Halloween Spirit-Yellowknife Style

Ready to Roll...

 Thanks to local Yellowknife business Quality Furniture for getting into the true spirit of the season...these northern scarecrows made my day!...

Walking Tall...

Dressed for Success...

Cool Dude...

Styling...

Lil' Ms Cheerful....

Farmer Joe....

...and his Special Friend...

Who me?...

Feeling a bit Witchy today...

Day after the Night before...

Boo!!!!...

Landscapes in Transition-Ingraham Trail Oct 2010

Along the Yellowknife River

                                                                                    
What a difference a few weeks makes!  A leisurely Sunday drive on the Ingraham Trail today revealed a landscape always in transition...  
                                                                                                   

Prelude Lake vista

Winter tracks begin

Spruce guardians of the lake

Winter textures

Snow dust over thickening ice

Roadside ice falls

First to freeze

Snow-capped reeds

Sunny birches lakeside

Moody sky rolling over the water

Sherbet layers of ice and water

Bev Doolittle scene

Frozen in place and time

Winter comes to Niven Lake Trail

Transitional landscapes

 

     So this past week saw our first real snow in the neighborhood, a few inches that seems to be sticking around. Roads had to be cleared and gravel laid for safe travel. Temps have dropped and smaller bodies of water are starting to freeze over. We can see this most clearly on the Niven Lake Trail where we typically spend at least part of every day with Lacey. A sense of the changing seasons....

Winter Cattail

New ice cover

Ducks seeking open water

Icy shores

Frosty breezes

Snow covers sepia grasses

Birches in midday winter sun

Frosted Forest

Hints of more ice to come

More Digital Storytelling from the North

Ageless Inuit Man-Photo by Doreen Leavitt

                                 

    Last year I was involved as evaluator in an innovative pan-Arctic Inuit Wellness TV Series project. It was a very engaging experience and I know we all learned a lot.  Take a peek at the website and just one of the imbedded project videos below and you may, too.                                                                                                                                                                              

 
Pan-Arctic Inuit Wellness TV Series      (click here)

TV Set-Iqaluit, Nunavut, May 2009

 
ABOUT US (excerpted from website above)


"Qanuqtuurniq - Finding the Balance" shared health information, stories about successful Inuit community health projects and interesting research with audiences across northern regions in May 2009 . It was co-ordinated by the Inuit Tuttarvingat, the Inuit-specific unit of the National Aboriginal Health Organization.

TV PHONE-IN SHOWS

"Qanuqtuurniq - Finding the Balance" was an International Polar Year outreach project. It involved a project team of health promotion experts, researchers, Inuit organizations, community members, and northern broadcasters, as well as several working groups that helped develop the content. Inuit Communications (ICSL) of Iqaluit, Nunavut along with EnTheos Films of Ottawa, produced the series and it was broadcast in May 2009 on the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN) North and Alaska's 360 North.

The three television programs were:

• about Inuit youth and coping; Inuit men's health; and Inuit maternity care
• live and interactive through phone and e-mail
• aired in the Inuit language with English captions
• broadcast on May 11, 12 & 13, 8-10 p.m. Eastern Time
• broadcast simultaneously through a Web-cast on the National Inuit Youth Council's Web site, www.niyc.ca
• hosted by an Inuk broadcaster, with a panel of community experts and a live studio audience
• a way to share interesting information about Inuit health and wellness
• an opportunity for Inuit to talk to Arctic researchers and ask how research is benefiting Inuit communities.

---
Here is one of the brief videos that provide highlights from exemplary community-based health projects (~5mins) that was created as part of the overall project and imbedded into the  2- hour live TV show on youth resiliency. If you like this one, I encourage you to check out the others, and the many additional resources all available on the Inuit Tuttarvingat website above. 

Look. Listen.

Project Life | IsumaTV   (click here)
Project Life is a youth wellness and suicide prevention program for the Maniilaq area of Alaska. It uses digital story-telling to help Alaskan Native youth to connect with and express their culture. It also helps the youth learn about leadership. These digital stories created by the youth allow them to explore their culture and interact with their elders by interviewing them and then sharing the interviews with the community. We will meet a young Inupiat woman whose life has been dramatically changed through the Project Life program and hear how this program hopes to impact many more youth.

Cultural Crossroads-a Celebration

  Like any community, Yellowknife is both a function and product of its complex history,  a cultural crossroads. Unlike many communities, Yellowknife acknowledges, celebrates and honors its multiple cultural threads in at least some of its public art. Each day as I walk to work, I pass a display that I first noticed last July when I was briefly in town for the 14th International Congress on Circumpolar Health.  It caught my attention and fancy way back then; familiarity over the past few months has bred nothing but increased fondness for both the idea expressed and its evocative execution on the local landscape.  See what you think.  Enjoy. 

What would a similar artistic collaboration look like in your neck of the woods?........

Open Pages of History

Solid Foundations

Shared Tracks over Time

Weaving Community

Cultural Mosaic

 Shared Reflections

Run for Our Lives-Yellowknife Style

Beaded Beauty

 Sunny blustery weather greeted the Yellowknife edition of the Race for the Cure today, called Run For Our Lives (RFOL)  here...1, 3, 5K walk/run options were available so locals could help raise funds to address breast cancer.  For the past few years, a primary focus of the local fundraising has been the purchase of an advanced digital mammography unit for the regional hospital. Today, post-race, amidst celebratory pink balloons, and much cheering and stomping from the all-ages, mostly pink crowd, the announcement came:  We did it!!...over $116,000 raised this year alone, in a town with a population just about a sixth of that.

Quilted tributes

A Good Reason to Give

Local Money Helps at Home

 The St Patrick's High School Gym was awash in community good spirit and old-fashioned competition.  The Diavik Divas narrowly beat the BHP Billiton team for most corporate donations; a local elementary school edged out high schoolers for most dollars raised. The woman who won two round trip airline tickets for raising the most donations, donated them back again.   Local businesses donated inspired raffle items, including a gorgeous hand-made quilt, heating oil, snow machine outerwear, audio-electronics, a pellet stove and the grand prize, a diamond valued at about $11,000 donated by one mine, won by an employee at another, with smiles (and more than a few tears) all around.

My Walking Team
(thanks to the Nursing North of 60 group
 for inviting me to join)

Wall of Memory and Shared Stories

People wore signs 'in memory of...' and 'in honor of...' pinned on their backs, and handwritten testimonials and fervent prayers have been crafted into several evocative and moving quilts each year that all graced the gym walls today.  Tim Horton Coffee and donuts, and Coop water, juice and bananas were abundant. 

One of many, gone too soon

Mickey Brown-Leader of the Travelling Bras
and Sold Out Book

Fun Art with a Message

And in a creative burst to help raise local awareness and have a bit of fun last Spring,  local women created and modeled stunning unique bras, surprising the organizers when all 500 colorful books that captured the stories of the art and the artists sold out.  The bras were on display at the gym today, too.  Plans are already underway for a 'boxer and tie' edition next year to help get the word out about prostate cancer.

A wonderful day.  Thank you, Yellowknife!

 

Hand-crafted Ribbon- Quilt Size

More fun underwear art