We’re coming down to the end of another one here in Weagamow Lake. This is Day 27 of this trip and I’m due to head back home on the 27th via Muskrat Dam, Sachigo Lake, Sioux Lookout, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Sudbury. It’s been a quiet little trip compared to some and it’s a great setting with the house and store semi-hiding among the trees. 
We’re located right on the shore with a sand beach and a great view of sunsets in the west when the weather is clear. There have been a few flakes of snow in the air during the past week in between the rain showers and it’s forecast again for Monday and Tuesday. I hope it’s enough to make people think of winter because I’ve got 4 snowmobiles sitting outside just waiting for customers to get the urge.
Store problems have been limited to people not showing up on time, or at all. Just par for the course and I’ve had to hire and fire two since I’ve been here. I’ve got another new hire now who started Friday and seems to be working out well. Saturday was a busy day with the child tax cheques hitting hard and she handled customers well while keeping her cash balanced nicely. I may add one more this week to help out with the grocery side as the grocery manager, will be taking a few days off to go hunting. .jpg)
Haven’t seen any geese or eagles around, just a few ravens and a little dog that comes begging around the door when I come home at night. He’s a friendly little beast and I’ve been giving him a few scraps as he lets me know when someone is around at night. No problems with anything like that yet though, just the opposite of my last location where I just about went a full month with only a few hours sleep at night.
Right now the geese are on the beach just starting to exchange stories of last nights dreams, the crows are talking just for the sake of making noise, there are a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers tapping the trees awake and I’m on my second cup of coffee. You can’t buy this… nothing finer… I wonder what the poor people are doing?
It has been a routine store management relief job and actually easier than most. This seems to be one of the rare stores where staff actually like to come to work and it was a real treat not to have to worry about cashiers or freight handling and deliveries. Of course there was the occasional disturbance at night due to the local youth having little to do but throw rocks, but at least there were no break-ins at our location in town. 
This is one of the few places within our system where the residence is attached to the store. This is certainly handy and much appreciated on rainy or blizzardly days. I'm not sure if I'll be around doing this in another year but there are certainly worse places to spend a few weeks. Big THANKS to all the Northern, Kasabonika staff for making my job an easy one!
I recently received a comment on this photo which is displayed on my Flickr site. The comment was "nice vanishing point." It hadn't occurred to me to think of it as a vanishing point at all but instead I always seem to think of photos like this as pathways to move forward on. To me this is an invitation to travel ahead and see and live whatever is out there. It's nice to have experienced what's behind me, but I find what lies ahead holds more fascination and challenge. 
What do I see out there in the distance? I hope it will somehow be something that can help make up for years of travel and missed memories. I want it to be a time to reflect and perhaps start to understand what I've lost by not being home to watch my kids grow up.
What do I want most to be down that road? Time. I want my lost time back. Simply time to spend wisely with my wife as we grow old together sitting out on that deck, reliving and building memories. 
Back on the road again and this time it’s to Kasabonika in Northern Ontario.
It was a great day to fly and on my preferred carrier, Bearskin Airlines at that. The route was Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay to Sioux Lookout where I transferred to Wasaya Airways for the last leg of the journey. The travel day was only 10 hours and it was broken up nicely into small parts with the longest being that early morning drive from Wikwemikong to Sudbury. Anyway, I’m looking forward to this ‘probably’ being my last trip of the year and spending some time sitting on the deck with a fine single malt scotch in mid September. See you then!
We took off out of Salluit about 10 minutes ago for what is most likely the last time for me. It's been fun but the staffing problems just flat wore me down this trip. A lot of it was because of the season when everyone goes camping. More of a problem this year was that I lost three people to Montreal and one to Iqaluit. It's great that Air Inuit is offering a very attractive return seat sale for its passengers but it makes it hard to keep our part time worker students around. Some days you have to open late and/or close early as a result and that is poor customer service which can’t be helped. The store here is not overly large but there is still too much involved in the operation for just two or three people to handle.
The plan was to have ten days or so off before heading out again but they called and of course I said yes, again. It's nice to be needed but I had plans for a huge Watkins Open House to introduce the new ALL-Natural Cleaning Line and also something special to promote a really great Holiday Gift series also coming out in August. Now you will just have to wait until I get home in mid September.
