A few days ago I started an adventure to the Northwest Territories that will last until next year. I’m moving to the Hamlet of Tsiigehtchic to teach Grade 7-12 Humanities for the 2024-5 school year. Tsiigehtchic is a small community of a hundred and seventy people, just north of the Arctic Circle. Imagine where the letter “N” in “Northwest Territories” is on a map of Canada, and you’ll have a good idea of Tsiigehtchic’s location. Or, if you prefer driving directions, imagine driving west from Toronto, a few days, until you reach Edmonton, turn north, drive a couple days north to Dawson City. Turn right when you get to the Dempster highway, and drive north to Arctic Circle, and keep driving north for a few hours. When you get to the ferry crossing at confluence of the Mackenzie and Tsiigehnjiik Rivers (about 300 kilometers from the Arctic Ocean), you will have arrived at Tsiigehtchic.

This all began a few months ago when I wrote a final paper for Teachers College. The paper was called “How does school work in Tuktoyaktuk?”, and looked at how teachers were trying to make school more relevant and meaningful to students in the northern community of Tuktoyaktuk. Fewer than twenty-five percent of all students in the Northwest Territories graduate high school. The teachers at Mangilaluk highschool in Tuktoyaktuk were able to double the number of grade 12 graduates by integrating the school more closely with the community in Tuktoyaktuk. I was deeply inspired by motives and outcomes of the school community in Tuktoyaktuk, so I decided to apply for a job there, to better understand how school can more meaningfully support and connect with northern students.

My application process began with an email to the Beaufort Delta Divisional Education Council, which operates Mangilaluk School. One of the assistant superintendents requested I sent them a resume, and a few days later I had an interview with the two assistant superintendents. They wanted to know how I would develop lessons, use Inquiry-Based Learning, and Indigenizing lessons. The conversation went very well. They asked where I wanted to teach, and when I said Tuktoyaktuk, they explained that the school was undergoing renovations and wouldn’t be a great place to work for the year. They suggested a community called Tsiigetchic, about 300kms south of Tuktoyaktuk. The community did an annual canoe trip with their students, and they said it looked like a great fit. There was also an option to teach in the community of Sachs Harbour – an extremely isolated community in the Aleutian Islands. I knew nothing about these communities. How do you decide, in an interview, between teaching at communities hundreds of kilometres from each other, literally on the other end of the country? The two people interviewing me knew the communities, and had experience placing teachers. I trusted they had reliable experience, and so I trusted their recommendation. After the interview, I looked up the Wikipedia page for Tsiigetchic. That was about all I could find on Google about the community. A few days later, I received a formal, indeterminate job offer to teach grade 7-12 Humanities in Tsiigetchic, with all my relocation expenses paid.

It took a few weeks to make up my mind. Many people helped me. I spoke to a current teacher, and a former principal from the school in Tsiigetchic. My family shared their thoughts – they would support me either way, but it would be hard to have me away for so long. I spoke to one of my mentors from teachers college, himself a teacher in Ottawa. I wanted to go, but I struggled with leaving my family and friends for so long. I worried about isolation, and lack of professional development. I’ve struggled with depression, and I worried how this might affect me over the year. Through these conversations, a theme started to emerge: I would not feel alone, so long as I remembered to reach out. The other teachers explained that Tsiigehtchic, even though it was small, was vibrant and welcoming. The other teachers, former staff, and my mentor from teacher’s college, all offered support in different ways. I realized that although the school, and I, would be isolated, we were still connected by a network of support. So long as I remembered to reach out, there would be support. This was what I needed to have the personal courage to accept the job offer.

The timing of all this was just before an 8-day canoe trip to Killarney Provincial Park with my Dad and one of his friends. I signed my job offer in a cabin near Killarney Provincial Park, attached it to an acceptance email, and clicked send. The next day, my Dad, his friend, and I, were paddling off into the Ontario wilderness.

