Carter-Johnson Life on an Island: Yellowknife to Victoria

And so, at the end of a week of adventure in Oslo, and with chest pain on the plane from Frankfurt to Calgary, I found myself taking an equally unexpected trip to Yellowknife, for a three day stay in the Stanton Territorial Hospital.

Steve arrived that night on the last flight out of Victoria, and so I lifted myself out of a drowsy morpheine-induced sleep to find him touching my feet at the bottom of the bed. Nice treat.

Because the unit was not overly busy, they let him sleep in the other bed (in the double room). So that is where the two of us spent the next few days. As Steve, says, it was a lot of work for a weekend get-away (we need to rethink what 'date night' looks like).

The view from the room was lovely. Across the way, one could see construction underway for the new hospital that was being built. A bit funny to find ourselves situated thus, after all the months Steve was working on the team for the new hospitals in Campbell River and Comox (he kept wanting to ask the staff about the health records software, or other aspects of data integration, haha).

Because it is July, and the north, the sky was lit-up til well after midnight. The sun seemed to take only a gentle touch to the horizon, and then head back up in to the air.

Map of the Official Languages of the NWT

I was reminded that the North is an amazing place (as if i needed reminding). On the wall of the ward was a huge map of the Official Language of the Northwest Territories.

I loved the side panel on the poster. I provided the same sentence in each of the 11 languages of the territory.

I loved seeing all the different Indigenous Languages marked around the map.

the language groups around Yellowknife

The map reminded me that Indigenous Peoples have always been working with "international law", as they have long been negotiating relations across and over linguistic groupings (and well before English and French speakers began to make their lives in the Territories).

It was an interesting reminder, having spent the earlier week doing Indigenous Legal Methodology with a group of European, South American and African scholars.

Languages.

Gifts of the mind!

The nurses and doctors were wonderful. On the second day, someone sort of apologized to me for the hospital food (wondering if I wouldn't have preferred to have Steve bring me something back when he went out to get himself breakfast). That morning, the breakfast had included toast and cream of wheat porridge. I suppose one could say that breakfast had been a bit bland (heart smart menu, and all that!), but truth was, i had thought quite a bit about the food while eating it. Yes, the porridge is perhaps 'nondescript' , and it was a bit watery, but it also felt like an amazing gift (would it be weird to say, something like a sacrament?). Part of the gift was that it reminded me of my childhood (cream of wheat porridge was my favourite breakfast until I was well into my teens). But more importantly, I couldn't help but think about the gift of socialized health care, that I was in fact sitting safely in a hospital bed and was provided with food... not something that every one actually gets on a daily basis. I know it is in the Canadian temperament to sometime complain about how our health care system is functioning (and yes, i know there are reasons to be attentive, and things that can be improved), but still. A plane had been diverted to get me to a hospital (sorry to those other 350 people on the plane!), I had received immediate and active care from a team of people (airline staff, fellow passengers, paramedics, ER room nurses and doctors, a hospitalist, and internist, other hospital food and cleaning staff) who fully threw themselves into sorting out the possibilities, with skill and kindness. And I would not be leaving the hospital with a bill to pay. So... it was this that was on my mind as I was eating that porridge. Just thinking about it still makes me feel a bit weepy. The Cream of Wheat just tasted like 'gratitude'.

View of Frame Lake from hotel room in The Explorer

And so, Monday morning I did the 'stress test', and passed it: which meant I had the requisite paperwork for Air Canada to allow me to board a plane to get back to Victoria. Yea!

Just enough time for a trip to the Vietnamese Noodle House for lunch, and to the Northern Exposures Gallery to pick up T-Shirts for the boys, and a bag for me with a Kenujuaq design on it. We sat in The Explorer Lounge for one last drink (ah sweet diet coke!) before the airport shuttle. I liked that the straw (which was paper!) matched the new bag.

I also love the Yellowknife Airport, with its large map of the north built into the centre of the floor.

I could walk myself through my own adventure from a Saturday morning start in Norway at 10 degrees east, to an afternoon arrival in Yellowknife at 115 degrees west.