The Magical Melt

I have promised not to write any more about the white (stuff). 

The season is done, the opportunity past, but I had to share this photo, it should be the last!

A roller coaster day

Today, was a roller coaster day. 

My morning started with a nice call from my mom, followed by a very exciting call from my sister. I have a new nephew (yay!) named Owen, and I can't wait to meet him in just over a week.

Then, my day continued to be great when I got to accompany Maria to feed the animals. Highlights included PETTING a MOOSE and a "teenage" muskox and learning a lot of things I have been wanting to know.  

Then I had interviews for summer interpreters which, unfortunately, were nothing to write about. But there is one good candidate. And lots more work editing Department documents.

My day got great again when Jeronima (I apologize, I think that is how it is spelled) became my new neighbour. Jeronima is a 'baby' mountain goat that we have recently acquired from Smithers, British Columbia. Poor guy had been attacked by dogs and was rescued, but the rehabilitation facility there is not set up for goats.  We were selected over the Calgary Zoo to be his new home because he's going to get a great new cliff to call his own and to start a family on. He passed all of his testing, waited out quarantine, and today 

was the first day he has been able to spend any significant time outside in months!! (Apparently they tried to leave him outside in Smithers but he kept clearing the fence!) He'll be my neighbour until spring is here and his cliff is ready. It was so great to watch him explore and, in my mind, devise a plan to jump out of his pen!

Unfortunately, the excitement of Jeronima was marred by my on-going discovery of things that had not been done before I came, things that were left to fall by the way-side, or just weren't bothered with -  and that is very, very frustrating. Added to that, is the ongoing saga of not finding a home. I found out today that one I had been holding out hope for was taken and I am having all of a time getting anyone to call me back. Sigh. 

Talking to Mike and discussing the thousands of dollars in property taxes we owe (the bill just came out - we're not behind!) and the roof repairs we need did not improve my mood. It would be one thing if I was in the house, but instead someone else gets my beautiful house and I return, yet again, to the mattress on the bathroom floor.  

Don't get me wrong, this is not regret. I love the Preserve, and there will be NOTHING better than waking up tomorrow morning to Jesse, Jeronima, the pretty stone sheep (who greeted me this morning with snuggles on the rock face) and my ever-interesting adult muskox - but seriously, I just want a house. Who ever would have thought it would be this difficult to find something that a) was within a 30km corridor, b) had running water, c) accepted a dog and d) didn't cost $2000/month. I just want somewhere to live. Period. Sigh.

Enjoy the photos of Jeronima, the adorable stone sheep and the red fox denning at the base of one of our cliffs. I'm going to my mattress.

The News

Whitehorse has 2 community papers - the Whitehorse Daily Star, which is daily, and the Yukon News, which is published on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We also have What's Up Yukon, which is published every week with the goings on around town and a business and health version which is offered periodically by the same publisher.

The most expensive paper is Saturday's Daily Star, which I believe is about $1.05 with tax.

I reckon any of the papers is about the size of a single section of the Windsor Star or the Ottawa Citizen - even the Saturday paper. I do, however, feel somewhat more informed than I have every been with either paper.  For small papers, both have remarkable international, national and local coverage.  In the past week, I have gotten stories on McGuinty's intended taxation changes, changes to delivery/publications at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News and regular updates on Obama. I have been updated about Zimbabwe, Italy, India and Sarah Palin is a regular subject, as is Ottawa politics and how this economic crisis is actually affecting the world! Professional and amateur sport, as well as things like biodiversity month are covered, and regardless of the size of the paper, the ice-guessing contest gets a page. What is the ice-guessing contest you ask? I quote:

"A river goes out neither late nor early. A river goes out precisely when it intends to. And, because rivers are nortoriously secretive and don't talk much about their intentions, the trick for us is figuring out when that will occur. The day that happens is the most important date on the spring calendar.

...Ever since 1896, the ice going out in Dawson has signalled the arrival of spring.  Back then, people would make bets on when the garbage on the ice - because the river was not only used as the city outhouse it was also the town dump - would start to move. There has been an ice pool run every year since - 113 years of people trying to figure out when the river ice intends to leave.

