So……what DO I do up here?

On the heels of what Yellowknife is like for us up here comes the question about the actual position I hold, and how it relates to previous work?

When I applied to this job – Information Coordinator, I can assure you that what I read in the job description and what it actually is, reveals some distinct differences. Though I’m inclined to believe my perception at the time of applying was filled with hope and inspiration and the huge desire to make a change in my life and, therefore prompted me to see the role a certain way, I also believe that job ads, as thorough as they sometimes are, tend to be a muddle of words verging on gobbilty gook. Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine that I would have been able to see the ‘real’ job between the lines of the crafted description. With no intent to convey any dissatisfaction with the reality of the job – plain and simple it is different from what I expected and time will inevitably reveal the entire magnitude of relevant tasks and duties.

Specifically, my role lies within the Petroleum Products Division (PPD) of the Department of Public Works and Services, Government of the Northwest Territories. PPD sells select petroleum products to businesses, residents, and government departments in 16 NWT communities where there is no private sector supplier. We are also responsible for purchasing these petroleum products and arranging for transportation of the products to those communities, as well as for sales, inventory management, and other related functions.  Transportation to communities is provided on a contract basis and consists of barge, and truck transportation: the two most common products sold by the division are home heating fuel and gasoline. The primary feature that makes PPD’s environment different from many other petroleum product distribution companies is the location; PPD operates in geographically dispersed, environmentally hostile, sparsely populated locations that may not be year round accessible.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words…..here is the actual building that houses the Public Works and Services department - my division is on the 2^nd floor.

Back to point – what do I do? Well, as we have been living in an information age for some time now, my role is to manage some (or most) of that information as it pertains to the Petroleum Products Division. When I came into the position in November, the government had converted their electronic records management to a new system. While it would be safe to assume they had been using a standardized system previously, it doesn’t appear it was as efficient and procedural as it should have been given many comparables across Canada that have been doing so for quite some time. Needless to say it was recognized that in effort to account for record management integrity, it was time to move towards complete immersion in that task – no matter how painful that might be.

Basically, the role currently involves managing paper files and electronic files and making sure they have been classified according to the Administrative and Operational Filing Structure and that they are filed correctly within the electronic filing system (which is huge). Working with active and non-active records and transferring to a Records Centre takes up most of my time. Additionally, I support the division with meetings and correspondence and contract editing etc. In the near future we will endeavour a website overhaul which will be a project I will manage. Though it is 100% different and requires major adaptation from the recent past, I do enjoy the variations – some subtle, others not so much and have determined that next weeks’ blog will be a more suitable place to explore those variations further. Until then, enjoy your work week - however that looks.

Yellowknife.....Somba K'e.......'place of money'....

I’m occasionally asked by friends and family back home (Ontario), to describe Yellowknife in terms of size, what it looks like and who lives there, among other queries of interest (and sometimes concern) ……I get it, I had to do some extensive research myself before making that big decision to relocate, and even then, it’s never quite the same as experiencing it firsthand to describe the reality of a place.

The short description from the City of Yellowknife’s 2013 Tourism Guide is as follows:

‘Yellowknife is a hub of activity and adventure, a mix of history and modernity. The gateway to the Canadian North, for more than half a century the city was home to two gold mines. Today, it’s the centre of Canada’s diamond industry, serving three operating mines and gearing up for a fourth in the near future. Small wonder, then, that in the Tlicho aboriginal language, Yellowknife is called “Somba K’e,” or place of money. More than 20,000 people live here, a hardy, cosmopolitan group of Canadians of all stripes. Northern aboriginals such as the Dene, Inuit and Métis share the city with long-time non-aboriginal pioneers, southern transplants and immigrants from around the world.’

Yellowknife downtown

Collingwood Aerial View

Most of us have some trouble getting our head around the population size, trying to summon up a comparison with other locales that we know. What is not typical about Yellowknife, considering its size to various counterparts across the country, is that it has quite a few ‘high rise’ buildings which, psychologically, makes one think it’s a larger city than it is. For example, it is close in size to Collingwood, Huntsville, Owen Sound and Brockville, yet as the picture of Collingwood shows,

the ‘height’ of the city is in no way similar. I could research this further and try to find out what the reasons are for building up, instead of out, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the Canadian Shield (which was scoured down to rock during the last ice age) upon which it rests.

Okay, so other than high rise office and apartment buildings what does it look like? I think I’ll save commercial sights and sites for a future writing. In the meantime, from a residential standpoint, and without applying research information, we’ve observed a high number of trailer homes in various parts of the city. This probably made a lot of sense during certain growth periods when it was more realistic to transport a mobile home here than to haul up the material, and find enough builders to accommodate the residential needs. However, there is significant diversity when it comes to living accommodations, from house boats to housing co-ops to the half million townhome and 1+million home. And there are a lot of apartment complexes in all areas of the city. In terms of new commercial and residential growth, explosives are used to transform the rocky terrain into a manageable building site. Someone recently expressed his dismay at the new home building going on in anticipation of further growth / influx of newcomers to the city – he didn’t share the developers / city planners’ viewpoint, apparently.

 

Who’s here?

