Vignette: voting day

It’s election day here in Alberta. Often we vote at the advance poll but we didn’t have all of our research done on the candidates until midweek last week. The polling place was the school just a couple of blocks away so we walked over this afternoon. I thought I might get up and get there closer to when the polls opened at 10 a.m. but that didn’t happen. 

It’s a lovely sunny day today although the temperature has just hit +11 in the last few minutes. When we got there the line up was down the hall to the doors of the school but didn’t stretch beyond. When we walked in a woman checked with us to see that we were in the right place. when we got to the door of the gym a youn man thanked Richard for having used the QR code outside the door to show that we were, indeed, in the right spot. When Richard pointed out that the code was hard to miss the young man looked skyward and said, “You’d be surprised.” I thought, but didn’t say, “No we wouldn’t, we were both teachers.”  When he got to the people behind us mentioned that he was 17 and couldn’t even vote yet. I wanted to turn to thank him but by that time he had made his way down the line. I have to think he’s a pretty amazing kid. 

At the tables where names were crossed off the lists and ballots were handed out, we met another interesting person. He had a definite accent that called out southern USA. We made small talk starting with the fact that Richard and I have different last names. He volunteered that he and his wife have different las names but that they are married and that’s what counts. One of us, I don’t remember who, thanked him for volunteering his time. He told us that he was at a wonderful peaceful place in his life now and that he just wanted to give back to this country. He called me Ma’am several times which made me wonder if he had been in the military at some point. His hair was short but not really a buzz cut. 

He proceeded with his tasks very methodically. I might say he was pokey and that is saying something, coming from me. A supervisor came up to the person beside him and told that worker that he didn’t have to fill out a particular form if he found the name on the voters’ list. That person turned to our guy and told him what the supervisor had just said. Our guy responded that he was just doing what they had told him to do in training and that it didn’t hurt to have an extra way to check that the information was correct. With that, he handed me my collection of ballots and I headed for the voting booth. 

I expected Richard to be at one of the booths when I handed my ballots in but he was at the table. I went out into the hall, read a couple of bulletin boards, had a good look at some of the paper mache birds in a display case and then went back to the door to look for Richard who was still at the table. I took a peek through the glass in the learning commons, and watched a young mother, in the hall, get her two kids organized to leave the school. 

I looked down the hall to see if Richard had made it past me when I was looking at the birds. No Richard. I looked again in the gym and saw Richard heading for the other entrance to the gym. I met him in the hallway and we headed home. On the way we talked briefly about the man behind the table. I will probably never see him again but from the tidbits I got today, he is a person with a very interesting story and I think he is one of those individuals, along with the 17 year-old volunteer, whom I will remember for some time.

Photos from our walk to vote.

Northwest passage 22 epilogue photos

 Here are some final photos  from the Out of the Northwest Passage, 2025.

Beach landing and piles of boots

Richard enjoying the sun

Interesting land formations

Scenery

Beechey Island

The Bellot of Bellot Strait

Northumberland House site

Canadian coast guard checking out the ship

Polar bear in the sun

Moody

Geography explained

Carolyn Mallory searching for plant life

Sun, fog, and reflection

Bringing the kayaks home

Kayaks on the hook

This wolf goes with the muskox sculpture Cambridge Bay

Farewell Ocean Endeavour

Next summer Adventure Canada will have new ships. Ocean Endeavour will sail in the Antarctic summer  season this year and then I'm not sure what will happen to her. Maybe other companies will charter her; maybe she'll get an upgrade, or maybe she'll be scrapped. I'm not sure I'll ever know but we certainly have some brilliant memories because of this ship. I hope we'll accrue many more on the Ocean Victory.

Northwest passage 21, epilogue photos

 I didn't want the previous post to get too long so I've decided to split up the epilogue into sections. 

