Changing the Calendar

This past holiday season was very quiet for Craig and I.  Craig had to work through the holidays, working Monday to Saturday no matter what holiday falls on those days.  I have been off since December 24th and will head back to work on Monday. We spent Christmas dinner with our good friends Kim and Doug and New Years Eve we hung out with the dogs and watched the annual fireworks up here.  

December was a busy month for me playing catch up at work, being away for 5 weeks and no one doing your administration duties equals your desk getting piled up with paper work and mail.  I also had some opportunities to shoot some photos for Nunatsiaq News and for the Nunavut Round table for Poverty Reduction Gathering which was held here in CamBay.

Every year my work donates Arctic char to the Christmas Hampers

This year we donated 130 char.  Here's some of our staff:

Cassandra, Ida, Annie, Alice, Jeannie and Jonathan

Our staff with the Wellness Centre staff 

The Nunavut Round Table for Poverty Reduction participates

This is the largest group I ever photographed so far.

During the discussions they had working groups

In the middle of the month Diamonds in the Ruff brought up a couple of bales of straw for some of the local dogs to help them stay warm in their dog houses this winter.  I tagged along with Bernie and Al to help and also to take some pictures. The dogs were very happy to receive some food and a cozy place to sleep during the long winter days of the Arctic.  

Here's Bernie feeding one of the dogs

Al had to dig out some of the dog houses before the straw went in

Bernie checking out the dog in their new digs

Elder, Margaret Nakashook recently moved so we helped 

her move some of her caribou meat and her dog house. She 

was so happy that we were there to help.

The Northern Lights have been really fantastic this past while and the pics below shows how fast they were moving one night.  They started over our house and then headed behind Craig's work, by the time I got my gear ready and dressed for the cold I only got about 1/2 dozen shots in.  I have never seen them move so fast and instead of red in the colours there was blue/violet.

Even though we will not see the sun rise over the horizon until January 12th we do have some amazing looking skies to the south.  Below are some pics of the skies.

A couple of komatiks on the bay

The Martin Bergman against some brilliant skies

My favourite place to photography: old fishing boat against the Northwest building

Blitz against those beautiful skies

Gorgeous skies

A hunter heading out

I drove by this tricycle the whole week of Christmas

and finally on Christmas Eve I had time to stop and photograph it.

I thought it was kinda cool as it was all frosted up.  After posting it on 

my Facebook page the owner was found!

Attima Hadlari built this igloo for Christmas - it's really pretty 

with the white light inside.

Our tree

Blitz & Molly in front of our tree

The rest of the pictures are from the annual fireworks display from this year.  Like all other years Jessie & Bill Lyall did not disappoint us with the fireworks, which lasted a good half hour.  The only difference between firework up here and the ones down south are that the ones up here don't get super high in the skies, I am thinking it must be due to the cold.

I want to say thank you to all my blog followers and the comments that were left during this past year.  I hope I can share my crazy life in the far Canadian Arctic with you all for another year.  I wish you all the best for 2016 and hoping all your dreams come true. 

Talk soon!