• The median age of the population is 32.6 years, lower than the national median age of 40.6 years.
• 34.2% of Yellowknife’s population is single (never married or common law etc), compared to the national average of 28%.
• And despite the idea that many people have about the ratio between Males and Females (ie that there are more men here than women), there are a similar percentage between the genders.
• Ethnicity demographics state ‘White’ makes up for 67.9% of the population followed by ‘Aboriginal’ at 22.2% and ‘Visible Minority’ at 9.9%.  
• English is spoken by 79.6% of the population; French by 4.3% and ‘non-official’ accounts for 14.7% - this breaks down further with Filipino cited as the largest non-official language at 17.3%

Yellowknife has a subarctic climate and averages less than 300 mm (12 in) of precipitation annually, as the city lies in the rain shadow of mountain ranges to the west. Thanks to its location on Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife has a frost-free growing season that averages slightly over 100 days. Most of the limited precipitation falls between June and October, with April being the driest month of the year and August being the wettest. Snow that falls in winter accumulates on the ground until the spring thaw.

The surrounding landscape is very rocky and slightly rolling, with many small lakes in addition to the larger Great Slave Lake. Trees such as spruce and birch are abundant in the area, as are smaller bushes, but there are also many areas of relatively bare rock with lichen. Yellowknife's high latitude causes a large variation between day and night. Daylight hours range from five hours of daylight in December to twenty hours in June. Twilight lasts all night from late May to early July. (see Mr. Sun.... blog for more information about hours of light - 02Feb14)

Last, but not least......the weather

Environment Canada - Yellowknife tops many winter weather lists, including coldest year round, longest snow cover, most cold days and most extreme wind chill. With average winter temperatures of -28.9 degrees, Yellowknife holds lots of cold weather records, including extreme wind chill.

The coldest temperature recorded in the N.W.T. capital with the wind? -63.99

But Yellowknife is not all about cold. The city comes out on top in the warmer months as well.

“You have the sunniest summers and the sunniest springs,” Phillips, of Environment Canada says. “That's something that should be on your bumper stickers.”

In the spring, Yellowknife sees almost 100 more hours of sun than the second place city, Winnipeg.

 

Yellowknife the coldest, sunniest city in Canada

                                      

Tourists in Yellowknife brave -40 C and ice fog on New Year's Day to get a view of Great Slave Lake from Pilot's Monument in Old Town. Environment Canada calls the city the Coldest Capital in Canada. (Sara Minogue/CBC)

Still lots of steam left in winter.....!

So many times I think I'm going to stop talking about weather....and then something comes along, or someone asks me about the weather....and the topic keeps getting recycled, so let's continue to talk about the weather....Rochelle sent me a link from Huffingtonpost.ca, titled: A message to anyone complaining about snow in Toronto. The photos are from every part of Canada that has been affected by snow and there are some really incredible shots of snow depth that I can't even wrap my head around. I commented on the post with, "crazy shots, this is why I love Yellowknife more and more every day."

Not an hour later, someone at work asks me how I'm liking the weather here, also commenting on how I bundle up so that you can't barely make out who it is.....First I reassure her that back home I would have dressed similarly; perhaps not the head scarf all the time...but definitely I dress to cover almost every inch of body. I like to be warm - plain and simple! Then I tell her about the photos I had just seen from across Canada showing the massive snow accumulation - people running out of room to place their snow - sidewalk tunnels and train tunnels all made from snow. And I tell her that I'm so happy for the fact that I've not shovelled one teaspoon of snow this year; that the only part of snow removal I've contended with is that which accumulates on the car window - which effortlessly brushes away. She's taken back by my comment - probably never expecting someone to say Yellowknife is one of the best spots to live in winter - particularly since I've been told by other Yellowknifer's that we've actually received more snow this year than usual, and it's been colder to boot......go figure....here are some of my favourite photos.....

This is from Bruce County, Ontario.

Cape Breton

Orillia, Ontario - quite close to home

Windsor, Ontario

 

So what does one do when there is so much snow......well, the Trecan snow-melting machine inside the Barrie, Ontario operations yard has been hard at work melting tonnes and tonnes of snow. The machine melts 135 tonnes of snow per hour and empties it into local storm water facilities. Storing snow isn’t usually a problem for the city, but there’s been a lot this year. The city reports, “We probably have about 1,000 tri-axel truckloads of snow so it's anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 cubic meters of snow. What makes the amount even more mind-boggling is the fact that there are thousands of tonnes more of snow at Barrie’s landfill where 10-to-12 trucks make 10-to-12 trips a day dumping snow on snow-clearing days. The cost of melting the snow is substantial, “the machine will go through about 5,000 litres of fuel in a shift,” he says. That contributes to a cost of more than $7,000 per shift, however that’s less expensive than trucking it elsewhere to stockpile.  (CTV newsreport - Feb 5, 2014)

To lay this issue to rest and to close out this missive, my last thoughts on the subject are as follows: 

I hope winter is not getting to you and that you are finding some ease with it somewhere, somehow. And as you’ve already heard me say, I’m so glad I’m not shovelling or clearing snow this year, what a relief. It’s just incredibly hard to imagine that I’ve come to the Canadian North to experience decent winter weather, where I don’t have to deal with inconsistent temperatures, continual snow fall, storms, melting snow, puddles, muck on the car, salt on my clothes etc. And, my apartment is toasty warm….go figure….even the office is warm….that is not something I ever experienced in Ontario – all workplaces combined…. (But yes, Carole and Christine, I still wear my sweaters and turtlenecks)!

No doubt about it, we’ve had an exceptional year and just like everyone else I’m really looking forward to spring – it may not be right around the corner for me here but each day it gets a little easier and the celebration of spring will be super sweet!