Adventures in the Sketchmobile with Shaughna and Andrew!

Hello everyone this Shaughna and Andrew!

Once again setting standards from the lovely town of Churchill~!

Today really started in the early hours of the morning (like 1 o’clock) when we all got an amazing chance to see the northern lights. It was cold, buggy and spectacular.  And I spent a lot of the time blinding everyone in the aurora dome with the every now then camera flash. But it was all a good time. 

The Northern Lights!
After rising very early in the morning, we drove away in a van dubbed... well the name isn’t really appropriate for a blog so we shall refer to it as the Sketchmobile! It was a bumpy ride ..... and when I say bumpy, I mean REALLY FREAKEN BUMPY! I was fearing for my life. I think we should have worn helmets.  AAAAAAAAnyway, once we arrived at the forest fire site, we got down to business.  We loaded out of the wonderful Sketchmobile and everyone got into our extremely spiffy looking bug gear, showering ourselves in lots of bug spray. Of course we still managed to amass a huge amount of bug bites.  But the work was very interesting.  We examined several sections of different sections of the forest floor, looking for different species and types of moss and plants that we could identify for part of a lab.  We got to see a lot of the difference species we have been learning about this week as well as getting a chance to find and identify some new ones.

Everyone looking great in their bug gear~!

      

Reindeer Moss!

Then afterwards we got back into the Sketchmobile, and headed off to a healthy full growing boreal forest so we could make a comparison between the two about the number of different species in each. My favourite plant we got to see was the Labrador Tea.  Mine was the reindeer moss.  Once back at the center, we gulped down our lunches very quickly and reviewed what to do for our labs.  Then we worked in the caf for a good three hours .....(in which Harry managed to hurt himself a couple of times and work was not happening as much as we really wanted.)

It's the Sketchmobile!!

The outside

The scary ceiling.

Aaaaaaand the back.

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One of our many views in Churchill

Then after dinner and short bit of free time we got a chance to listen to Caroline, who is a Dene elder speak about her culture and life. She also brought along all kinds of different beaded works and things made of caribou. It’s really cool they use EVERYTHING from the caribou to make stuff.  It is amazing how the Dene use every part of the caribou, from the sinew to the hide.  Nothing is wasted.  We had fun trying on mittens and playing a game that involves pieces of bone and hide on a string attached to another piece of bone. I got the hang of it on the second try! Although others were not as successful *cough*Larissa*cough*hehe. Although Troy found a way to fail but still make it look “stellar”, to quote the man himself.

 Success! for Harry

 Troy shows us how it's done

And now we find ourselves at the end of another fascinating, swaggerific day in Churchill.  We will finish off by listing the many lessons we learned today. 

Lesson #1- When sitting in the back seat of the Sketchmobile, wear a helmet!

Lesson #2- Labrador tea is poisonous, no matter what Harry says. (Troy)

Lesson #3 – When you have TWO FREE HOURS don’t learn the words to a song about  narwhals  (no good can come from this!!!)

Lesson #4- 5 pin bowling was invented in Toronto by a guy from Guelph.

Lesson #5- Peat moss can hold up to 20times its dry weight  in water!!!

These were so soft.

check out my mitts.

This was Andrewand Shaughna signing off from Churchill Manitoba!  

Day Six in Land of the Polar Bears

We were up late last night

To see the lights

That dance throughout the town.

We then shut our eyes

Until sunny skies

Woke and brought us down.

We all went to class

And then alas

We went to see the lake.

We ventured afloat

In a rubber boat

With whales in our wake.

We set off by foot

On tundra and soot

With photos along the way.

We continued our romp

Surrounding the swamp

Which made for an interesting day.

Four hours past

We were at the fort at last

And they had something to share!

All white and plump

|From the nose to the rump

We had seen our first bear!

From there we venture

Back to the centre

For dinner and homework hooray!

This was Harry and Emma

And this post was our day!

Museums, Forts and Whales (Oh my!).

We woke up to a much nicer day this morning. The sun was shining, even though it was still chilly to us northerners we ran out in shorts and t-shirts. Our travels started with a trip into town to the Eskimo Museum where we enjoyed authentic Inuit art as well as some fluffy stuffed animals.

