Volunteering in the subarctic

Valerie and I were led to believe that we'd be packing boxes for the move into the brand new $15 million studies centre which was being built next door, and after that moving on to kitchen duties. There was an element of truth in that.

The first week was indeed spent packing boxes, twiddling our thumbs while pondering about what to next, washing the odd dish and once again wondering what to do next. In our second week at the studies centre we found ourselves working more hours than the paid staff- six days, from 8.00 until 4.00 (thankfully we soon after started working the 36 hours a week we were meant to be doing when Heidi came back from business in Winnipeg). Our main duty it now emerged was to be cleaning all the dry wall dust from the new studies centre with water/vinegar solution and makeshift tools made from old towels and a sander.

Donning a variety of inventive head garments and our soon to be grubby clothes we set swiftly to work with the aid of music. Big Sir (Peter, the site foreman) had other ideas though and came to ask us how we could think with this noise on, to which Valerie quickly replied that we didn't need to think. After dwelling on it for a day, Big Sir eventually plucked up the courage to tackle the formidable Valerie again. He told us to turn the music down, because the builders weren't allowed music on whilst working. In solidarity we turned our music off and our work pace slowed dramatically. Instead of music poor Valerie had to put up with me whistling 'like a bloke'.

When sneaky Pete (a local builder) wasn't jumping out at us from all manner of places and giving Valerie a fright we were cleaning. Cleaning windows, cleaning cupboards, cleaning walls, cleaning sinks, cleaning toilets, cleaning showers, cleaning furniture and cleaning floors. All of this while breathing in copious amounts of drywall dust. Little Sir (Mike, the director of the field studies centre) says that if we are going to sue the studies centre we should sue in an English court, because he wants to see the people wearing wigs. We'll bear that in mind...We had a system going- Valerie would chief cleaner of cupboards, light fittings, shelves, windows and baseboards (Canadians don't understand what skirting boards are), while I would wipe down all the walls, clean under the desks, and hoover.

We started with all the bedrooms, then the bathrooms, the offices, lounges and classrooms, dining area, laboratories, stairs and corridors. Patsy (housekeeping) would help us when she wasn't running around the old building cleaning another set of toilets and bedrooms etc. and in the weeks before we moved Kelly (a volunteer from Ontario) and Lizzie (a volunteer from England).

There was an awful lot of dust and as we cleaned the builders still worked and created more dust in the rooms that we had already cleaned. We could never close a door and declare that room finished. It was hard at times to get much of a feeling of accomplishment. We were told that Big Sir and his team would clean up the mess in the 'clean' rooms behind themselves, only for him to declare that we had to do it. Most of the time it seemed that the builders hadn't even bothered sweeping up when they'd finished working there, and that Big Sir was getting them to do significantly less cleaning than they should have been.

We laughed a lot as we worked. And when we weren't laughing I was worrying why we weren't. Always at the back of our minds was CNSC burn-out. This little known disease is known to afflict volunteers as well as student staff at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. It was in our pre-arrival interviews that we first came to hear of this ailment, since Valerie and myself had both inquired about staying longer than the usual volunteer stay at the centre. We were told that volunteers are not normally allowed to stay much longer than five weeks due to risk of extreme burnout, but an exception could be made (my extension was until the 24^th of June, but I managed to renegotiate once in situ).

Symptoms of Burnout (according to Robert)

• Not being able to get up in the morning

• Swearing at clients

• Exhaustion

At times we were tired and would joke about having burnout. Valerie might even have been afflicted early on when her alarm clock didn't go off and she was quite a few minutes late for work. Kaleigh (student staff) still remains under observation for any trace of symptoms at the CNSC.

As more researchers arrived and then the guests conflicts of interests arose- dust v. dishes. The breakfast, lunch and evening dishes would mount and we'd need to clean those and clean the building. And meanwhile the move in date would move ever closer. We could never see us moving in on time, firstly since they hadn't finished building and secondly because we weren't finished with cleaning.

No-one ever told us when we were meant to be moving in. The researchers always seemed to know, but maybe we just hadn't been told, because we knew it wasn't going to happen. The move-in did eventually happen though, two weeks after it had been meant to.

Just before the move we had to go back to all the bedrooms, wipe away the dust and hoover the floors again. Adding insult to injury Little Sir handed us a note in the morning detailing (as if we didn't already know) which rooms we needed to clean. He had missed a few off the list...

