The importance of place- Part 4

Yellowknife, NWT.

 “There are strange things done in the midnight sun - by the men who moiled for gold”

           - Robert W service

“Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.”

           -Writer unknown (probably someone’s dad)

Yellowknife was in my bones long before I began to understand the importance of place.

It was never simply where I lived. It permeated my decisions, my relationships, my work. It altered the way I thought and felt. I carry Yellowknife with me still.

Papua New Guinea had loosened my attachment to black-and-white thinking. Yellowknife returned me to a world of stark dualities.

Darkness and light.

Merciless cold and precious warmth.

Solitude and belonging.

Black rock beneath white snow.

view from my apartment window the day I arrived

In 1984, Franklin Hospital had too few hands and too many urgent needs. I carried a full-time family practice while delivering babies, administering anesthesia and covering the emergency department. There was endless work, punctuated by fragments of sleep.

I was practicing far beyond anything I had ever imagined myself capable of. Anesthesia had never been my forte, yet suddenly I was responsible for it. There was no hiding. No specialist down the hall. No easy second opinion.

The second opinion was often hundreds of kilometres away.

Yellowknife lies about 400 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. Its growing season is barely thirty days. The trees are small and stunted, offering little protection from the winds that whip freely across the landscape.

The Canadian Shield seemed almost stripped to its essence—ancient rock, sky, snow and light. Billions of years of weathering had smoothed the land, leaving something stark and elemental.

Living on the tundra meant living with ground that never fully thawed.

I found it desolate.

I found it breathtaking.

And I was lonely.

Winter took possession and penetrated everything. At times the temperature fell to -30°C, and with wind chill it could reach -65°C. It was too cold to stand outside for long, even to watch the famed Aurora Borealis dancing across the sky.

So I watched from my bed.

My bedroom had no curtains. Through the window, I could see the northern lights dazzling across the darkness—green and pink ribbons and curtains. I was separated from something extraordinary by a pane of glass.

                              ***

Everything was expensive. Most supplies had to be flown or trucked north. There was a strange shoulder season when the ice road was no longer safe, but the ferry had not yet begun running. All foods were then astronomically priced.

Then, Anika and I would share each piece of fruit.

The Yellowknives Dene had lived on and cared for these lands and waters for thousands of years. I had Indigenous patients and Indigenous co-workers, but no Indigenous friends.

Most of us in Yellowknife had come from somewhere else. We had left behind parents, siblings, and old friends.  Government workers, miners, teachers, nurses, doctors—people from every corner of Canada gathered in this improbable northern outpost.

We were far from home.

So, we became home for one another.

Holidays became orphan celebrations. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter—crowded tables, potluck dinners, mismatched chairs. We shared food, stories, loneliness and laughter. We checked on one another.

The North taught us that survival was not an individual enterprise.

Warm clothing mattered. A stocked pantry mattered. Knowing how to shovel your car out of a snowbank at -40 mattered.

But so did someone knocking on your door.

Someone noticing that you had been alone too long.

The North had a way of driving people inward, and sometimes that inwardness became dangerous. Cabin fever was real. Isolation could quietly turn into depression. We learned to watch for one another because we understood that human connection was as essential as heat.

I remember Anika’s unusual, lovely caregiver. I remember Franklin Hospital; the intense learning experience. I now recognize the survival skills that three years as a Yellowknifer cemented onto my scaffolding.

I see it now.

Yellowknife was a treasure, carefully disguised.

Betty and Ian

Great White Hunter ( my dad )