Sex and the School Christmas Concert

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"Guess what! Mommy was in labour yesterday for eight hours!"

The little girl came flying out of the Sub Arctic blackness just before the bell went at 9 a.m.

We stood in the pool of light that shone from one of the school windows.

"What did she have?" I asked with a smile.

"A BABY!"  she shrieked. 

The newest arrival in Dawson City, which had a population of about 500 hardy souls in those days, sent all of the little girls in the school into a frenzy of excitement. 

Sex, babies, labour, birth, babies, pregnancy, sex, nursing, delivery, sex, babies, babies, babies.

On and on it went ... whisper, whisper, day in and day out.  

This was long before sex education classes took away the thrill of learning about life from your best friend's older sister at recess.

And the town had several very conservative religious groups that carefully monitored the goings on at the school so it wasn`t possible to simply give them the facts.

Anyway, it was hard keeping their minds on the upcoming Christmas presentation.

And putting on a children's Christmas concert is more stressful than an opening night on Broadway.

Ask any teacher.

I was beside myself with anxiety.

Would somebody get sick? Get stage fright? Cry? Throw up? Have a fight with another cast member? Would we lose a prop? A costume? A mind?

I could barely sleep for worrying.

And the kids could barely sleep for thinking about where babies came from.

But the big night finally did arrive and as I was back stage riding herd on the cast members, most of it went by in a blur.

I kept listening though because I knew the play would be over when I heard the narrator say: 

So we went to the church and we all got presents.

As we drew close to the moment I almost imploded with relief. 

I still laugh when I remember how I leaned against the wall, closed my tired eyes and listened to the tiny narrator say:

So we went to the church and we all got pregnant ...  ...

presents ... I mean we got presents!

Wishing you a stress free pre-Christmas week!

Hey, That Ain't Chocolate Moose

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Many years ago the principal of Robert Service School in Dawson City, Yukon quit a few days before school was to open in September.


While the search was on for a permanent replacement, the art and home economics teacher was appointed acting principal for six weeks and I was hired to fill her position.



The art I was qualified to teach.



The home economics, maybe not.

In those days I knew how to fry an egg and in a pinch had been known to open a box of frozen fish and chips.



But I was fresh out of Teacher's College and wanted desperately to land my first job so I lied hinted to the superintendent that I was the Yukon's answer to Julia Child.



"What are the chances I'll have to cook anything in six weeks?" I thought.

"I'll teach table manners or something useful like that."



About half way through my first home economics class, which consisted of 8 sullen grade nine girls, a native man in hunting gear suddenly materialized in the doorway.



He strode over to the table where the girls were slouched and dumped a huge bleeding hunk of something in front of me.

Then without a word of explanation, he left.



It wasn't pretty.

The animal had been butchered where it fell and because it was wet with blood, lots of interesting things had stuck to it.

Things like dirt, twigs, leaves, bugs and probably some other stuff I didn't want to think or know about.



The sullen girls snickered, so I did the only teacherly thing I could think to do.

Once I was sure it wasn't moving, I ignored it.





"There's something bleeding in the home ec room and I don't know what to do with it," I said to the principal at recess.



"Oh good," she said, "he brought it in.

There's a meat grinder in the cupboard.

Show the girls how to grind it up and make moose chilli con carne."



Grind it up?

Moose chilli con carne?



"You mean you want me to cook it?

Jeesh!  I was thinking more along the lines of calling in the priest and giving it a decent burial."



She just looked at me.





Anyway, I didn't keep the Yukon recipe I used that day, but I found this one on line.

So this is for all of you hunters and carnivores out there.


Just don't worry about saving any for me.



Moose Chilli Con Carne:


Ingredients:
• 1 pound Moose Mince
• 6 Cloves garlic (There’s no such thing as too much Garlic )
• 1 large onion, quartered and sliced
• 28 ounce (796ml) can of diced tomatoes
• 28 ounce (796ml) can of tomato sauce
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 14 ounce (398ml) Red Kidney Beans
• 14 ounce (398ml) Baked Beans
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• 2 tablespoons chilli powder
• salt to taste
• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1/2 teaspoon ground red chillies (more or less to suit)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 cup Good Red Wine



Directions:
• In a skillet heat Olive oil and cook onion and garlic until soft.
• Add meat and brown.
• Add remaining ingredients.
• Simmer until fully cooked.


Serve Moose Chilli Con Carne with Fresh Bread

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• Chilli Con Carne (itsnotartitsdinner.wordpress.com)

Man-Who-Wanted-a-Wife

When I lived in Dawson City, Yukon, there was a man I avoided as if he had the Spanish Influenza. Not because he was bad looking or smelled or was abusive. I avoided him because he was so needy.

