Ice Road to Tuktoyaktuk

Back in the early 80’s I lived for a year and a half in Inuvik – the girlfriend that I travelled up with ended up living there for ten years! Then she moved “south” to Whitehorse! She is one of the founders of “The Great Northern Arts Festival” – Charlene Alexander – she was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal for her part in building a “a fledgling arts festival into a major cultural event that celebrates northern Canada's diversity and creativity.” I am proud to know her! She is still involved in the Festival and travels to Inuvik each summer to work on it. She also is very involved in the arts community in Whitehorse – she is an amazing woman! One of these years I will make it back up there to celebrate the Festival with her – this year would have been ideal as it was the 20th anniversary of the Festival and the 50th anniversary of the town of Inuvik – but, alas, it was not to be…

It was very different living up there…beautiful, rugged, wild...my "car" in the winter was a ski-doo - there was only a small section of the one downtown street where you were not allowed to drive them on the road...24 hours sunlight in the summer, 24 hours dark and ice fog in the winter…twice we hired a taxi and drove to Tuk (Tuktoyaktuk) on the ice road…you had to tell the RCMP in Inuvik when you were leaving and then check in again with the RCMP up in Tuk when you arrived there – same thing in reverse on the way back.

Today I did another postcard inspired by my time spent up in the Arctic – “Ice Road to Tuk”

















I have just finished four days of working at my part-time job...I am not used to spending so much time on my feet (you sit a lot working on computers!)...now I have two days off and no computer jobs lined up...so I plan on sleeping in tomorrow and hopefully spending some time in the studio and also going over to the pottery school later in the afternoon (since I missed my class tonight) to do some glazing...off to bed now!

Good night...