Of Circuses

The past couple weeks, I've had my head down, busy volunteering with Alianait and attending the multitude of Alianait events, and with writing report cards on the way to the end of school (my last day was Friday). I can't even believe I made it to the end of the school year; I'm sort of still in a daze of disbelief.

My life feels like a circus, especially since I've attended a couple of circuses - the Fibonacci Project was a great show last Sunday, and Artcirq on Tuesday was pretty cool too. In fact, all the Alianait events so far have exceeded my expectations, I'd say. The opening concert was a long night of eclectic music from all over, Monday night brought this amazing frenetic Quebecois folk band to the Francophone to ring in St. Jean Baptiste Day, Wednesday I heard cool stories from Dave Bidini and Michael Kusugak, Friday Dave Bidini played some songs at the Nova bar... phew! And those are just my evenings this past week.

Oh, and last Sunday I also swung by the Nunavut Arts and Crafts festival, where I played some songs, and participated in a Printmaking workshop done by Andrew Qappik. I also purchased a print by an artist named Veronique Nirlungayuk. Here's the print I made along with and the one I bought:

On the Road to Nowhere with Robertson Davies

On Monday, I took advantage of a recently discovered teaching perk - the Discretionary Day. Which is basically an extra, random day off of my choosing. Luckily, it was beautiful, so I took a short walk out on the tundra.

Staying in the north after peak oil

Since I made the decision to stick around the north for the indeterminate future, I've been reflecting alot on what the future will hold up here. One of my main concerns about sticking around in this town is how large my environmental footprint has become. Although I don't own a car and walk everywhere I go, almost all the food I eat is flown in (at least until the local greenhouse can feed me, or I catch a Char), and all the electricity in town comes from diesel generation. This is all pretty hard to ignore when you're at ground zero for climate change.

Even ignoring my guilty, lefty, green bleeding-heart, with oil at $135 a barrel (and $200 a barrel oil a possibility in the future), it's going to cost the government and everyone else alot more to live up here, and it makes me wonder how sustainable all of our futures will be.

Anyway, these are some of the things I think about when I contemplate the future of the North, in particluar with me in it.

On a more positive note, I hope to do alot of positive things as an art teacher that I might never get the chance to do down south (more on that later). And I love that I can walk everywhere here... although if I ever get lazy and buy a vehicle while I'm up here (besides my non-enviro-friendly snowmobile), I'm looking at electric scooters, or even electric atvs! How cool would one of those be?* I'll bet I can rig one up to run on solar...

*If the battery doesn't die really fast, which it probably will in the cold winters, as my more practical-minded brother pointed out.

Buying art in Iqaluit

These are recent pieces I purchased while drinking beer or eating Chinese food (which is how most art gets purchased in Iqaluit).

I should also point out that there are some excellent drawings from Cape Dorset at the museum here in town - I encourage local folks to check it out.