Getting a Taste for the Haida Gwaii Semester Program

 So a week or so ago three of the other students in the program and I were asked to speak on a panel for the community about why we wanted to come and study in Haida Gwaii. A short video of the panel, with still photos, has surfaced on YouTube. Thought you all might be interested in why I'm here and how awesome and diverse the interests of my peers are!

Haida Gwaii Semester Video

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow, Snoooooow

No pictures today, mostly because I haven't been able to charge my camera for a couple days. This is what happens when there are 150km/hr winds and no power. We were about 24 hours without power yesterday, which meant a VERY cold morning, cancelled class, team naps in large beds for warmth and then a lot of lovely walks in the sunshine and making coffee on the gas stove in our house. It was actually really fun. We got about another five inches of snow last night, SO unusual for the islands. Haida Gwaii usually has winters very similar to Vancouver's, but this year is taking the cake for freak storms and crazy temperatures. It has warmed up considerably this week to about zero, which is really nice. I'm still wearing two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two tops, a sweater, a jacket, boots, a toque, scarf and mitts every time I leave the house, but at least I no longer feel like I'm going to freeze to death despite all those layers.

The best news right now is I thiiiink we've sorted our housing situation. The boys, T and M, have a two bedroom apartment and K and I have almost nailed down a two bedroom house just around the corner from them. So exciting. Trying to scrounge housing for four people in a community of 950 in ten days has been yet another example of the power of community. People stopped me in the grocery store (having bright white hair is helpful when people are looking for you) to tell me about places they thought might be available or coming available. People I'd never met before. This is a village that cares about it's members. Have I mentioned the giant crush I have on these islands? Has it become completely obvious yet?

Tomorrow we're writing our final for our very first course of the term. It's been phenomenal and really affected (effected? UGH) my perception of occ/enviro health, industry and community development. The next class is the history and policy of natural resource management (or possibly just of forestry...can't remember) which I'm very much looking forward to. I had the chance to pick the brain of one of my peer's husbands, who's a faller in Port. Really interesting guy. So now I'm totally obsessed with the forestry industry and trying to learn as much as I possibly can about how it functions (and fails to function).

Wish me luck on the exam tomorrow and hopefully I will soon be posting pictures of my new home!

The Mill on the Floss

Today we took a field trip to a mill in Port (Clements). Yup, that's right, a field trip to a mill. It was actually pretty interesting, though also kind of depressing. The forestry industry is really hurting up here. After the disastrously unsustainable management of the forests, the protests in Lyell Island and the 'bust' part of the boom and bust cycle up here, the forestry industry has been slowly coming under the control of Taan Forest, the Haida forest products management branch. It's a pretty complicated and tense history and current climate and I don't profess to understand what's going on particularly well but the end result of all this is that there really isn't a reliable source of raw timber for the couple of mills that are trying to make a go of it on the islands. The mill that we went to is operating super part time and mostly sending raw logs oversees, instead of doing some more value-added processing. I've never been inside a mill before and I still don't really understand how all that machinery works but it was definitely interesting.

Finish boards are way harder to sell post-US housing market collapse.

So this is the raw timber that ends up getting shipped to China and Korea.

Trim saw's not seeing a whole lot of action these days.

The mill is only operating three to six months of year due to availability of cut logs.

After our field trip, four of us headed back into Port to meet with A, another student from our program who lives in Port, to work on a project we're doing on Skidegate. The work is sort of endless (though the report is due Friday...so I guess it can't be that endless) but A made us an amazing dinner (elk and spinach pasta, salmon with capers and giant salad) and we got to hang out with her partner who's a faller, aka a man who does the actual cutting down of the trees. For a resource management program we sure don't know much at about how forestry actually works so it was fantastic to pick his brain for an hour about what harvesting lumber involves. Super interesting and full of a ton of jargon and words we didn't understand. But it was really interesting to hear about the realities of clear cutting vs. selective logging (the former resulting in much faster and healthier re-growth, less destruction of water sources from wind-downed trees and considerably less lost lumber) and the mechanization of the forestry industry.