His name was Man-Who-Wanted-a-Wife. Man-Who-Wanted-a-Wife did things for people, particularly women. He majored in being helpful.

But he was so depressing and self-centered that even a few minutes in his company was enough to drive me gratefully back into spinsterhood.

This is not the story of how I discovered his nobler side.

"FIRE! GET OUT! FIRE!"

I recognized the voice. It belonged to a teacher who lived in one of the bottom floor apartments in our 12 unit prefab building.

I heard her start pounding on my neighbour's door.

I hadn't been completely asleep. I had heard the town's fire siren wail a few minutes earlier and had debated about getting up to see what was going on. Fire was a big source of entertainment in Dawson City in those pre-computer days, but it was 11 p.m., extremely cold outside and I had to work the next day. I had decided to stay in my warm bed.

"We're on fire," I thought. "I have to get up!"

I stumbled to the closet, threw my parka over my nightgown, grabbed my mukluks and headed out the door. I could smell smoke.

I ran barefoot down the closest staircase but I pulled up short when I saw the fireman standing in the doorway.

It was Man-Who-Wanted-a-Wife.

It would be hard for any man not to look good in a fire fighter's uniform. He was no exception. I hadn't imagined him doing anything so selfless and brave. I ratcheted up my opinion

But the door to the building was open and it was 30° below zero.

"Have to put my mukluks on," I said to him through chattering teeth.

I fumbled with the long laces.

"Never mind those," he said in a manly voice as he swept me into his arms and carried me next door to safety.

Oops. I lied.

That's not what happened.

Actually he knelt down and slipped the mukluks over my bare legs and then carefully laced them up before he smiled and held the door open so that I could leave safely.

Okay, that isn't what happened either.

The truth is that give me an irritated look and said in his whiny voice, "Well, hurry up, will ya!"

What a crab.

Reality 1, Romance 0.

A Love Story From North of Sixty

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Alaska is a remarkable place. It is full of beautiful snow capped mountains, fresh air, turbulent history and an assortment of the most interesting people you could ever hope to meet. When I was teaching in the Yukon I was so taken with the forty-ninth state that on one of my holidays home to Ontario I told my family that I hoped to find an Alaskan to marry so that I could stay there.

My brother, who'd had a hockey scholarship to a New England college for four years, and was therefore an authority on all things American, snorted and said, "And what are you going to do when he decides that he wants to move back to Muncie, Indiana?"

"Humph!" I said.

A few years later during the early summer I was driving from Whitehorse over the Top of the World Highway to Skagway, Alaska. I was going to take one of the Alaska State ferries down to Vancouver Island.

Much to my surprise, because I was in the middle of nowhere, two big hitchhiking men suddenly appeared in my line of vision.

In the north you do not leave anyone standing on the side of the road.

I stopped.

The younger one got in the back and the older one climbed in beside me. It turned out to be a father and son team from New Jersey who had spent a few weeks together hiking in the Alaskan wilderness.

The father and I talked for hours as we headed into Skagway. We got along so well that I was actually sad to say goodbye to him when I dropped them off downtown and headed to the ferry terminal.

I drove my car onto the ferry, shaking my head at the way things go in my life.

Just before the ferry hove away from the dock I was leaning against the railing, staring at the water feeling sorry for myself when I felt someone come and stand beside me. I looked up into the rugged face of my hitch hiker.

"I should come with you," he said gruffly.

For a second my knees went weak, I swooned and my mind was suddenly full of images of a little house with a white picket fence. I saw dogs, maybe even kids and it was all happening in...











Uh oh.













"No you shouldn't," I said hastily.

I practically pushed him down the gangplank.

"But have a great trip home to Muncie!

...I mean Trenton!"










I waved goodbye and really enjoyed the rest of my trip.

A Yukon Ghost Story

I taught with an older woman named Marion when I was in Dawson City, Yukon. Her husband, Joe, was retired and their children were grown. We often gathered at their log house during the long nights. This is a story she told us.

In the 1950s Marion didn't teach school, she stayed at home with their two small children. The family lived on the outskirts of a tiny, isolated Yukon settlement.

One winter day Joe and a co-worker came across the frozen bodies of two men and their dog team in one of the rivers. They had fallen through the ice. Because some of the indigenous people in the Yukon believe that the soul wanders the earth forever if the body is not buried properly, Joe and his friend laboured long and hard to cut the corpses free and tether the stiff bodies to their vehicle.

But what to do with them? Because they had died in unusual circumstances the deceased had to be sent to Whitehorse before they could be buried, but at 40 below zero and with hundreds of kilometers of gravel road to travel, it was easier to say that than to do it. There were no funeral homes or morgues in the small community and the bodies couldn't be left outside for animals to gnaw.