In the evening Valerie, Kelly, Vanya (researcher) and I put the bunkbeds together, with assistance from Heidi and Little Sir. According to Valerie we were the 'Borg of beds' (reference lost on me...). As a reward Little Sir donated a few of his beers. Valerie and Vanya, aided by Kelly, proceeded to drink his entire case of beer, returning the empty box behind the door in the freezer room with a note- 'We drank it, we earnt it. Ta'. Perhaps Little Sir forgot about his beer in all the activity of the move, because he never did mention it.

So we moved. Moved boxes from the kitchen to a van, and then from the van to the new kitchen. The hardest part was trying to find a new place for everything that made sense. And once we were moved we were on full time dish washing duty and very occasionally let loose to make a salad, invent a tofu concoction or put Otis Spunkmeyer's frozen cookies in the oven. We also had to fold hoodies in the giftshop and stuff a large portion of the 5,000 invitations for the 'Grand Opening' into envelopes.

But it was mainly washing dishes. I washed dishes to the point where burnout almost became a reality and would have done if I hadn't had all the other subarctic wonders to keep me going.

Churchill Northern Studies Centre

My time in Churchill has been at times monotonous, yet brilliant and full of stark changes, people coming and going, changes in work, in accommodations and particularly in the natural world. As usual I'm pretty far behind on my blog, made some headway, but I'm going to be dropping behind again. At least I'm still in the subarctic, but only just. I leave on Saturday (9^th July).

The field studies centre is 23km from Churchill and home to researchers, staff members, us volunteers and when they are here visiting groups (school kids, scouts, birders, Manitoba orchids etc.). When we got here there was no-one living in the facility apart from Valerie and myself. The chef Robert from Newfoundland arrived on the 12^th of May, the researchers and some summer staff started drifting in around the 16^th, Robert's wife Rosalind in June and then the first of the tour groups.

Churchill, Manitoba (end of April)

Churchill, Manitoba is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and it took me three days and three nights of no-flight travel to get here. Leaving aboard the greyhound from Vancouver at 6.30a.m. on the 27^th I arrived in Churchill just before 10a.m. on Saturday the 30^th April. It was a long trip, but I survived the Greyhound without getting beheaded and even found the prairies quite beautiful in the morning sunshine.

I was greeted at the station by Heidi the assistant director of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre and Valerie, another volunteer, also from England. After a quick drive around to see the limited sights of the icy Churchill we breakfasted in Gypsy's Bakery -'the place to be in Churchill', one of the few cafes in the town. We were then driven out to the remote field studies centre along the coastal road, with the frozen Hudson Bay to our left. After being shown where things were, we were left to spend the rest of the weekend in solitary confinement.

Vancouver (October 2010-April 2011)

After the long trip to Canada we stayed a few days in the hi hostel and then a few weeks in the cheap and maybe slightly nasty CN backpackers hostel, before moving into one of the only two houses left on Hornby Street (always a matter of curiosity for people passing by). Crammed into three other rooms were our eight housemates, with Michelle- the boss living in the sitting room. There were always people coming and going, we had housemates from Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, Spain and Chile.

At the end of November, and after more than thirty-five applications, I got my job as Skyride (cablecar) operator at Grouse Mountain. Two of our then housemates were already working there. In the base ops department I worked with an international crowd of lovely people from England, Australia, Canada, South Africa and with Canadians masquerading as South Africans. As we say the job 'had it's ups and downs', lots of them, about 28 a day on a slow day, but during the Christmas holidays it could have been about fifty. I had to do this speech about what was happening on the mountain (e.g. theatre in the sky, snowshoeing, skating pond, santa's workshop), inform people about the weather conditions, which runs were open, make them aware of the alpine responsibility code and exclusion of liability, tell them about the view and warn them about the two towers coming up and that they should 'steady' themselves. On the way down the speech was shorter. Either way the passengers never tended to listen, or complained that they'd heard it all before. In windy conditions we would have to slow the 'tram' down so that we didn't hit the towers, and in particularly windy weather stop running or switch to the other tram.

The commute to work was a long one, but thanks to the enormous Vancouver Public Library I got through plenty of books on environmental issues. When I could be bothered to go back to work on my day off I could enjoy free skiing and lessons. Progress was slow but I got a bit better at it, and eventually got off just doing the green run 'the cut'. I also went up the Eye of the Wind wind turbine (1.5MW, meant to supply 25% of the mountain's energy consumption), saw the grizzly bears, stroked santa's reindeer, saw the films in the theatre in the sky and went on the extremely short sleighride. The winter lasted a long time and it was still snowing when I left, about 650cm had accumulated in total on the peak.

