I May Be Some Time...

My sister Meaghan gave me a brilliant book for Christmas: Pierre Berton’s “Prisoners of the North.” I sort of sneered at the title, assuming she was making a jab at my present working conditions, but that soon vanished when I started to read it.
Mr. Berton focuses on some southern individuals who truly went to heroic and, some would say, foolhardy attempts to explore this part of Canada. I think some of them were certifiably unwell, but whatever their motivations and reasoning, as I look north across a vast expanse of blue-white sea ice , my hat goes off to them. If the weather up here is inclement, I sit in my heated, furnished, well-stocked little house and whine if my espresso supply gets low. My worst hardship is having to boil my drinking water. The men in the book endured, by eating pelts, and, you guessed it, each other.
The argument has always been that people, if they want to survive up here, need to imitate and heed the Inuit. I believe this credo to be true. But even the Inuit died of starvation, and fell through the ice, and froze to death. That they continue to thrive against constant hardship makes them the real heroes.

A is for Alcohol

This part of Nunavik is dry, so bootlegging is rife up here. A bottle of vodka (any brand) goes for $300.00. A mickey of vodka goes for $150.00. There is never a shortage of buyers. The Inuit binge drink, so life can be cheery and humdrum for 30 days of the month, until the booze comes into town and the whole place erupts. It's better not to be on-call at those times.

Gone Away is the Bluebird

This is not a cheery Currier and Ives' winter landscape. I have woken up to find myself in the Discovery channel's "Extreme Weather" program. It is cold and dark and the wind is raging, blowing snow everywhere. I have to dig out my doorway before the snow piled up there freezes and I will not be able to close the door. Feeling huffy at my pampered friends (you know who you are !) in Montreal who hire people to do this for them.
I lay in bed last night listening to dogs howling. At least I told myself that's what it was, because it also sounded like a woman screaming.

Advent 1

Yaël, my good friend in Montreal who doubles as my cat's godmother, has sent me Christmas decorations from Dollarama and a chocolate Advent calendar that I have begun to pillage in recent days. It doesn't seem to occur to her that she is Jewish and it would not be in my favour to remind her of this fact right now. Part of her traditions show through, however, as the Christmas lights she sent are blue and the tree ornaments are silver. She has introduced me over the years to the edible joys of Hannakuh and this season she and I have both vowed to forgo an evening of latkes and beer, our unique holiday tradition, until I get back south in February. This means sparing hapless Pharmaprix employees our drunken tampering with their holiday merchandise. We ended up there one overly festive night a couple of years ago, and spent an hour relentlessly pawing at a musical santa and sleigh to tinnily warble 'Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer', drunkenly guffawing into our scarves.

The short days of the north, and the heavy social conditions here, lead me to yearn for a glimpse of light to guide my way, both when I am negotiating the weather and when I am sitting with a family and listening to a litany of abuse and sadness that spans generations. I love the materialism of December, the chocolate and the tinsel and the buying and wrapping of gifts. Under my present living and working conditions, though, Advent is more real to me than it has ever been. I am a lacklustre christian, prone to the inertia of doubt, but I still believe the Christmas story, and how it all comes together at Easter, and this year especially, I need to believe it. It's what warms and comforts and guides me.