Sara in NWT

When I was selling Yellowknife to Brent I pointed out that our life was basically:  get up,  drive to work,  spend 7.5 hours inside,  turn around and drive back home, and spend the remaining five hours inside before going to bed.  I argued if that is all we do, we might as well do that in a place where we had access to world class recreation centres. When we lived in Grenada we did lots of hiking and walking and when we came back to Ontario we had fallen back into a sedentary lifestyle. I was optimistic that by moving to Yellowknife we would get out of that funk and back into an active lifestyle. Trying to find housing in Yellowknife (in August for September) is really challenging. So our criteria was close to my work and Aiden’s school which are within a couple of blocks of each other. Luckily (if $2800 for a three bedroom apartment could ever be considered lucky) we found our condo online. Google maps showed us that it was very close to my wor...

We have been lucky to arrive in Yellowknife when the daylight/darkness cycles are  close to southern Ontario. Currently I could not tell you what time the sun comes up because my work is a five minute walk from home, which means I get up an hour later than when I lived in Ontario. I am assuming it comes up before 6:00 a.m. since it is light when I get up around 6:30. While I couldn’t tell you about the sunrise, what we have been enjoying is the sunsets. Our condo development is situated on a hill that looks over Great Slave Lake and the City of Yellowknife. At first, we were disappointed because our condo is on the side that faces the city rather than the lake. However, we quickly realized this may be the better side after all. The sun sets right off our balcony and while we have only been here three nights, every night is an amazing sunset.  The weather has been cooperating and we can sit out on our deck and watch the sun go down over the city. We only brought two outdoo...

Today was the first day of school for the boys and work for me. By noon Aiden was back at the hotel, feeling sad about not already making friends. He was also frustrated that his English class was going to be studying the same books he had done in grade nine. I came back to the apartment to check on him. It was actually really nice to be able to see Aiden at lunch! So after a couple of hugs (and letting us know Jay had messaged him to say Aiden would always have him as a friend) he was off. Brent gave me a lift back to work, and to my surprise and delight Jay was crossing the street in front of us. It was such a nice surprise. At my work, my manager had been unexpectedly been called to Toronto and my colleague Sarah was off. So my Director ended up dong my orientation. The good news is there is lots of work that needs to be done, and fairly short timelines to get it done. I share an office with two others - which after working in my own office for 10 years is quite a change- but a...

The main selling point for my boys about moving to Yellowknife was that we would be near a dear friend of mine Jay. Jay has been a part of our family since I worked with him on a project called Canada@150, almost nine years ago. It is perhaps therefore destined that we would find ourselves in the same city for Canada’s 150 th birthday. Jay and the boys on the Ingraham Trail Jay has a job where he travels a great deal, so he was farther north when we arrived. But once back everyone was eager to get together. Living in a hotel makes it somewhat hard to host, so we opted for a driving tour of the city and then headed out to the Ingraham Trail. The Ingraham trail is a beautiful road through the rugged landscape of the Northwest Territories. Rock cuts go from shades of pink to almost charcoal black and always marbled with quartz. While climbing up hills the boys and Brent found beautiful pieces of stone, which they began collecting, much to my dismay. I am not a fan of useless...

Our priority was getting the boys registered for school. We started with Owen's school. Owen decided that he wanted to go to a middle school (it has lockers) instead of the Catholic school right across from where we will be living! So first thing Thursday morning we got a cab to the school. I had emailed both schools all the proper forms so they were ready for us when we arrived. The school secretary, Liz, was amazing. She jumped up and gave us a tour. Owen's school, William McDonald Middle School, is shaped in a circle.  The school has a home economics room, shop classroom, music room and art room. These dedicated spaces are amazing. The school has a lunch room so, students get out of their classroom and get to eat lunch with friends. It also has a small canteen so the kids can buy lunches if desired. The school has so many supportive services for the students. All the students in the school are assigned a Chrome Book. There is a full-time guidance counselor (whic...