Joe brought the frozen cadavers home and put them in his garage.

He was called out somewhere in the middle of the night and Marion was alone with her babies when she heard Bang! Bang! Bang! coming from the garage.

Terrified, but determined to protect her children, she pulled on her parka and mukluks. She said she was sure their visitors had thawed and were trying to get into her house. But when she opened her door she heard the men harnessing their dog team and a few moments later she heard them mush on down the trail.

The bodies were sent to Whitehorse the next day for autopsies and eventually returned to their community for proper burial.

Was it a dream? A post partum hormonal disturbance? Or did Marion actually hear the spirits leaving on their final dog sled journey?

I don't know - and Marion and Joe are both gone now, too.

Something to ponder...

A Bittersweet Memory

By September of 1983 I had been teaching grade five in Dawson City, Yukon for several years. I was in my early thirties and single. The north can be a lonely place for an unattached person so I was quite interested when a fellow teacher told me that her friend, John, had asked her to find out if I would go out with him.

I knew him slightly. It is hard not to know someone when there are only 500 people living in an isolated community. He was my age - a tall, bushy haired, bearded carpenter who did some exquisite cabinet work for people around the Territory.

I told her that I would.

I waited, quite nervously at first, for him to call. When he didn't I started showing up places where I knew he'd be, smiling like an idiot and generally trying to look approachable. It was a lost cause.

Eventually I gave up. Women weren't as assertive in those days as they seem to be now. I went back to my usual life of socializing with the teachers and watching Dallas. Winter slowly disappeared from the Klondike Valley, the ice went out of the rivers, the sun came up and didn't go down and tourists started to reappear.

One Saturday night in May I was caught in a crush of people at one of the local watering holes that was having its grand opening for the summer season. Quite by accident I found I had been pushed against John. We laughed about it and after all that time something clicked.

But it was close to the end of the school year. I was busy with report cards and with planning a trip to B.C. and Ontario to see my family as soon as school ended. We managed to see each other whenever there was time. I wasn't worried, there was always the long winter to get to know him.

The night before I left we had dinner at the Midnight Sun Restaurant. It was a wonderful Yukon evening full of good food, good wine, strange characters and plenty of laughs.

But it was the last time I saw him.

John died in a car accident just outside of Dawson City a few days later on Canada Day .

The Death of Johnny Two Rivers

My last blog got me thinking about Christianity and from there I started thinking about something that happened a few years back when I was teaching in Dawson City, Yukon.

There were only about 500 people living in Dawson when I was there. For excitement we occasionally took a trip down the Klondike Highway to Whitehorse. Depending on the weather and who was driving the trip took anywhere between 8 and 12 hours. If possible we drove in a convoy. The highway was a dirt road, the conditions could be treacherous and you never knew what could happen.

On one trip back we were surprised to see a woman standing at the side of the road, crying and waving her arms at us to stop. We were a little north of Carmacks, which is maybe about 1/5 of the way to Dawson and like most of the Yukon it was complete wilderness on both sides of the road.

I can't remember how many vehicles were with us but we all pulled over and followed her into the bush. Her father wasn't well she told us and she didn't know what to do.

When we arrived at their fish camp, it looked as if the old man's time was over. It was Johnny Two Rivers, a well respected Yukon elder. He was lying on a blanket on the ground, he looked comortable but he wasn't conscious and was having difficulty breathing. There wasn't much we could do for the old fellow so we were standing commiserating with his daughter when there was a sudden disturbance in the bush behind us.

Now I wouldn't have been too surprised to see a bear wander into their fish camp or even a few Russians who had made a wrong turn somewhere up near Tuktoyaktuk but I totally taken aback to see a group of young white people suddenly appear out of nowhere and race at full speed toward us.

The man in the lead screamed, "Stop! Don't anybody touch anything! I'm a Christian!"

" Well, thank heavens!" I thought, "He's a..."

By the time it had registered that he hadn't said doctor, he had thrown himself on the dying old man, and was shaking his fist at heaven (?) and shouting," SATAN, I COMMAND YOU TO LEAVE THIS MAN!"

In the next instant while the exorcist was still doing his thing, and we were all standing around dumbstruck, a small car appeared at the camp. I have no idea how they managed to get it so far into the bush. They literally stuffed the unconscious old fellow into the car with his daughter and they all took off back to Whitehorse in a cloud f dust.

It happened so fast and was so strange and even violent that I have never forgotten it.

We wandered sadly back to the road and our vehicles and continued on to Dawson City. I heard on the radio the next day that Johnny Two Rivers had died in the hospital in Whitehorse. I'm sure the old man would have preferred to die at his fish camp.

It was as if we had witnessed a five minute lesson on the history of the dark side of Christianity.

Sigh.