Life in Canada's north isn't just cold. Being locked firmly in the Arctic Circle away from vibrant farms and other food sources, it's also very, very tough on the bank account. A jug of orange juice retails for more than $20, for instance.
Life in Canada's north isn't just cold. Being locked firmly in the Arctic Circle away from vibrant farms and other food sources, it's also very, very tough on the bank account. A jug of orange juice retails for more than $20, for instance. Feeding a family is not a matter for the faint of heart.
“It's very expensive,” explained Linda Tutt, noting that utilities add up to several thousand dollars per month. “I've seen pictures from the grocery store there. Milk is $11 or $12 a gallon. Pop isn't a necessity… but $40 for 12 cans of pop? It's just ridiculous.”
That's why the Society of St. Vincent de Paul has decided to step up and help out. Since last year, members of the local chapter of the Catholic charity aid organization have been collecting a wide variety of goods to send via seacan to Ulukhaktok on the northwest coast of Victoria Island in Northwest Territories. The group's second seacan just started its long journey early this week.
She described the seacan's journey as first being trucked to Hay River on Great Slave Lake – a land distance of 1,000-km – before being placed on a sea barge to take an incredible westward jaunt up the Mackenzie River into, another distance of 1,000-km up to the Northwest Passage where it will traverse several hundred kilometres of the Arctic Ocean from Tuktoyaktuk to Ulukhaktok.
It will likely arrive around the end of August. Air travel from Edmonton would still mean a six-hour journey with a plane ticket costing upwards of $4,000. One can only imagine the shipping costs to stock a grocery store at 70.7368° N.
“There are no roads up there. I phone them every few weeks and we've gone through line by line: ‘could you use this? You got this last year but was it useful? Okay, you don't use that brand of lard any more.' Those kinds of questions. It's very specific to what they need.”
Tutt is the chairperson of the North of 60 Project, an effort that sees 10 High Arctic communities receiving their own seacans of goods from various Edmonton and area conferences of the Vincentians. She described Ulukhaktok as a community of approximately 450 people. Today's temperature should reach 5C and is currently enjoying 24 hours of daylight.
The project focuses on the essentials but they still consider one's quality of life to be important enough. When Tutt's northern contact suggested that they could use some tools, she put out the call. A truck driver from Morinville put together a bunch of hand and power tools to fulfill that need. They've also got baby boxes – cardboard boxes filled with infant blankets and such plus the box itself doubles as a bassinet.
“It's mostly food and necessities like diapers and non-perishables: flour, sugar, oatmeal, powdered milk. Not even cans of food because the seacan could freeze. Our president arranged to get some whole powdered milk shipped from Winnipeg. We have dried vegetable mix that was dehydrated in the Okanagan. Some church paid for a truck and a priest drove it to Jasper and my husband picked it up from there!” she laughed.
Her husband's hockey team threw in a bunch of hockey sticks. She requested some bicycles from the city's bicycle recycling program. Some of their friends from Peace River collected money to buy fabric and a new sewing machine for Ulukhaktok's sewing centre. Then there's a donation of winter clothing from the Vegreville United Church Women, an anonymous local individual hand-knit more than 60 toques while another couple (a retired RCMP officer and his wife) who lived in the Arctic also contributed some hand-knit baby outfits and blankets to add to the shipment.
In addition to this work, the society's members never stop to collect and distribute material goods and offer other assistance to the impoverished and those needing help in the Edmonton area.
People can learn more about how to help the society with donations by calling 780-471-5577 or visiting www.ssvpedmonton.ca.