The work itself was quite repetitive, doing the same speech day after day, and only seeing my colleagues wave from tower 1 every 15 minutes. Member's of the public occasionally engaged in the same old conversation about whether I was from Australia or New Zealand, and wondered if I liked it in Vancouver. My badge with 'Fiona, Zurich, Switzerland' on it just confused them even more. In the morning we'd bring down the crazy hikers who would run up the closed Grouse grind and talk to each other about how long it took today, health drinks, singing and nursing homes. Some of them would hike the icy ascent multiple times a day and others with their infants on their backs. The elderly regulars would come up for their daily ski in the mornings and it was always nice to see them, I was their favourite skyride operator (although maybe they told the other operators the same thing). During the day we'd get all the noisy school kids and I couldn't hear myself speak, although sometimes the teachers would tell them to be quiet. On Wednesday night there would be winter social nights in 'Altitudes bistro' and it would always be a late finish, transporting the last few drunken staff down into the early hours of the morning. At the weekends there would be weddings with late finishes and on New Years we weren't done till 3.00a.m., celebrating the New Year with 'Happy New Year- stepping on'. Some weddings brought welcome change to the monotony, such as the time when a guest smuggled a massive candle from the candelabra in the chalet into the skyride under his jacket. And all the time there would be the rest of the skiers and snowboarders, shouting Marco Polo into the tram (this is apparently a Canadian game that you play in the dark) or asking questions which you'd already answered in the speech they weren't listening too.

My office had one of the finest views in the city and a very international clientèle. On my last night deciphering their English was pretty challenging, but the lady who dropped her 'cell phone' on the ski slopes did get it back... There is a lot more to say about the job, and despite the repetition I might even miss it. Although I definitely wont be missing the commute or the strange sleep patterns that I had to adopt.

Meanwhile Jenny was doing a script supervising course, a few days of PA work in the film industry and then lots of voluntary script supervising on short films and student films. When she wasn't doing that she was meant to be cataloguing photos for the Nature Picture Library back in Bristol. During my last few months in Vancouver we rarely saw each other. Some nights she'd just about be crawling into bed when I was getting up for the morning shift at 5.10 a.m.

When we did have some free time together we'd go on some Vancouver explorations to see the third largest tree in B.C. in Lynn Canyon, lighthouse park, walks along the coast, numerous visits to Stanley Park to observe the raccoons, birds and starfish, and cycle trips. With others I went on other walks and a canoe trip to Deep Cove, just a short way from Vancouver- beautiful and very peaceful. Along with fellow inmates- Monica (Spanish), Susann and Klara (German) I rented a car (so this isn't a very green option, but it's just pretty hard to get to certain places in Canada without one!) during my last week in Vancouver and took a circular trip to Lilooet, BC via waterfalls and Whistler, and back along the Fraser River, through the warmest valley in Canada (although it wasn't particularly warm in spring/winter) and to Harrison Hot Springs' hot and sulphorus smelling spring. By the time we'd finished Monica, who is fed up with Vancouver, might even have started to appreciate Canada.

On Easter day we prepared an Easter breakfast for the Hornby Street crew with dyed eggs, Zopf and hot cross buns. Jenny and I then went to visit the script supervisor (who gave the course she went on) and her husband who were very interesting people. This was a pleasant surprise for me as (rather stupidly) I didn't think someone in the film industry would be that interesting. She fed us a pancake lunch, drove us round the sights of White Rock, took us for a walk along the beach, showed us her allotment, got her husband to take us on a walk to see eagles and a hummingbird and fed us again. The area around White Rock, which is pretty close to the US border has changed a lot in the time that Deborah has been living there, from farmland to modern suburbia and the Wallmarts that come with it.

Because I really want to see more of Canada than Vancouver I planned a great escape to volunteer for two months at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in Churchill, Manitoba, and after that to WWOOF my way back to Vancouver. On the 26^th of April I was packing while the Vancouver Canucks hockey team were playing a game to get into the next round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. All of a sudden there were cheers all around me and I looked out my window to see the lights being flicked on off in the apartments opposite me and people jumping around. The atmosphere outside was electric and Jimmy, Susann and I went outside to explore. Everyone outside was elated, complete strangers were hi-5ing and hugging one another in the street, car horns were beeping and the whole of Granville street was swarming with people, with most of it closed to traffic. At times it was good to live downtown in the middle of everything. It certainly was a good send-off party, although perhaps Vancouver seemed a bit too keen to get rid of me.

Seattle (14th & 15th October)

Seattle, when we did finally get there, we discovered was a very nice city and pretty walkable for North America. There is a free bus service in the downtown area, which I definitely approve of, although of course people are apt to drive to the edge of this area and then get the bus. Well we walked along the seafront, into an area where seals are known to be found, wandered around outdoor shops looking for warm coats (we have no warm clothes with us), visited Pike Place market (because it seems that's what you have to do when in Seattle), looked out over the islands and the port, went to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park (which finds itself in a building in downtown Seattle...), bought chocolates for sailors and delivered them to the port (the Hanjin Yantian is due in a few days).