This whole program, all 2.25 weeks of it, has really opened my eyes to how much I've limited myself in my life so far. People up here are full of creativity and flexibility and...bravery almost. I feel like my life so far has been very lazy. When I have a problem I call someone and they fix it for me. If my bike is broken, I take it to the shop and pay someone to deal with it. There's a guy here who had a broken bike so he started a volunteer program at the highs school to teach people how to fix their own bikes. He reads stuff on the internet and in books and just tries stuff out. If people see a need for something in their community they just...do it. My experiences with rural life, aka the time I spend reading research papers in my spare time, has always been to think about the lack of access that being rural and remote involves. But now that I'm actually living it I can't believe how much more access I feel like I have. If I want to hike, I go for a hike. If I want something to do I go to the Wednesday night hulahooping class or the Tuesday night bike program or the Friday night coffee house and open mike at the Legion. If I'm bored in the evening I go to someone's house and we play music and sing. The world seems full of possibilities here and for the first time in a long, long time I feel like I have skills, valuable skills, that could make a difference to this community. I feel useful.

I just can't believe how different life can be from what I thought it had to be.

This is my favourite totem at the Ka'ay Centre. I can see him from my seat in class.

It's Still Snowing

The beach at the Ka'ay Centre. This is my lunch break.

The Ka'ay Centre in the snow. Ah school :)

Balance Rock in Skidegate.

Our awesome cabin in North Beach. Electricity and water be damned!

North Beach. This is how you get between cabins, which are built over a swamp.

Heaven.

The surfers among us were pretty excited by this point.

There are icebergs on the rivers. Ice. Bergs.

HI!

Apologies for the radio silence. Photos will be posted tomorrow but the past week has been crazy. A brief summary of this week's events:

- SCHOOL (first course is juuuuust about finished, eep).

- Blizzard! So much snow!

- Freezing temperatures are no fun and no one packed enough warm clothing. Also, the entire infrastructure of the islands were not built for -22 degree weather.

- When the weather is really cold for several days pipes freeze. Then the frozen pipes burst. Yay!

- We've been having rolling black outs the past couple of days due to wind and snow, meaning no internet and no electric heat (BURR) but thankfully the gas range still works!

- Looking for a new place due to incompatibility with landlord. We're working to keep our new little family together and move by the end of the week. Lots of drama but also amazing support from the whole program.

- So many amazing speakers in class this week. Lots of discussion of community and place and space and 'development.'

- We all spent Friday-Saturday off the grid, in the POURING rain in tiny cabins in North Beach. All potable water froze. North Beach is gorgeous. Tlell is empty. Port Clements has the best grocery store on-island. Masset isn't as nice as Charlotte but has more stuff to offer in terms of stores and so on.

- During the above-mentioned trip there were lots of fires and gas lamps, flaming hoola hoops, surfing, and I may or may not have ripped my last pair of pants jumping from a loft onto a guy with rainbow dreadlocks. It seemed like such a good idea at the time...

- In Port at a friend's house, having elk for dinner!

- I'm hitting the thrift store tomorrow for new pants.

Brrrr

It's -22 degrees C. People are freaking out.

We are also now the only house being lived in by program members that still has water. Everyone else's pipes are frozen. Thankfully we have five bathrooms and a hot tub and are willing to trade access for shiny things. 

Snow Day!

Sorry for the posting delay, I've been distracted by snow! We're in the middle of the Artic airflow that's heading towards Vancouver and Friday night we got a 'big' snow (big to me anyway, probably 6 or 7cm) and then we were blessed with sun all day Saturday!

The possibly now familiar view from my sliding door

Trees and wires and snow, oh my!

So after a nice long sleep-in on Saturday (due to some debauchery and dancing in the local bar on Friday night) my three roommates and two of our good friends geared up and headed out to hike the mountain behind our house. I use the word mountain very lightly.