The good news however is that unless something really drastic or particularly nasty pops up this is my last trip of the year. You know, sometimes I complain about the trips and the problems but how many other jobs give you up to 4 months a year off with full pay, plus bonuses, plus travel to locations that the average tourist would pay thousands of dollars to see just once. Hey, guess I've got it pretty good, huh!
So that's how it's done, eh? I won't say how it happened or who was involved but it wasn't me! Somehow or other the only key for the store truck got locked inside it last night. Neither Lorne nor I had any idea how to break into a vehicle so I went next door to see if our construction crew had any ideas. I'm not too sure what these guys did in a previous life but needless to say I now have an excellent idea of how to break into a vehicle. It's surprisingly easier than I thought... but I still hope I never have to practice it myself.
The CGCS Terry Fox sailed in at about 5:00 am yesterday. I suspect that it's in the area due to all the difficulties that some of the shipping traffic has had this year and of course it's great to be "showing the flag" in the north. My own photo above was taken from quite a distance but the close-up of this Icebreaker was taken directly from the Coast Guard web site.
THANK YOU to Lorne, Josepie and the gang for making this event go so smoothly. We didn't get much stock for the store on this ship as the big one is in October but it was still a major undertaking for the day. Most of what came off was for our new store construction crew who took care of their own freight and everything went nice and easy for both of us.
You're never quite certain what you will find when you open a container. Sometimes you get a mixture of furniture, soft drinks, ski-doo oil, floor tiles, photo-copy paper and who knows what. Here the crew is starting with a fairly clean warehouse but it sure looked different by the end of the afternoon. Thanks again to everyone who showed up to help!
The demolition of the old, old Northern Store in Salluit took place yesterday. It was raining and blustery and the darkness of the day somehow seemed necessary as we watched the destruction of a community landmark. This was the oldest building in town and had originally been located on Wolstenholm Island, way out in Hudson’s Straight. From what I hear it was moved here when the Hudson’s Bay Company relocated to the mainland about 70 years ago. At that point in history these communities were visited once annually by supply ships, which carried everything needed to survive another year. Even though the Inuit had survived quite nicely without our interference for thousands of years us outsiders needed more than was locally available in order to survive in this climate. Other than local foods available to the hunters everything from tea, needles, cloth, pots and pans and everything else that we would take for granted had to be brought in by annual supply ship. That included only getting your mail once a year, so don’t complain any more about Canada Post service! 
Actually I'm not sure it's the main herd at all and it's more likely just because I've never seen this many at one time before and I'm getting excited over an offshoot. I have no idea how many thousands have passed by already this morning but I've been watching them for about 3 hours now and there is no end to the chain of them at one end or the other. Unfortunately my camera just doesn't have the megapixels to take a proper photo and it's also raining, but if I look up the river to the right the hills are just covered with caribou moving southward. If I look left to the north and the mouth of the fjord there is still a steady line of them coming. It would be nice if they would come down from the top of the mountains to where I could get a better photo for you and maybe they will later today. I have no words to describe it right now but I feel priviledged and very lucky to be able to witness something that I have only read about before.
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They tell me there were about 1,200 altogether but I only saw a hundred or so myself, and these were a couple hundred yards away. The caribou are skitish this year and I realized why when I saw some idiots chasing them on Honda's tonight.
Well, the site is being prepared for the new Northern Store at Salluit. The old, old store that was moved to this location from Wolstenholm Island in Hudson’s Straight 50 or 60 years ago has been gutted along with half of our heated warehouse space. 
The reason for that is because our land area is limited and these buildings will have to come down to make room for the new plant. The electrician arrived yesterday and he’s already got two of the 4 panel boxes moved. 
After we close today we’ll cut power to the entire building and he’ll start on the preparation for relocating the main panel box. There is a power pole that will have to be relocated outside also and this will be a problem as all the power for the store, warehouses and dwellings comes off this one location.
Our ship with the materials for the new store itself will not be here before the 28th. They’ve had a lot of trouble with ice and only got away from Iqaluit a couple nights ago. Now he has to make 4 or 5 stops before he gets here and that’s OK as it just gives us that much more time to get the pad for the new building ready. The exciting and sad part will be early this coming week when the old buildings go under the bulldozer. There is a lot of history in one of those buildings but the old have to make room for the new, right? 
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