Cruising among the bergs

Joe bear guard and zodiac driver

Outerwear hanging up in the cabin

Ocean Endeavour's history

Serious consideration of the map

More bergs

Iceberg poking up above the ship

Mussel shell

Cabin bathroom, for the curious

I like the lighting in this one

Northwest passage, 20 Epilogue : Calgary, October 13, 2025

I have posted the last of the blog entries I wrote on the trip itself but there are some photos I didn’t get to use, hence this epilogue. I’m not sure I’m ready to sum up the trip at this point but if I think of anything as I collect photos as random I’ll note it. Thanks for coming along with me through the reading of the blog. After I finish this one I’ll be buying the fourth book in the Life After Teaching set. According to Blogger this will be my 348th  and I’m now into my 18th year. I hope you enjoy the rest of the photos and I hope there will be many more years of this blog to come. As always, thanks for reading.

Kangerlussaq

Our luggage coming off the barge

Inside the tundra buggy. No physical access to the driver

Interesting plants with river in the background

Muskox

Dog yard Ilulissat

Water plants by the boardwalk Ilulissat

Tundra plants

More tundra plants

Among the bergs

Reflecions and ice

Northwest passage 19, homeward bound, September 18, 2025

13:50

Our chartered plane on the tarmac Kangerlussaq

We are actually on a flight home from Toronto. Our opinion that Pearson airport is among our least favourite has been affirmed. We did manage to find the walkway from the hotel but once in the airport the signage was just about as bad as trying to find the hotel last night. I was going to take a photo of what the entrance to the hotel looked like but I didn’t do it. We’ll be flying out of Toronto on a charter next year which won’t be as bad as trying to find a domestic flight. I will say that the waiting areas at the gates weren’t as full as they are in Calgary, which, i suppose is an advantage of sorts. I think I’d rather have an easier time figuring out where I’m going than have more seats in the waiting areas.

I didn’t do any of my repacking last night but had plenty of time to do it today. Last night when we checked in, they offered us an upgrade to the lounge rather than just the restaurant/bar and we took it. I was skeptical this morning about whether that was just an upsell for a couple of tired travellers but when we went in for breakfast, there was Christine.

Christine and friends last moments on Ocean Endeavour

I was lamenting on the way down from the room that we probably wouldn’t see her before we left. We had a nice visit with her and her two table mates.They asked me about my ukuleles and I can go on a bit too long about that when I get going. The husband was a guitar player when he was younger and had a great story about writing a wedding song and playing it when his bride came out of the house for the ceremony. They were married in her parents’ backyard. The people we meet on these trips are really very interesting and there were only a two people we met that we preferred to avoid.

In some ways, when I’m in the middle of one of these trips the days are so full that it’s only when the trip is over that I can sit back and really appreciate what a great experience it was. It was interesting in her third talk that Aleqa administered a sideways rebuke to Adventure Canada. One of the things Chris our Expedition Leader was really good at was finding landing sites AC had never been to before. He says he would go up on the bridge with a chart and say to the captain, “I want to go there,” and he’d point, “can we?” The captain would look at him and after a few moments of silence as he considered the charts he would say yes.Chris was very proud that we had explored 6 new sites for future landings for AC. Aleqa, during her talk, asked if we had noticed that there was no border security and said that in the future that would change. People wouldn’t be able to just land wherever they wanted without checking with Greenland first. I’m not exactly sure how they will manage that and it will put a cramp in AC’s style but we’ll wait and see. Greenland certainly doesn’t have the infrastructure to check every ship in its waters at the moment.

I don’t think I mentioned this yesterday but when we were out on the tundra tour, we saw some fighter jets and a bigger plane in formation. The fighters were following the large jet at what looked like close range. We wondered what was going on and asked Mike to relay our questions to the guide. The guide said that it was part of a military exercise by the Danish Air Force. The bigger plane, according to him, was a fuel tanker from France that was responsible for refuelling the F18’s in the air. We didn’t see that particular manoeuvre but it would have been cool. When we got to the bridge leading out of the town of Kangerlusuuaq, there was a military check point set up. From where i was sitting I couldn’t figure out what was going on because all I could see was the tops of the soldiers’ gilly helmets. On our way back to the airport we got a good look at them and they all smiled and waved as we went by.

