The Definition of Success

My last year of McGill was very much a challenge. I would come home every day after class and collapse on my bed, and wonder if all my efforts at getting a degree in social work would lead anywhere. I was very dissatisfied with school and my stage placement at a clinic in downtown Montreal was reinforcing my view that I was not being adequately equipped to do this work.
But miracle of miracles, I somehow completed all the required courses. At the same time I encountered a prof who, when she spoke of her experience as a social worker in the North, inspired me to see my degree not as an end in itself but as a door to a world I may not have previously considered. From that time on, I began to look at what I could do as opposed to what I could not do. I took it one step at a time: making the phone calls, getting an interview, reading about the Inuit and their history, completing the interview. Of course, when I was offered a job up here, I fretted. A lot. Should I go? Should I not go? My housemate, who probably said it more to ensure I would be moving out rather than for my own good, gave me gave me some excellent feedback. When he could no longer tolerate my whining, he said, " If you refuse this job you may as well rip up your diploma. What is the point of working so hard to chicken out now?" (or words to that effect. He is not known for his diplomacy.)
So now I am up here living and working in an Inuit community and I love it.
When things are bad, they are so bad I just want to inject myself in the eye with ammonia. But when things go well, and I am able to assist someone to come to a more positive realisation about their circumstances, then the pay-off is very big indeed. That I leave the office and walk home under a night sky in which the northern lights bloom irridescently only makes the pay-off even greater.
I have been reflecting on this past year because my supervisor has asked me to go to McGill and talk about life as a northern social worker at their annual career fair. Even though I will be trapped in an airless room trying to be heard above the din of other agencies also talking about how great they are to neurotic 3rd year students, I will relish this day. To go back to McGill, the place I always think of as Mount Doom, as an employed professional and not as a stressed-out, embittered student will be very sweet indeed. It will almost be like revenge.

Moonwalk

After I had suggested a perambulation beside the sea, my walking buddy convinced me, on this gloriously sunny and -27 Sunday morning, that I have not experienced the north until I walk across the frozen ocean. As a person who always ruminates about worst-case scenarios, particularly when it comes to my personal health and wellbeing, I was not in agreement with her, but I decided to go for it rather than be assaulted by the jeers of my siblings if I chickened out.
We set off across the frozen expanse of sea-ice, every Farley Mowat story I ever read popping into my head, and after the first couple of metres, I gradually began to relax. Ice sculptures created when one slab was pushed above another dotted the surface , and our shadows at high noon were as long as if it were early evening. I figured as long as skidoo tracks were visible on the ice, we were not in danger of falling in. We crossed the ocean at its narrowest point, taking about a half hour to reach the other side of the bay. I was quite aware that , being exposed on the ice in our contrasting clothing, we might as well have had neon signs directing the local carnivores lurking on the surrounding tundra to a Sunday buffet. It truly gives new meaning to the term 'vulnerable'.
When we got to the other side, we turned around and stared at the village, clinging like a limpet to the last bit of Quebec. I felt like an astronaut taking a spacewalk, happy enough for the experience, but eager to get home.

I think I am falling for the north, and I am not sure when it started. It could have been when I noticed people saying hello to me in the COOP. It could have been the night I was out walking with the nurses, and we stumbled across an Arctic fox in a leg trap. One wrestled with the trap while trying to evade the fox's piranha-like teeth, and the other nurse and I tried to restrain the husky who had joined us and keep a look out for the returning trapper. In theory I have always agreed with the notion of not interfering with another culture's ways of living, but that was until the fox looked me in the eyes.
Two days later, under a brilliant blue sky, the nurse drove me up to the crest of a hill overlooking the sea and the town, to point out wolf tracks in the snow. We then turned and faced south across the tundra, and he pointed out "polar bear alley", where the cuddly killers walk from one fishing place to another. This alley runs behind the town airport, where in the summer time I frequently walked alone. Not now.