The Health Canada china

Back in the day, the health centres in northern Canada were all run by the federal government and were called nursing stations, and each one had a residence where the nurses lived communally.  Food was provided by the health department, and was ordered weekly or so by the nurses.

These residences were furnished by the department as well.  One of the head honchos back then, maybe in the 1970's or so, wanted the nurses to have nice things to use, and each nursing station was equipped with a set of fine china and silver.

In most of the communities this has long since worn out or broken, but sometimes in the smaller communities some of the china can still be found in one of the existing apartments.

Here is some of the place setting china:

Here's a close-up of the pattern, I forget the name of it already:

Pretty rare to still have the silver kicking around, and in it's original case too:

It's an interesting little quirk of history, to find it here and there in a few of the smaller communities across Canada.

My deeeluxe apartment in the sky

My desire to have a home base, combined with my migratory lifestyle, led me to buy a little one-bedroom condo in Ottawa last month.  It's in the near-west end of Ottawa, and is right on the Ottawa river and the bike path network.  I can walk to almost everything- malls, stores, library.  I like that I can lock it and leave it and not worry too much about it, which is impossible with a house.

It's on the 20th floor of a 25 storey building.  It has a great view of Britannia bay and the Deschennes rapids in the Ottawa river, as well as Mud lake.  Here's the view at sunset one day last week, looking at the rapids:

Not bad, eh?  I love having a sky view.  It faces west so I can watch the weather roll in too.

I haven't moved in yet, I have some renovations to do first.  Stay tuned and I'll post some photos of that as I try to re-make a somewhat drab (literally, wait until you see the wall colour) little apartment into something a little less drab.

Flying south out of Arctic Bay

Just a few more photos to show you from my flight south on July 10.  I didn't mean to drag them out for this long!

Here is Holy Cross point from the east as we climb out of Arctic Bay:

I took a physical geography course in university but of course have forgotten all the words I learned for the various landforms.  So here are those fan-shaped thingies that form at the mouths of rivers:

Just some interesting landscapes, not the greatest photos though.  I do the best I can though a dirty airplane window and the variable moisture in the air:

Landscape on the cusp of becoming repetitive and boring:

... and that's it.  That was my trip to Grise Fiord this spring and early summer.  Not sure where I'll be going next, or when.

The new Arctic Bay airport

They started building the new airport in 2006, and it took 5 years.  The  new and improved runway is on the site of a previous smaller runway that was used occasionally for medivac flights and maybe other small charter planes.

The former regular airport was around 30 km away, close to the old mine and townsite of Nanisivik.  Weather at the old airport was frequently a problem so flights would often be cancelled- I have heard it's much better now that the new airport is open.  As well, if the taxi forgot you on it's way to the old airport (happened to me once!), it was a very big deal to try to get a ride out there before the plane left without you (if it landed at all... weather!)

Flight from Resolute to Arctic Bay

Here we are taking off from Resolute on July 10.  If I ever spend any time there, I want to try to walk around these old buildings at the airport that you can see in the photo below.  Lots of them are very old and no longer in use.  Some or most are government buildings, some might be military too:

A peninsula pointing south:

North coast of Baffin Island:

We fly over some cool canyons as we cross the Brodeur peninsula:

I'm such a sucker for a pretty ice pattern.  This is in Admiralty inlet:

Entrance to Adams sound, which takes you to Arctic Bay:

Adams sound:

Flying over the southwest lobe of Arctic Bay the town, and Arctic Bay the body of water:

Next up, I'll show you the new airport at Arctic Bay that opened just this year.

Flying into Resolute

Our flight to Resolute from Grise was late on July 9, so these photos are all I got from my stay there, no time to go for a walk in the evening as we leave for the airport the next morning at 5:15 am.

Aziz, who runs the South Camp Inn, says that lake in this photo is usually frozen until August, and this year it was only a couple of days before it would be thawed.

There's Resolute the town in the upper left:

Coming in for a landing:

View from my room at the South Camp Inn.  I wish I would have had time to go for a walk, but I was just too tired, had been working right up until the time I left Grise.

Stay tuned, I have a few more aerial landscape photos from the flight down from Resolute.

The surreal landscape of Devon Island

Here are some more photos of Devon Island.  I love the patterns, and the meanderings of the rivers.

Mars on Earth

One of my fellow passengers on the flight from Grise Fiord to Resolute had worked at the Mars on Earth project, so he pointed it out to me as we passed over it on Devon Island.  There is an international research project that uses that site as a "terrestrial analog" for Mars.

The site is that white crater ("Haughton impact structure") and the surrounding terrain:

Ice in Jones Sound

Here are some pics of the ice in Jones Sound as we flew over it on July 9.  I love the patterns the ice makes as it melts and breaks up.  It's different every time I fly.