I bought a Kangerlussuuaq T-shirt before we got on the plane. It’s a maroon colour sort of like the jelly bean row T-shirt I bought in St. John’s last year. This trip I bought one in Yellowknife, one in Sisimiut, and one in Kangerlusuuaq. I guess that means I’ll have to ditch three of the t’s that are getting a bit used around the edges. I notice that the New Zealand one is beginning to lose its printing so maybe that will be one of the sacrificial ones. It’s six years old now. I’ll figure it out when I get home.

Northwest passage 18, Kangarlussaq, September 17, 2025

8:40

Sisimiut from the archeology walk

I didn’t do this last night. By the time all the shenanigans with the variety show were over and I was mostly packed I didn’t have the energy to do more than fall into bed and then I had trouble going to sleep. I’m tucked up here in a corner of the Aurora Lounge. It’s chilly in here but it’s pretty hot elsewhere on the ship. It’s another beautifully clear day and the fjord is just like glass. We didn’t see anything coming in last night. It was dark after the variety show. Apparently there were some northern lights but they were very brief. I suppose I should start at the beginning of the day yesterday.

We opted to go on the ‘archy’ (archeology) hike in Sisimiut yesterday. It was in a totally different part of town than where we had ever been before. We didn’t get anywhere near the visitor centre or the lake where we usually hang out. It was foggy at the beginning of the day but the rocks were dry. It was another of those boulder scrambles broken up by boggy bits.

Not the easiest walking terrain

This trip has been quite humbling for me. Until now I have relied on muscle memory and whatever latent fitness I still retain. Last year I was able to get wherever I wanted to go at whatever pace I wanted to keep. This year I don’t trust my footing. I trust my boots on dry rock but when it comes to taking large steps up I don’t trust my legs to get me up the distance so I’ve been holding onto rocks, relying on my poles, and placing my feet carefully. I find this whole process more than a little irritating. Besides the physical stop and go, the constant evaluating of what seems like each step is a lot of mental work. I want next year to be better so we’ll have to develop a plan when we get home. I know I’m not going to be able to do what I could when I was thirty but I want to be able to do better than I did this time. Enough whining - on to something else.

At the archeology site there were the remains of a couple of different kinds of dwellings. There was a round house next to a rectangular house.

Remains of houses

Of course they were really just lumps in the ground but Aka said they were evidence of the ancestral Inuit and the contact with the whalers. Like the site we visited the other day, this was a year round dwelling place. They left us to make our own way back to town which was fine. Richard did a great job of route finding and once we got out of the boulders and the boggy bits, we made good time.

I noticed these on our way back

Walking in Sisimiut

We decided to go back to the ship, dump our packs, do some fluid balancing, and then head back into town to see if I could find some stickers.

Near the museum ship in the background

We found stickers and more quiviut. Richard now has two quiviut toques. He wears the one I got for him last year constantly so now he can swap it out occasionally.

Nivi cultural educator and friends

Hmm, we were having a lovely time here in the Aurora which is supposed to be a quiet place. Two guys have shown up and are speaking in rapid Spanish. I can’t quite tell them to beat it but I’d like to. Now some other people have shown up and have started talking and laughing. The quiet was nice while it lasted. I may have to try to find another place to work. We’ve been kicked out of our cabins so they can be cleaned for the next batch of passengers. One good thing is that customs is coming onto the ship and do the processing so we don’t have to so that at the airport which isn’t that big. When we leave the ship we have a tundra tour before going to the airport to catch our charter flight to Toronto. In the past we’ve seen musk oxen on this tour.

So I have relocated to the spa. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here and I’ll ask permission if someone shows up, otherwise I’ll just sit quietly and work. I went up to the Meridian Lounge and all the seats up there were taken and people were chatting. I have nothing against people chatting but I just need a place where I can be quiet in order to concentrate and that’s pretty hard to find at this point. If it was a bit warmer I’d go out onto the deck but it’s just above freezing and, while that might be okay for tea on the deck, I don’t think it would work for sitting down and using the keyboard for any stretch of time.

