It’s harder—and more wonderful—than I ever imagined
I met my partner, Alex, in July of 2019 in Yellowknife. Both of us had recently arrived in the Northwest Territories from Ontario, newly sober and ready to embrace the pristine land and water surrounding us. Soon we were inseparable. He works as an environmental technician at a diamond mine, and I’m a video news journalist.
This shoulder period came with its own unique set of challenges that tested my patience. Most of the year, we could travel comfortably on an ice road or cruise across the water in an old 16-foot aluminum Lund boat. But during this transitional season, the trek was either by skidoo, by canoe, on foot or any combination. On April 22, my contractions kicked into high gear. We managed to drive to the hospital across the lake on an ice road, but I knew our trek back would be more challenging.
Public health called the next morning and insisted on a home visit. We clearly explained that it was not easy for them to maneuver across the lake, so we would travel to them. A few days later, while our newborn napped, we used an auger to drill holes and measure the ice’s thickness. We took Arlo outside and flew our drone to see where and how the ice was thinning. In the past, we would have travelled across the ice using skidoos and jumped over short sections of open water closest to the shore.
For months, the smoke was relentless. Most days we couldn’t see across the lake, and a thick layer of ash blanketed the ground. There were days when the air’s particulate matter was 1000 ug/m3. To put that in context, any exposure to anything over 300 is considered hazardous. Still, we tried to make the most of our time together as a family. Whenever the air-quality health index was downgraded, we took Arlo outside for brief stints to fish for our dinner.
We fire-smarted the cabin, removing fuel—deadfall, woodpiles, combustible trees and bushes—from within 10 meters of any structures. We trimmed the bottoms of trees to help reduce fire risk and felled hundreds if not thousands of trees in the forest to create a 100-foot fire break. Suddenly, we had years and years worth of firewood, to be bucked up and loaded into toboggans in the winter.
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