Off we go!

The entire hike was just stunning

We started out like good little hikers on pretty well groomed trail but abandoned it quickly in our ongoing search for monumental old-growth trees. One my roommates, T, took the lead and unwittingly lead us into a new growth Hemlock area so we bushwhacked our way through the snow for quite a while, mostly walking on top of the old fallen trees and bush as much as we could. We failed to find much old-growth, we think we weren't high enough up the hill, but there were some spectacular streams and we stumbled upon a deer stand where we had our lunch. 

We even managed to cross all the water we encountered without anyone falling in!

Deer stand. Deer are invasive species here and doing a lot of damage to the existing silvaculture of the forests.

Today is less sunny and thus more conducive to working, which is good considering how much homework we have! Goodness me. Couple of presentations coming up this week, plus tomorrow night the HGHES (Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society, the group that runs this program) is doing an evening event to introduce us to the community and a couple of us, myself included, have been asked to talk a bit about why we're here. Add to all that to my 'work-work' and I've got myself a pretty busy day lined up. We're in for a very cold snap this week, someone said the temperature should be around minus 7, and I unfortunately just broke the zipper on one of the two pairs of pants I brought and the other pair are in the wash. Time for layering long underwear!

Bliss

And Now for Something...

c/o Mr. General Delivery and IGA Kitsilano.

Food security guys. Honestly.

Blue

As some of you know very well, I've been quite homesick during the past couple of days. Adjusting to life in this tiny village, having housemates, being back in the classroom, even navigating life without having a car, has been overwhelming. Especially without my usual support network and Mr. General Delivery. Despite the loneliness I've been feeling, or maybe even because of it, I have never so quickly come to love a place as I have Haida Gwaii.

I've felt drawn to the north, to the rural parts of Canada, to the Arctic, for a long time. Hearing about my grandparents on both sides of my family, and their experiences in the colder, emptier and often more brutal parts of Canada, has pulled at my imagination and had major influences on how I see my future unfolding. When I study a map of Canada, a trait I inherited from Babz much to the vexation of Boo and Mum, I gravitate to Baffin Island. I think this fascination comes from needing something to focus my sense of Canadianism on, like having my grandparents live in all the places they lived gives me more street cred as a Canadian.

We've been talking a lot about culture and place and identity in class over the past couple of days, heard from some of the Haida leaders (several of whom were involved in the logging protests here in the mid-80s) and watched two incredible TED Talks that I highly recommend. Wade Davis, a National Geographic researcher, talks about the 'ethnosphere,' the idea of a biosphere-esque summation of the total of human culture and imagination.

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

John Howard Kunstler talks about my favourite topic, urban and suburban city design and the effect of built environment and has an amazing rant against the hideousness of much of American (and Canada). I swear some of his photos could be spots in BC towns.

http://blog.ted.com/2007/04/20/james_howard_ku_1/

Have a watch, I promise you won't regret it.

Queen Charlotte, Charlotte City, the Village of Queen Charlotte, whatever you want to call it, is a pretty neat place. It's quiet and slow and coastal in the fullest sense of all those words. It's an extremely blue town. The water is blue, the clouds are blue, the giant snow covered mountains to the west are blue. Almost every home here is heated by wood-burning stove and the blue smoke drifts out of every chimney, down the hill (the town is about 10 blocks long and 3 blocks deep along the water on a bit of a hill) and settles in the inlet between us and Moresby Island. The architecture here is creative in a fantastic Salt Spring-esque example of rural design. When you're home needs a new room, you gather up some supplies and build another room. Having the same siding on all parts of your house, having a level roof or a square house footprint, having anything resembling a Vancouver home iiiiiisn't really a priority here. But it comes out looking really lovely rather than like the shmozzel it sounds like. The constant building and changing, and the ubiquitous piles of firewood, are often covered in blue tarps that match the blue recycle bins and blue-green trees. It's deeply restful. I think it actually makes the adjustment harder as I'm forced to settle down and let things wash over me.