We took the Greyhound from Seattle to Vancouver. At the border we had to get out along with all our luggage and the foreigners were shunted into a room to wait their turn. It took quite a while since the American man in front of us had been arrested a few times. The Canadians wouldn't let him in and he had to be escorted back to the US immigration offices by armed individuals to wait for the bus going back to Seattle.

Train to nowhere (actually Seattle, but very slowly)- 12th, 13th, 14th October

At LA Union Station we checked in our backpacks, only to realise after that we’d left our mashed potato, penknife and couscous in there and if we didn’t get a move on and buy some snacks a very hungry Jenny and Fiona might be arriving in Seattle. There wasn’t much available at the station, but we found a few bits and pieces.

The train journey started as it meant to go on with a delay of 45 minutes before we’d even left the station. Our fellow passengers were getting into the spirit of train travel with the man behind us announcing to no one in particular ‘this is like the roller-coaster train, any fun that’s gonna be had on this train, we’re gonna have it’. He also kept going on about this apparently amazing donut place in Portland and about a previous train journey he went on. The passengers had been told there would be a 90 minute delay at the station, so he went off to buy a sandwich and when he came back the train was gone. Apparently it was ‘fluid’ and he should have been ‘fluid’, but they forgot to tell him this before he missed the train.

Jenny’s face formed into a childish grin following an indecipherable (to my ears)tannoyannouncement that there are recycling facilities on board. This meant we could proceed to offload most of the contents of our bag of recycling we have been carting around since disembarking the boat (it was just too painful to let them burn our plastic bottles). In another announcement we were told ‘it does get rough up here now and again’ and an extensive explanation on how to handle the rough and turbulent conditions was added. The seaway was worse than most days on the Hanjin Yantian.

The sprawl of Los Angeles felt like it would never end, but we did eventually come into an area with lots of rocks rather like Terelij in Mongolia without the gers, goats or sheep. In Santa Barbara I made sure to show Jenny the famous fig tree, which is either the oldest or largest in North America. She didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for it. With Santa Barbara behind us we followed along the coast again. We felt quite at home as the train rocked its way slowly along the coast with just the sea, birds and dolphins to spot out of our window. Even more comforting (to begin with) was when the train broke down, the power was cut and the engineers were called. We could easily have still been on the Hanjin Yantian (only the ‘shit alarm’ was missing).

It was 2.00p.m. when we came to our break down spot with excellent sea view. In order to provide some distraction from the delay the following announcement reached our ears ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there are a number of dolphins playing in the water’. It took a while before the dolphins had reached our end of the train, but they hung around for a long time and were very close. At some point we were all told that the air brakes weren’t working and that we couldn’t continue with this engine. We would progress at a very slow pace using the remaining engine to a passing place 7 miles away where we would wait for the train coming the other way to bring us a replacement for the one that wasn’t working.

As we sat there we thought about the Hanjin Yantian gaining on us on it's way to Seattle. We found ourselves amidst a relatively international crowd- Americans, Canadians and an Australian, and we soon came to enjoy ourselves in the camaraderie and hilarity of getting stuck on an Amtrak train. The man behind us had a pretty good commentary going on.There was some disgruntlement from fellow passengers festering in the cattle wagon accommodations of second class (coach class) at the announcement regarding the free wine tasting for sleeper car passengers taking place later on in the dining car. The announcement might have been a little tactless.

After about three hours we saw the other train approaching with our new engine and we were told we'd should be leaving in about half an hour. From behind us came 'Oooh- here we go' and as the train came to an abrupt halt a second later 'that was shortlived'. In the corridor some elderly people almost toppled over. There was a lack of power too and the air conditioning switched off as well as the lights. The commentator had his two pennies (cents) worth to add of course. 'You know some day in the future we’ll all laugh about this. You see that there, which has been cut, that’s where the electricity stops.' Jenny and I couldn't help ourselves we'd already been laughing for a while.

As time progressed the phrase ‘Ladies and gentlemen….we are now going to stretch the train’ became very familiar. The train would start up, go a few metres and then brake violently. After a while they let us know that 'the train keeps going into emergency. We've definitely never had this problem before. The mechanics are still here working on the problem. Our apologies again. Thank-you for your patience. We appreciate it.' All very reassuring. And a bit later came across the tannoy what sounded like 'Fortunately we have been unable to fix the problem'. Fortunately?

