Sachs, Dempster, Wow.

I have now been to each of the six communities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. I was in Sachs Harbour yesterday, it was a chilly -33 with the wind, but the sun was shining and the people were kind. Everything with our meeting went well, I just wish we would have had a bit more time to walk around and explore town. The picture you see above is part of town, with the Beaufort Sea in the background. Sachs Harbour is a community of 120ish, located on Banks Island, much further north then Inuvik. They are known for their polar bears and their muskox, of which we brought back two huge boxes. I didn't see a muskox though, they just completed their harvest - the coral where they heard them in was empty. One of the townspeople said there were a couple polar bears around Sachs lately, but I saw none. It is pretty flat, white and treeless in Sachs Harbour. I felt welcome in the little town, as we preached about Integrated Ocean Management Planning for the last time.

Today I got to go along with one of the habitat biologists at work to check on a new bridge that is being put in 30 or so kilometers down the Dempster. It was neat just to see what she does as her job, and to drive down the Dempster a ways...it would be amazing to camp all along there in the fall time. We saw a couple fox on our drive to the bridge site. The drive was amazing, and apparently the Dempster becomes fantastically gorgeous when you enter the tombstone mountains in the Yukon. Guess I'll have to come up this way again some day!

So this is my last weekend in Invuik. Come Tuesday, I will be venturing to Yellowknife for a three night stay at a gorgeous looking lodge for an 'all staff work planning' meeting for work. It should be great. Then I spent a couple days in Edmonton on the weekend, then I'm back in Ontario. Wild. I really cannot believe how fantastically fast my time here has gone. I went out for dinner tonight, not a regular thing I do, there's not too much option in town...but it was nice. We'll see what the rest of the weekend brings me. I'll be sure to share it with you.