All this seems like a very long time ago now. In all the accounts of northern expeditions I’ve heard of, the expedition had months or years to prepare for their voyage. When I got back from the canoe trip in Killarney Park, I had less than two weeks to get ready. No only did I have to pack to go up north for a year, I had an apartment in Ottawa that had to be vacated, and moved back to my parents place. It was one heck of a job.

The day after the canoe trip, I drove out to Ottawa to start packing (and to instruct a one-day First Aid course for St. John Ambulance… and to instruct a series of canoe lessons at the Rideau Canoe Club). My Dad drove out from Toronto a few days later with a rented U-Haul trailer. We teamed-up, and loaded the entire trailer in just over three hours. It was a big job. Before moving back to Toronto, we visited my friend’s place in Chelsea Quebec. We’ve been meeting weekly over the last year to play music, work-out, roll logs in his back yard, and cut holes in the ice on the Gaineau River. That was a hard goodbye. We played a small concert for a few friends who were visiting that evening.

The next day we were back in Toronto, and the work of packing for the north began. In reality, it was eight days of non-stop chaos, but there was some method to the madness, and gradually lists became bags, and bags became boxes, and boxes became packed boxes. There were a number of times where I sat down in the middle of half-emptied boxes spilled over an entire room and felt like giving up in despair. I was trying to plan everything, and it wasn’t working. “Just get started” was a motto I read, and so I just started with a random box, cleaned up a random corner, wrote down a few things I needed to pack, and then picked up another box. It went like that for days, until I had an understanding of what I wanted to travel with me, and what I needed to teach and live and work for the next year.

The last three days were stressful. My flight was booked for August 26th. I was allowed to take seven checked bags, weighing up to 70lbs each on the plane. All my other stuff had to be prepared for movers who would ship it by truck after I’d flown up. I was packing food in the kitchen, books in the living room, clothes in the hallway, and teaching supplies in between. The night before my final day, I barely slept, I crashed after 2am. The next day, my last day, I could barely function until 9am. My sister called to tell me she was on her way to help. She stayed with me the entire day, made lunch and dinner, kept me on track, and helped me with boxing and packing until well past midnight. My sister said she would finish some of the cargo items the next day after I’d left. I couldn’t have done it without her. I closed up my flight bags and went to sleep for a few hours.

My taxi to the airport was scheduled to arrive at 8am Monday morning. I was up by 6:20. Showered. Cleaned up my room, the back room, the garage, so that the house was not covered in left-over boxes and packing supplies. The taxi arrived at 7:50. I was bustling around the house doing something. Time paused for a moment. This was it. I put down what I was doing, and found my sister by the front door. She gave me a big hug. I could feel my eyes welling up. She was crying a little too. We opened the front door. The cab driver was ready. We took my flight bags out, and loaded them into the back of his van. He got in the car, ready to go. I walked back up to the house, and gave my sister one last hug before leaving. She waved as we pulled out of the driveway.

A few minutes later, the cab driver was taking us down Young Street, and to the 401. Driving in the middle of sixteen-lane of 401 freeway at rush hour always amazes me. It becomes a river of cars, flowing through the city centre. The sheer volume of people, all traveling at once, amazes me. It was going to be a big contrast from the streets in Tsiigehtchic. I told this to the cab driver, and he laughed. He told me a bit about where he came from in India, and the changes he’d seen in Toronto over his thirty years working as a cab driver.

We arrived at the airport at 9am, three hours before my departing flight. Lots of time. Time to relax. Time to call home, send some messages, review some teaching plans. I felt a wave of relief.

…as it turned out, the relief evaporated into a desperate rush to make it to the flight on time, and ended with me flying off in the wrong direction. That will be the next installment…

Resources:

“How Do You Double the Number of High School Graduates? A Snapshot of Schooling in Tuktoyaktuk, NWT” by Melanie O’Gorman, University of Winnipeg, and Holly Carpenter Mangilaluk School, Tuktoyaktuk (available free of charge, here)

“How do you make school work in Tuktoyaktuk?” by Lyndon Kirkley (available here)