An example of Inuit sculptures, animals are a big theme in thier art

A big fluffy cuddle buddy. (a stuffed polar bear)

Harry, after a very long night. (More Inuit sculpture) 

An arctic wolf.

An arctic fox.

 After our visit to the Eskimo Museum, we hopped onto the ferry to visit Fort Prince of Wales. The fort was set up by the Hudson Bay Company in 1731. The fort was held for many years before the second governor Samuel Hearne, who had large pet beaver living with him in his office, surrendered the fort to the French. The French disabled the fort’s cannons and destroyed the fragile parts of the fort, leaving only the large stone walls. As we ascended to the top floor of the fort, we had a magnificent view of the Hudson Bay where it met the Churchill River. From here we could see a preview of what the ferry ride back would allow us to experience, a bunch of belugas surfacing.

The Far Northers with the Fort Prince of Wales in the background.

The Fort Prince of Wales.

On our ride back to Churchill, we crossed the river via ferry, where we saw an incredible number of beluga whales. The number of whales we saw was incredible. There were tons of whales. We saw pods of 7 or 8 whales at a time circling and descending under our boat, surfacing very often. We were lucky to hear the whale songs from a microphone on the ferry. On our way to the shore, we saw what seemed like an army of hundreds of belugas of all ages and sizes around the boat. The babies were a tan-beige colour, while the cubs were grey and the adults were a bright white. We even saw a seal or two.

A few pictures of our Beluga adventures.

Sitting on the Ferry, having fun spotting whales.

After returning to the center, we had a lesson on GPS navigation. Using this knowledge, we went out to an open patch of tundra, where we had a GPS scavenger hunt. After fending off the swarms of mosquitoes, our first real encounter with the mass of bugs in Churchill, getting wet in the tundra bog, and finding clues we found using GPS co-ordinates, we raced to decipher a coded message. Liam was the first to successfully decode the message, shortly followed by the football team of Emma, Greg and Shawna. In the end we were all winners and won a prize of a thousand mosquito bites and one lollipop each.

After a long day of adventure we all headed back to the center, to get ready for another big day.

Signed Eric and Larissa.

Our first day of exploration in Churchill

August 5, 2011


It was refreshing waking up well rested, on a bed, on solid ground. Although we miss the train, we are all excited to start our journey in Churchill!

Today was a rainy, windy, cold day but everyone was hyped to go exploring. Suited up in our rain jackets and lots of layers (except for Greg and Harry :P) we headed out to our first site: the twin golf balls. The twin golf balls are a structure used by the military as a radar base for rocket research in the 70s. It’s called the twin golf balls because of the large, golf ball-shaped canvas structure protecting the radar dishes from the elements.

The twin golf balls

We stopped here to begin our instruction on plant identification.



Trying to identify plants

Here are the few plant species that we can identify:

Fireweed

Alpine Arnica

Mountain Aven

Our next stop was Miss Piggy. Now before you think it is a big structure of Miss Piggy from the Muppets, take a look at the picture below.

Miss Piggy

Miss Piggy turned out to be a cargo plane that had crashed because it was overloaded. The story goes that the pilot realized during his flight that the plane was overloaded and tried to turn around to land on the tarmac but it was too late and it fell from the sky and landed where it sits today, on the rocks. Even though they crashed, the pilot and co-pilot were unharmed and, amazingly, the cargo was undamaged.

All of us in front of Miss Piggy

Next we moved on to the beautiful but small town of Churchill. There we stopped and acted like the tourists we are by taking lots of pictures and visiting gift shops.

Here is Greg getting eaten by a ceramic polar bear,
all of us feigning shock

After we explored the town, we had the chance to explore a beach that was behind the town community complex.

Posing for a picture on the beach - Shaughna, Eric, Emma, Liam, Troy and Shawna

Next we were off to Cape Merry, one of many national park sites around the Churchill area. Cape Merry was a gun battery defending Fort Prince of Wales. From here, we had a good view of the bay area where belugas usually swim during high tide. Unfortunately, we were unable to spot the ridges of the belugas due to the wave crests being the same colour as them. 

Standing around the cannon at Cape Merry

The next stop was a more somber one because we visited the memorial of to the Dene Village. The Dene people were relocated in 1956, away from the caribou lands to Churchill, where they lived in tents and shanties. The removal from their native lands and their loss of lifestyle took its toll on the Dene.