...a wooden tripod. The time of the ice going out is recorded when the tripod moves sufficiently to stretch a wire that runs from it to a clock on the shore. When the wire gets tight enough, it stops the clock, and that's when we finally know what the river has known and intended all along. When someone notices the river is moving, they call the fire department, which then alerts the entire town with the fire siren - no matter the time of day or night. Almost everyone, including the kids in school, heads down to the riverbank to watch the ice go out."

Mike and I have both put our bets in - date, hour, minute.  How could you not when someone walks up in the coffee shop and asks if you have money.  When the answer to the question 'what for?' is I need $2, one must review the results of the past 113 years and comply. 

While the ice breaking is one of my favourite articles, I will sign off with the following article found in the Yukon News on April 1.  Anthony, this one is for you!

Yukon Government launches Walking Dead Action Plan.

The Yukon will be "undead ready" by 2012, according to a new $6-million Walking Dead Action Plan announced last week by the Yukon government. "This plan provides key opportunities for Yukoners to remain safe from the threat of re-animated corpses," said health and Social Services Minister Glenn Hart in an official release this week.

The centrepiece of the plan is a $2.3 million package to promote "zombie-proof" housing in Whitehorse communities. Home builders will receive subsidies of up to 50 per cent for the installation of acid sprinkler systems, fortified window shutters and roof-mounted flamethrowers.

Opposition members hailed the new legislation as an "important step forward" in making Yukon an important commercial and industrial centre for the post-zombie-apocalypse. "The North is uniquely positioned to become a world leader in undead management," said Hart.

The Yukon is the first region in Canada to institute zombie legislation. "We're finding more and more that provincial and territorial governments are woefully unprepared for even the most minor living-dead apocalypse," said Tim Korman, a living-dead specialist at the University of Victoria.

The plan also sets aside $630,000 for law enforcement training in zombie control.

In 2002, a zombie epidemic struck Alaska's Kiska Island. Police, unaware that the walking dead can only be felled by a shot to the head, uselessly aimed their pistols at the torsos of the undead.

Snow - My Final Comments

I have been a TERRIBLE blogger lately. Admittedly, work and house-hunting have been all consuming - if not in hours in stress, so my creative juices have not been flowing.  I will try to make it up to you. 

In an ode to my friends and relatives back East, who I understand are experiencing snow today, while we are basking in glorious, snow-melting sunshine that makes every coat I have up here too warm to wear, I will make what I hope is my final comment about snow (for this season).

As I continue to mention, the snow here is much different than at home. It binds different - allowing the blocks to be made for igloos, and it melts different.  Yesterday while ice fishing, I watched kids create walls of snow, a la an igloo, to protect them from the wind with nothing more than a small shovel. It was efficient and effective and fascinating to watch!

I have also been in awe over just how much snow melts each day when the temperature truly is just about zero (out of the wind). 

What allows both of these to occur is how the snow binds and flakes together (and apart).  I am not a scientist and I cannot explain it, but I have taken a few photos in an effort to demonstrate. Here is my photographic thousand words. 

A day in the life!

My apologies. It has been more than a week since I wrote last, and that is just unacceptable.  The good wife that I am, I blame Mike.  He came to visit this past weekend, ok from Wednesday until Monday, so I did not blog. A very good reason I think!!

In contemplating what to write about today, I have decided to answer the question - What do you do? To be fair, I'm not sure I can answer that question, and certainly not within a reasonable length of time here (I have been told I write too much, so I'll try to prevent that moving forward! Maybe!  LOL!). So what I will do is highlight some of the things that have filled my day over the past few weeks. Some might take a few minutes, some several hours, none of them could happen without the great people around me!!  But all keep me very, very busy, very, very happy and ensures my day is never predictable!