In short, I'm pretty much having my mind blown up here.

Will Somebody Please Turn the Lights On?

I swear I will stop commenting on how late in the day the sun rises here sometime soon but that time is not now. Seriously. I get up in the morning, run from my bed to my shower in the freezing cold to turn on the hot water, run back to bed and dive under the covers, wait ten minutes, shower, dress, make some coffee, eat some brekkie, greet the roomies, lay out all my school stuff...

The "school stuff"

...and then we all head out the door around 8am to head to class. 

8am. The view from our front driveway.

To all of you who send me emails asking me to promise me to stay safe, don't fret, I wear blinky bikes lights on my backpack when it's this dark outside. But it does make it kind of difficult to feel really awake in the morning. But enough about the sunrise (for now). Let's talk about the Ka'ay Centre. Ka'ay is the Haida word for sea lion and part of one of the older Haida names for the area around Skidegate. Our classroom is just to the right of the main atrium, for those who've been there in the past, and the view from my chair of choice straight out the windows and into the bay.

I don't know what that little guy signifies but I like him.

We tend to spend our lunch hours out on the beach as much as possible (it's bloody cold)

The bay, looking across to Moresby Island on the right.

The beach is all rocks, no sand, so the waves make an incredible sound washing in and out.

One of the five longhouses that make up the Centre. Each one has a house pole that signifies one of the five major Haida settlements on the islands.

The oldest of the poles at the Centre. This one stood in the village that used to be here.

The obligatory raven atop pole shot.

My bike is being dropped off tonight by the wonderful girl who so kindly drove it up here. Really excited to get a bit more mobile and have a toodle along the highway (helmet and lights in tow!).

The days are starting to go a lot faster now, with class during the day and homework and workwork in the evenings (must. write. abstracts!) and I'm finally starting to feel less homesick. Em, one of the amazing folks who runs our program, is going to start letting us know about community events so we can get a bit more involved with what's happening around town, which we're all really excited about. It's tough to just jump into the community here as so much happens by word of mouth and in people's homes, rather than at more public areas. But I'll figure out how to worm my way in there and make some friends :)

First Day of Class

No pictures today I'm sorry to say but there will be more tomorrow, I promise! My alarm rang at 7:30am today and I hauled myself out of bed, flung open my curtains and greeted...total darkness. I cannot stress this enough people, the sun rises miiiighty late around here. But we were treated to a rather magnificent view once the sun made its appearance and we actually got to see blue sky almost all day! Admittedly, it also snowed and hailed lightly, on-and-off, all day long as well and was really cold...but at least it was bright out!

Classes are held in the Haida Heritage Centre, just west of Skidegate, which is a beautiful set of five or six connected longhouse-style buildings that house a museum, classrooms, a performance hall, a cafe and the offices of the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society (the folks responsible for this program) and a number of other organizations. All of the water-facing walls of the building are completely glass, making for a breath-taking view of the bay and the small islands that dot the inlet. Somewhere across the water is Prince Rupert, but far too far away to see.

Our first day of classes was good, if a bit overwhelming. There are twenty students in the class, mostly doing some kind of forestry/geography/conservation program. They are mostly undergrads but generally older so I fit in well age-wise but not so much academic background-wise :) It's very interesting to be up here and talking about resource management in the midst of the Enbridge shakedown. We were welcomed by the chief of one Haida clans and his niece this morning and he had to zip out quickly after the prayer to meet with some of the other chiefs about an upcoming Enbridge meeting.

And now my friends, the sun has set and I have homework to do!

Sunday in Charlotte...

...is a quiet kind of day. Took the opportunity to sleep in on the last day before classes start. Then the roomies and I hit up a Bike Re-Psych, a neat program for high school students to get experience working with and restoring bikes. They built a bunch of bikes for some of the students in our program. We kind of saw the sun today...and by kind of I mean it got a bit lighter outside midday.  Here's the evidence :)

The lovely strait between Graham and Moresby Islands.

