Wind in the Fireweed,

summer time flying;

Soon, from the willow trees,

leaves will be gone;

I, like the ptarmigan,

see summer dying,

And, when the last plane leaves,

you will be gone...

Of all the images of the Arctic still fresh in my mind after all these years, fireweed is, perhaps, the one that most instantly summons the past.

I spent some of the happiest years of my childhood living and playing, and growing up in Aklavik, a tiny hamlet on the Peel Channel, in the delta of the mighty McKenzie River.

The Peel Channel, seen in the photo to the right, sweeping around the peninsula where Aklavik perches precariously, is a fairly respectable size on its own, but it is only one of the many fingers of the McKenzie to wend its serpentine way through the alluvial delta on this final leg of the river's journey to the Arctic Ocean.

I have seen this river grow its winter sheath of Ice seemingly overnight. Fall was only too short, and soon the landscape was again blanketed in the winter coat the would be its robe for the next seven months.

I've been wakened from sleep on a dark night in June by the groans of the rafted ice pack, heaving floe after floe up onto the shore, tearing itself apart like some wild demented beast in its grinding quest for the open sea.

Then the morning would dawn, clear and bright, sparkling on the rippling waters of the open channel. All that remained were a few ice pans, cast up on the river's banks to melt slowly in the watery spring sunlight.

The latest I ever remember the river ice breaking up in all the years we lived in Aklavik was mid-July, but most usually the ice was gone before the end of June. Its exit created a great deal of excitement each year. Not only was it a sure sign of the changing season, it lifted everyones' spirits just to see the open water again after so many months of ice and snow.

It was also a great reason to have a pool on the date of the ice's final exit. Never ones to miss out on a wager, the navy hands (enlisted men) were avid followers of the 'break-up' pool. As well, most of the officers and a large number of townsfolk participated, particularly the teachers, the school principal, and even the local constabulary, the members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment, got in on the action.

I don't know who won the pool the spring the ice stayed 'til July,, but whoever drew that date must have had nerves of steel or monumental confidence to hold out so long.

We didn't feel we were particularly different from the people who lived in town, or their children - our schoolmates, beyond knowing that they all belonged to this sometimes harsh but beautiful place, and we would be leaving in two years, the average length of stay at any posting.

We lived in small houses on the base, and most of the people we knew lived in equally small houses in town. There were a few who had to stiffen the walls of their combination tent-and-plywood dwellings with salvaged side panels from the huge and heavy corrugated cardboard shipping cartons.

Everything not available in the town - non-game meat, tinned or powdered skim milk, powdered eggs, dehydrated staples, canned goods, building materials, machinery, spare parts - had to be shipped in by barge during the all too brief arctic summer months when the river was navigable (and free of ice), or flown in by bush plane in the winter. As you can imagine, there was no shortage of large containers. The wooden crates and pallets from the barges were reused, but the heavy cardboard often disappeared from the uncrating piles, only to magically re-appear, bolstering the side of one of the tent-houses.

I had never seen houses like the part-tent, part-cabins. My friends from school, town kids, explained that the fathers of the families who lived in them either weren't very good hunters, or didn't work hard enough on their trap-lines, Say what you will about colliding cultures, poverty, and the ills brought to the north by 'outsiders', to my child's mind, my friend's pronouncements were explanation enough.

'Outside', to those of you who have never lived up north, is any part of the country not in the Arctic. By definition, anyone from what we would call 'down south' was referred an 'outsider', because they came from outside the community.

Still, the gap between us (the base brats) and our schoolmates from town was not so wide. We each had our special privileges and areas of expertise. We were sometimes allowed to each invite a friend to the men's mess (dining hall) on a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie brought in for the hands (the men). When one was deemed suitable for children's viewing, it was a grand occasion. We would all sit on the hard, folding chairs as quietly as we could, munching our bag of chips or (wonder of wonders) sharing a bowl of fresh, hot popcorn.

Our town friends, on the other hand, were fonts of useful information. Thanks to them we learned that the well-dressed northerner never ventured out without a jacknife in their jeans. This was a necessity, used in July, the peak of mosquito season, for cutting the leafy willow switch you would flail incessantly in front of your face keep the clouds of thirsty little blood-suckers at bay.