Meetings

• Board meetings to set direction, get approvals, ensure we are operating as we should be
• Committee meetings to come up with great ideas, seek advice, plan, identify more work for us and get help doing the work by volunteers
• Weekly team meetings for information sharing and planning
• Partnership development meetings- meet with local tour operators to partner on marketing, events, to create new products/things for people to do; meet with local artists to partner on carving antlers; meet with the Department of Education to plan school programs (and funding) for the coming year; show film scouts around the Preserve in hopes they'll pick us one day for a movie

"Business"

• Negotiate our agreement with the Department of the Environment for an 8km fencing project, to negotiate a 3-year funding agreement, to negotiate a long-term management agreement (the Territory owns the land and animals, our non-profit runs the business and needs some ownership guarantees if we raise money and build buildings....) and to confirm if we are insured to drive their vehicles or not (that was an interesting day!)
• Write requests for proposals for building said 8 km fence
• Budget - make sure we have enough cash flow to pay people, and that projects start within a time frame we can pay the bills, figure out how we're going to raise enough money to be less reliant on government, approve expenditures, decide if a vehicle is worth fixing or not
• Pick up cheques, get them signed, pay bills, code and drop off invoices
• Ensure our policies are up-to-date, legal and enforce
• Hire summer staff and ensure everyone is trained, insured and feeling welcome!
• Making decisions regarding the use of animals who have passed away, for example providing a muskox skeleton to the Heritage Branch for comparison with historic breeds or using a sheep's skull and horns for education programming

External Relations

• Events - plan a dinner for 125, an open house for 1000, a staff bonding event, a special event for Earth Day and Mother's Day, a presentation for a biodiversity conference and fun activities to bring more local families to the Preserve
• Write press releases, pitch stories to local media, write and place ads, develop new tourism materials, re-write our membership materials
• Meet every person I can in Whitehorse and surrounding area, especially board members and volunteers of the Preserve

Fundraising

• figure out how we're going to raise money and for what!
• submit proposal, submit application, submit proposal, submit application, repeat

Professional Development

• Learn about: human rights, wildlife viewing, biodiversity, tourism development, institutional benchmarking
• In the future: first aid, driving a passenger bus, firearms

Shopping

• buy boardroom tables
• buy office supplies
• buy baskets and wrapping for auction items, gifts
• buy frozen mice to feed the owl being rehabilitated (available in a ziploc, approximately $3 each - who knew!)
• shop for the best cell phone plan

Oh, and watch the muskox and stone sheep play!!

Our Lynx

I went and visited our lynx a few minutes ago.  I thought it would be a nice thing to do. He's been alone for some months now (his mate passed on - she was very, very old for a lynx) and he is purported to be somewhat lonely. 

I had seen him on a few occasions, but always from far. Today, I made a special effort to trounce through the snow, through the gates and visit, close up for a bit.  He hated it. It was a definite stand off and I was most certainly not welcome. Clearly, no one has explained to him that I am going to launch a campaign to raise $25,000 to put him and a new friend in the BEST lynx enclosure ever!!  A spectacular plot of land with a hill, lots of trees, places to hide and so much more!  We'll have a nice platform for people to stand on and fencing that looks invisible from far away. A home any lynx would be proud of. And yet, all I got was a stare down and some general seething.

Hmph I say!  If only he weren't so gosh darn adorable!!

The Radio

Over the past week, I have realized that my Land Cruiser has a radio that does, in fact work.  While I will not admit to how I came to the conclusion that it didn't, I am glad that it does. Now, for most of the trip into Whitehorse, I have company and am able to catch up on news around town. (There are a few radio-less spots....)

So far, I have found three stations - CBC (well, I haven't found it, but I know it exists), a country station and CKRW The Rush, which might be described as playing classic rock plus many other things. Radio in Whitehorse is, truly, community radio, and for anyone who has travelled to PEI, what I am about to say may not be surprising. In addition to terrific coverage of local events, meetings, AGMs and conferences, Whitehorse radio plays many, many public service announcements - such as community meetings to discuss potential flooding and information on key community funerals/memorial services. The radio also has regular time slots set aside for bingo and for people to call in and advertise the stuff they have for sale. 

I think my favourite segment is the radio equivalent to heritage minutes. Throughout the day, the radio broadcasts several minute segments talking about important historic figures in Yukon history - be they former commissioners or hockey players that made the Canadian Olympic team (but didn't actually play a game until the post-Games European tour), each segment tells me something that I would probably never have learned. All in all, while the music may be pretty bad, I can't help but feel more engaged in the community.  Now, to learn how to actually PLAY bingo via radio!

p.s, as promised, here is a photo that proves there is a town, with buildings, called Whitehorse.