The bottom (north end) of our street, 6th St. Which is referred to by everyone who actually lives here as Hippie Hill.

People are really unenthused about official road names here. Which makes it super awkward for the 22 newbies who just arrived in town with only street addresses for their homes.

Classes start tomorrow. We're still waiting on about half the students who drove up and are stuck in Port Hardy, waiting for the ferries to start running again after the last couple days of storms. It sounds like they'll make it up tonight but, in case anyone was planning to drive up this way in the winter...DON'T. Classes are in Skidegate, which is just east of Charlotte, down the highway. We're going to be in the new Haida Cultural Centre which is supposed to be breathtaking.

And that's all for now folks!

Wet and Cold and Loving It

There are two things I can already tell you about Haida Gwaii. Number 1, the weather really is the same as Vancouver. Honestly. The only difference is that it doesn't phase people here. Case in point, my roommate M and I went on a three hour hike up a bit wet hill and had a blast (side note: my rubber pants, jacket, gloves and backpack rock!! Thanks for your input and help with shopping AMac!). M is pro at finding old growth trees to climb around in. Case in point:

What you can't see are the hundreds of daddy long legs behind me

Tree door!

The second thing you should know about Haida Gwaii is that it is about 1000km north of Vancouver, which means the whole sunrise-sunset business is outrageous. I woke up at 8am this morning to darkness. No sign of a perky sunbeam. Not much better at 9am either.

Daylight, where are you?

This afternoon will involve a trek to town centre and an attempt at grocery shopping that will be made more complicated by the fact that the produce truck delivers on Mondays, meaning the pickings will be slim. Lentils and rice and pasta sauce, here I come!

Two more shots of my house to finish out this post. 

Looking from my chair to the right into the kitchen

Looking straight ahead into the rest of the living area

Feel free to leave comments if you want, it's very strange sending this stuff out into the aether and wondering if anyone's actually reading it...

Up, Up and Away!

Just about half of the stuff I brought

Packed! Somehow. Had to reshuffle it all at the airport though. Bloody weight limits

Cloudy flight up

My first sighting of Haida Gwaii! Sandspit

Landing in Sandspit

My new home!

Welcome

Hi everyone!

Since I don't have Facebook, and my email tends to freak out when I attach photos to messages, I thought the easiest way for me to keep in touch while I'm up in Haida Gwaii would be blogging. So here I am. Admittedly I haven't actually left yet and packing photos aren't the most interesting thing in the world, but I've got to start somewhere.

Mr. General Delivery did a TON of laundry last night and now I'm 'patiently' waiting for it to dry so it can be added to the puzzle of gear, stuff and clothes I've been laying out on the floor over the past couple of days.

Thanks Mr. GD :)

My bike and associated accessories left Vancouver on Tuesday morning in the car of one of my delightful HG colleagues (actually I haven't met her yet but anyone who's willing to deal with my bike-related neuroses has got to be delightful) and should be arriving in Skidegate this afternoon. As a bit of an introduction to Haida Gwaii, which was called the Queen Charlotte Islands on most maps until just last year, Skidegate is a Haida village on the southeast corner of Graham Island, which is the northern island of Haida Gwaii. I'll be spending a lot of my work time in Skidegate but my down time will be spent in the village of Charlotte, a larger village (n~950) 20 minutes down the highway. Charlotte is one of the two large communities on Haida Gwaii, the other being Masset on the northern part of Graham Island. 

Haida Gwaii, minus the very top and bottom bits. Silly screen capture.

Emails, texts and in-person visits are strongly encouraged over the next couple of months. I have a new cell number, let me know if you need it. I'm going to miss you all while I'm gone but hopefully I'll come home with fantastic stories and about 3000 reeeeaaally wet photos to share with you all! And finally, in case anyone feels the need to send care packages full of tasty and/or warm things, you can reach me at

My Name
General Delivery
Queen Charlotte
V0T 1S0