Your jacknife was also used to trim small sticks for kindling, and, of course, for the occasional game of stick-knife.

We also learned no weekend outing was complete without a billy can (any large cast-off tin that had been outfitted with a twisted wire-loop handle), a waterproof twist of matches, and a small paper sack containing equal parts of loose tea and sugar.

Relatively clean water was available from any slough or creek and was always boiled for 5 minutes before the tea was brewed. In a pinch, one could always make 'Hudson Bay' tea by gathering the correct leaves and berries, but real black tea was a treat and a sign of proper hospitality. You never knew when you would welcome guests to your lunch fire.

I remember I was eight years old when our teacher took us down to watch the seal boats returned. It was electric. The whole town had turned out on the river bank to help - the river bank was busier than I had ever seen it, with whole families gathered by their boats. I was enchanted by the noise, the bustling people, the sights and smells. The crisp, stinging smoke of the campfires intermingled with the tang of the curing salt and the heavy, almost sweet odor of freshly butchered seal carcasses.

Dogs yelped and leaped at the end of their chains, frantic for the odd scrap tossed their way. Children ran, laughing among the adults, who, though hard at work, were also laughing and smiling at their antics. I understood little of the babble of languages, Louchoux, Cree, Innu, and all the various dialects with a smattering of French thrown in.

The men and older boys were unloading their precious cargo while the women and girls were hard at work, expertly skinning the carcasses and carving the meat for drying. Most used conventional knives, but some of the grandmothers wielded 'ulus', the razor-sharp and efficient 'woman's knife', a well-honed half-circle blade with the haft leading up from the straight side to a wooden handle.

One sore point, to my mind at the time, one difference between us and our town friends, was they had much nicer parkas than any of us. We wore the nylon covered, service issue-type garment - warm and serviceable, but not attractive.

Our schoolmates, however, wore beautiful Western Artic garments. Constructed in several warm layers, they were easy to get on and off quickly, and were re-covered each year with a new outer parka. This outer parka was a heavy cotton dress, complete with pleated or gathered ruffle round the bottom, usually in a colorful floral print of some kind.

I always looked forward to the first day the ladies all wore their newly covered parkas to church. Gazing out from the choir pews at the front of All Saints Anglican Cathedral on Easter Sunday was like looking at a sea of fresh colorful flowers. I am sorry to say this wonderful wooden structure has long since burnt down.

I have many fond memories of climbing the winding narrow wooden stairs of the bell tower up to the loft where the junior choir changed for Sunday service into our red cassocks and snowy surplices topped off with a red beanie. The senior choir looked very smart in their black cassocks with white surplices, but each lady also had to contend with balancing a mortar board atop their heads, all the while singing lustily as we solemnly processed in behind the cross.

It's wooden structure housed an amazing altar piece painted by a local artist. It depicted Mary and Joseph as an Inuit couple, beautifully dressed and attended by two hunters offering pelts to the Baby Jesus, a Hudson Bay factor, and a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman in full arctic gear.

But I digress...

To return to the obvious inequities between us and our schoolmates in terms of dress, not only did our classmates receive a fresh, new parka cover each spring, but, their fur ruffs were amazing. A good wolverine ruff protected the wearer from the wind-driven snow. As well, anyone lucky enough to have a wolverine ruff would not suffer from an iced up face scarf like the rest of us, a common problem in very cold weather. The wolverine fur naturally shed water, so the moisture in your warm exhalations wouldn't stick to the fur and cause an ice build-up over the unfortunate wearer's nose and mouth.

We greatly admired the colorful tassels cascading gloriously down their backs and adorning the mitts of the nicest looking young townsmen. Once I too, learned how to braid proper mitt strings and make pom-poms and tassels, I was able to add a bit more color to my winter clothing. I remember many a Brownie meeting that ended with several of us debating color choices for the wool we would wind into tassels or pom-poms, and with every doorknob festooned with long hanks of wool soon to be braided into mitt strings.

We quickly learned that these beautiful adornments were not only style statements, they were life-savers, and a necessary part of arctic gear. That, however, is a topic for another hub. Let me leave you with two pictures of another of my arctic favorites - the Aurora Borealis (northern lights).