Looking at the memorial, seeing all those names, seeing that some of them were mere infants was upsetting. After the relocation, the population of the Dene was decimated by more than a third. The memorial was established in remembrance of this tragedy. Since this tragedy, the Dene have returned to their ancestral lifestyle in a new village outside of Churchill.

Next we got to see the bear jail were they keep the bears that are causing trouble in order to relocate them in the wild. Unfortunately we did not get to see any of the inmatesL!

The polar bear traps

Warning sign

After a full day of exploring Churchill, we returned to the centre to continue our lessons.


By Shawna and Eric

Day One

Today is August 4^th of 2011. This year’s Far Northers got in to Churchill earlier today after a gruelling 48 hour train ride, 3 hour flight, and varying lengths of car rides immediately prior to the flight. That adds up to a minimum of 51 hours. When was the last time you spent 51 hours doing the same thing? (Personally, it was when I watched all eight Potter movies back-to-back-to-back-to-etc.)

The train ride was exciting once it got started, but looked dull and boring from the outside. The hot muffins were especially delicious, though some enjoyed them more than others. Same with the cheese. Regardless, the flatness of the land was intriguing for the first while but lost its lustre after the next while. The scenery changed overnight- both nights- and thus we saw the results but not the transitions. It was certainly surprising to see such diversity and variation in a land that we all thought was going to be boring. ­­At the end of it all, we were very disappointed when a certain porter refused to take a souvenir photo with his biggest fans.

The entire group minus Harry, the generous photo-taker, in Thompson, Manitoba.

Most of the group was taken aback by the reality of Churchill as opposed to their preconceptions of the town. It was smaller than expected to some, bigger than expected to others, and more modern than expected to the rest. Since we haven’t explored the town yet, that’s about all we know.

Working together on the train- Greg, Emma and Shawna.

The Northern Studies Centre could easily be compared to a jail- we are locked in, get food at a certain time, and on the old building the windows had fencing on them- but we have found the new facilities here to be cutting edge and quite simply NEW. It is a very environmentally friendly building, and one in which the showers are indescribably marvellous after 51 hours of travelling.

As an aside, I just looked outside and saw, no word of a lie, 50 mosquitoes buzzing right in front of the second floor window. With that, the day comes to a close- though it will be hours until the sun goes down.

Greg and Troy

(or Troy and Greg. We don’t know which should come first, me or him.)

Emma is SUCH a Sleeping Beauty. (An eyes-open, drooling, sleeping beauty.)

First Assignment

Before the trip starts I wanted you to read a few articles and get your response to them. Over the last few months I have been tagging articles in the popular press on Arctic Ecology and Global climate change. Most have been coming from Science Daily News, and Canadian media outlets etc.

For this first assignment I want to you look at two issues. First a brief review of the community we will be visiting. I want you to get a sense of the history of this place. Considering the European contact started in 1610, Churchill has a long history in Canada. Read the tagged articles at http://www.delicious.com/doug.isaak and give me a summary of what your reaction is to the place. I have tagged the wikipedia article with "Churchill" tag. If you search my delicious site for that you will find it. I am looking for a personal response to the place. Don't present facts but tell me about perhaps what you are expecting to see.

If you are unfamiliar with delicious.com, you can just click on one of the tags on the right hand side of the page and it will bring up all the articles tagged by me. Follow the link to the article.

The second part of this assignment is to review at least 5 articles on climate change or arctic ecology that I have tagged at the same above website. It doesn't matter which web pages you review but include the web page reference to the web page in your discussion. You can stick to a theme if you wish (i.e. animals, ice, etc.) Give a brief summary of the article and give your personal response whether you agree or disagree with it or its possible implications. No more than a paragraph per article.

Please have this completed before the trip and emailed to me. If this will be a problem please contact me for alternate arrangements.

Summer is starting and Trip is coming

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be sending the instructions out for the Pre-course work soon. Make sure you receive the email sent from me on July 4th.  Please send me a email in return to ensure that your email is getting through. If you have any questions regarding equipment or packing please let me know. Hope you are getting exciting. Less than a month till the trip starts......
Doug