So, we haven’t written any blog posts in a while. This is largely because life in Inuvik, while climatically interesting, is much like living in a normal city elsewhere in Canada.
…and then COVID-19 hit.
At the time of writing, NWT only has one case, Yukon has two cases, and Nunavut has none. We’re actually in a really good spot because we’re reasonably isolated from the outside world but we’ve also got medical facilities here in town. Most of northern Canada is taking pretty extreme isolation measures now because there are a lot of small communities with no medical facilities and elderly population that cannot risk being exposed. Borders are closed, and flights are cancelled (there are no longer any passenger flights into or out of the Sahtu). Basically this is playing out much how I expected the apocalypse would play out in the North: the local populations still do a substantial amount of hunting, so a lot of people are just heading out with their families to live off the land for the next few weeks/months.
My employer has ordered all non-essential employees (including me, because apparently counting bears isn’t considered “essential” for some reason) to work from home until further notice. Fortunately, since we basically live in the wilderness, going outdoors is still an isolation activity, which is fantastic because we’ve got amazing weather right now!
It’s dawned on me that three years in Tulita was great training for this. We’ve now got plenty of time for projects, crafts, virtual social activities, cooking, and similar. So we will start up the blog again to share some of our isolation activities, and our gradual descent into madness…