So where was I? Buying quiviut, right. After we got the toque, t-shirt and stickers we came back to the ship. Richard had a nap and I spent time out on deck watching them off load the garbage. Don’t laugh, I find that kind of thing really interesting. There was a guy with a crane truck and he was operating the crane with one of those hand held control panels. By the time I got there they had most of the garbage in a container and they were trying to pack it down so it wouldn’t fly away on the ride to the dump. One guy was scrambling around on the top of the garbage in the container.

Tamping and stamping down the garbage

All of it was in bags and there was a lot of loose cardboard so I don’t think it was too gross. He’d stomp something down in one spot, then move to another spot and stomp on something else. In the meantime the crane which did have a hook on it was pressing down on various spots to try to compact the load. It was interesting how the arm of the crane went from a convex arc when it first touched the load to a concave arc at the operator applied more pressure. Evidently the guy doing the stomping and the guy operating the crane were communicating well or it could have resulted in squished guy on the garbage container. He didn’t have a hard hat either. Our zodiac guys always have to have a hard hat when they are working taking boats on or off the hook.

After a while the guy climbed down from the garbage pile and then the operator of the truck began to pull the container up onto the flatbed of his truck.

Loading up the garbage container

It seemed to be attached with cables and it made an ungodly noise as it scraped across the pavement and onto the truck. The two guys talked for a bit and I saw a bottle of spirits change hands. Then the driver of the flatbed got into his cab and drove away.

That left the crane guy. He got the arm of the crane to pull itself in and then tuck away nicely in the back of the truck. Then he turned his attention to retracting the outriggers. I was surprised that he did the back one on one side and then the front one on that same side. I would have expected him to do both back and then both front. Then he hopped in his cab and off he went.

Packing the crane away

I noticed a lot of gulls so I went over to the other side of the ship and watched them do their thing for a while. I couldn’t get any photos because they were too far away. I only got a picture of one bird on this trip, a very vocal raven on a roof by the Sisimiut museum.

After lunch Aleqa did her third talk of the trip. This one was about where she sees Greenland in terms of the world interest in the Arctic. Greenland only has 57,000 people but it is positioned right in the middle of whatever will happen in the north in the next 30 years. 

We had a rather lengthly gathering with some great photos, official goodbyes, and an appearance by the captain who is a great guy and gave his sweater, name badge, and epaulettes to the auction in support of the Ayalik fund. The woman who won the bid on the sweater has been rockin’ it around the decks since she won it. I think that was an amazingly cool thing for the captain to do.

Last night after supper was the variety show and we finally got to do The Zodiac Song. I still think it would have been more effective for us to do it at a gathering early on to help set the tone for the voyage. It was a big hit as it always is. After that, it was a bit of a repertoire musical chairs. I had thought to do Stan Rogers’ Northwest Passage but then someone else had signed up for that. My second choice was Frobisher Bay but that was taken too. That surprised me because I don’t think that song is all that common. I decided to do Log Driver’s Waltz. Then it turns out that a trio of guys had practiced it so they did it again after I did it. They said that was good because by the time they did it everyone knew the chorus and could sing along. Near the end of the evening we had about 15 people up on stage to sing Northwest Passage. That was fun. Actually the whole evening was fun but then I had to go back to the cabin and pack. I got most of it done last night and I was able to finish this morning before the luggage had to be outside the doors at 7:00.

Mike B as cow in the variety show

Julie Assistant Expedition Leader and friends

So now I’m pretty much up to date. They’ve just announced that the processing for disembarkation should start at around 10. It’s 9:46 now and we are the last group to go. We have lunch on the ship, do our last zodiac ride ever from the Ocean Endeavour, tour the tundra in a series of ‘eclectic’ busses, and then hop on a four and a half hour flight to Toronto. Once we’re back in Canadian cell territory I’ll find out what I have been missing for the last three weeks. Not sure I’m ready for that but time just keeps moving. I’ll pack it up at this point, see if I can find Richard, and perhaps pick it up again in Toronto.

Raven sharing his opinion

Cloud around the mountain  Sisimiut