Not thinking we'd heard about it enough times- 'Ladies and Gentlemen we are about to start our wine tasting'. Comments were made. And after the air conditioning had turned off for the umpteenth time 'That's what I get for mouthing off'.

Time ticked slowly by. 'Ladies and Gentleman I am now taking reservations for dinner' came across the PA and the voice behind my head announced 'Jeez, he's got a cheek. Maybe it's free'. After descriptions of the pork tenderloin- 'We need oxygen and he's telling us about what's for dinner'.

At some point in the proceedings the air conditioning did come on again briefly to the pleasure of the Americans who seem not to be able to go for 5 minutes without it. Another announcement in the slow drawn out phrases with lot of pauses that we had become used to for the past few hours, apologised once more for the delay and said something along the lines of 'we realise some passengers are wanting a cigarette, but we're very sorry we can't let you out, we're in the middle of nowhere and it would be unsafe to let you do so'.

A few more failed attempts to get going later the man behind us announced that it was 'time to start walking' and murmured 'God! God doesn't like me' to his laptop. After his visit to the loo/toilet/washroom/bathroom/restroom/whatever you call it he came back with some sound advice. 'Don't use bathroom C, there is a malfunction in bathroom C'. In actual fact there seemed to be a malfunction in most of the bathrooms, perhaps something to do with the intermittent electricity.

All the dinner reservations were off schedule due to the lack of power and in the end the 7.00 and 7.30 dinner reservations were actually called at 9.00. It was almost 10.00p.m. when the train finally got going again. Only once before (with the air conditioning in Germany) had we had any problems with the trains as we crossed Europe, Russia and the supposedly less developed nations of Mongolia, China and South Korea. Where the Asians had succeeded with fast trains that arrived on time, the Americans had failed.

Being so far off schedule meant that we saw a lot more of the Western Cascades mountain range than we would have. One man was ecstatic about the mountain views, since the train would normally go through this mountain range in the middle of the night. He finally got to see Mount Shasta- 'large and in charge' in the daytime.

A 'Quick fresh air break for those of you starting to bite your fingernails' as we started to go through the mountains was a chance to see a small isolated town and feel the cool air. It really was very scenic and a new conductor had been swapped in, and maybe this one in particular to raise morale. In the sightseeing car he gave excellent information on all the mountains, extinct volcanoes and derailments of days gone by. The passengers listened in intently and an old man looked at his map to trace our journey. The conductor seemed to be a bit obsessed with talking about fishing and fishing lakes. Most people were enjoying the chance to see this scenery.

In the evening the train stopped for about half an hour before it got into Eugene station, waiting for a platform to free up, so we lost yet more time. In the middle of the night the Australian was eagerly anticipating disembarking the train in Portland and had risen wishfully from his sleep, with backpack on about two hours before we thought the train would arrive there. He proceeded to pace up and down the carriage. We were crossing the bridge and just about to pull into Portland station when the train stopped abruptly and the lights all went out again. It started up again, but then stopped. So close for them, and yet so far. The girl behind me (I'd spread out onto a different seat to sleep) was on the phone and had had enough, beginning to get pretty hysterical. It wasn't too long a wait though before we were en route again.

The 'roller coaster train' reached Seattle at about 5a.m., our youth hostel booking for the night pretty useless. But we did at least take advantage of the 'free' breakfast.

Los Angeles (11th October)

In the morning the internet connection was moderately better but still sporadic. Dad wondered how it felt to be in America and have a speedy internet connection. Little did he know that this was the worse connection since we left the 'excellent' connection at home. Making any plans for the day via the net was rendered impossible, so we headed to the farmer’s market mentioned on the what to see today in LA notice board at the hostel. Turned out the farmer’s market is on Sundays and not Mondays. Hollywood Boulevard was the same old shambles I remembered it to be. Loads of tacky shops that I can’t imagine anyone visits. We then had a mission to find somewhere to print our train ticket and other documents off the internet. In ‘Office depot’ we could check our emails and get what we needed printed, although there were a few problems with changing the paper size.

We spent some time in a thrift store trying to buy some clothes, because we really don’t have many intact ones with us. Next door was some supposedly cheapo supermarket, where there were no prices on the products and the total might as well have been picked out of a hat. Walking through a residential area we came across a film studio and lots of trucks for the TV series ‘Dexter’, which I've never heard of. Hollywood is a funny place, one second you’re walking through a nice tree lined street with pretty houses and well kept gardens and the next you’re back into the grubbiness again. Back at the hostel we ate and got frustrated at the Internet. That was it for LA sightseeing, but there’s really not a lot worth seeing there anyway in my opinion.