Jumah in Yellowknife

Alhamdullilah!

Over fourteen centuries ago, God's final revelation to mankind was completed, and what were once the backward tribes of a backwater peninsula emerged suddenly united, carrying their message as far as they could with a combination of intelligence and zeal, wisdom and bravery.

The empires they built grew powerful, then corrupt, and then waned, but the message itself was never lost, so that in 2009 in Yellowknife, Northwest Territory, Canada, the call to prayer could be heard.

I have never believed strongly in proselytizing. As the Prophet (as) himself said, "The best da'wa is your character." If Islam really was "all that" then people would see it. If it really was so transformative, then those whose eyes were open would eventually come to admire the Muslims they knew, and know that there was a reason for their admirability. And at that point, whether or not they chose to follow the rituals prescribed specifically at the time of the Revelation to Muhammad (as) was immaterial - God had given the Message to many peoples, and so it was inevitable that belief would have more than one valid manifestation. Many Muslims I know would recoil at the idea, but it is the only logical conclusion that I can draw from my reading of the Qur'an itself.

Nevertheless, there was something special about joining the Muslim community of Yellowknife, a place so distant culturaly and geographically from Mecca and Medina, for Jumah.

The Islamic Centre of Yellowknife

The awesomeness of that fact was also the substance of the khutbah, delivered by a Sudanese man who was for some reason travelling through, and known for some reason to be a reputable Khateeb. I might have recognized him were I more connected in ISNA circles.

And, much to my sad delight, there was no craziness in his khutbah of the sort I had winced through during my days with the UOMSA ("The theory of plate tectonics is kufr! Tsunamis are a means of punishment!") nor the bland platititudes that I had come to expect from certain speakers in London, but an intelligent yet straightforward reminder to us of how far we had come, and how wonderful the journey had been.

I didn't leave feeling inspired, but for the time I was in that small hall that had been converted to a mosque, I forgot that I was in Yellowknife, because I really could have been absolutely anywhere. The specifics might change a little, but Jumah is the same all over the planet.

There was food afterwards - the largely Somali community in Yellowknife wanted to put on a good show for their guest, but I had to rush to the hospital. As I turned to go, I noticed that the hall had suddenly become crowded. Jumah in Yellowknife also had the usual gang of latecomers.

Leaving the building, I saw that it had suddenly become surrounded by taxicabs, as if this were their dispatch station. Also much like the other Friday prayers that I had attended.

Polarcabs

Today a Somali man came into the emerg with a 1-week history of flu-like symptoms and chest pain. The flu had resolved, but the chest pain was getting worse. While examining him I asked, "were you at the Masjid yesterday?" His face brightened "Yes! I knew I had seen you somewhere!" "How was the food? I couldn't stay for it because I had to come here." "Food was good," he affirmed. "What do you do for a living?" Ostensibly, this is a medically relevant question, but in his case I asked just to see if he was a cab driver or not. I'm a huge racist sometimes.

Anybody who comes in with chest pain in Yellowknife gets at least 160mg of ASA, oxygen, and a cardiac workup (this is also the case in most other places), but nothing else in his history suggested there was sinister cause of this. His physical was also totally unremarkable, and the tests showed nothing either. He went home with some mild analgesia.

We've seen a lot of people with funny chest pain following an ILI; some people think the swine flu is to blame.

As to the cause of his chest pain, God only knows.

The Insufficiency of English

The Northwest Territories epitomize Canada in a lot of different ways. There's the weather, for instance, which is a patriotic Canadian cold. Moscovites have nothing on Yellowknifers.

Then there is wildlife. No polar bears in the city, but plenty of beavers and ravens. I don't think I've ever actually seen a raven up close before. It looks a bit like a crow wearing a coat with fur trim. I'll get a photo before I leave. They make an odd noise - not a crow and not a whistle, but a rhythmic sort of percussive hum. Actually they make a few noises, but that was one I'd never heard a bird make. They're known up here for being both playful and cunning

Finally, though, Yellowknife epitomizes Canada in its diversity. While about 20% of the town are from Indigenous First Nations, they are from a variety of ethno-linguistic groups, including the Slavey, the Denesuline, and the Dogrib (Wikipedia classifies all 3 as being Dene people, but I'll wait until I talk to a human being before writing further on that). The Northwest Territory has many more official languages that the usual English and French, as a result of having an Indigenous population of over 50% of the total.

CBC North - Yellowknife

In Yellowknife, though, the population is highly mixed, with Western Europeans, East Asians, South Asians, Africans, and Arabs all well-represented. There are also a lot of Canadian Maritimers, which is also just like the rest of Canada. Somebody once told me there were more Newfoundlanders outside of Newfoundland than in it, and hearing the accents around here, I believe it.

In 3 days of working the Emerg at Stanton, I have seen lots of Indigenous peoples, a couple of Mandarin speakers, at least two Arabs, and today, a recently immigrated family from Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the Indigenous women I saw was there for what was almost certainly a pneumonia, probably of viral origin, that she had been hit with quite badly. She was clearly sick, but not unstable. While doing the head and neck exam, I noticed that her right eardrum had a hole in it.

"Have you ever been told that you had a ruptured eardrum?"
"Oh yeah," she said, huddling herself under the blankets.
"How did that happen," I said, for the sake of conversation.
"My common-law hit me a couple months ago." She said this casually, like we were talking about the weather.
"Oh." What to say at this point? "And then what happened?"
"I saw a doctor."
"Oh." I paused. "And are you and he still together?"
"Oh yeah," she said, and then, as if to reassure me, "It's the first time he's hit me in 12 years."

She'd clearly had the speech before. What was I supposed to add? It had happened a while ago, and nothing I was going to do or say would possibly change her domestic situation, at least not for the better. "That's still not normal," I muttered, before leaving the room to finish my note.

Today I met a pair of new immigrants, a father and son, from a sub-Saharan African country. I didn't ask exactly where they were from, but one of the names ended in one of those Xho'sa (I have no idea if they were that or not) type of clicks that I couldn't reproduce on the spot without resorting to the "qaf" sound that most Western Europeans can't reproduce. I could tell by their "sort of" reply that I wasn't even close to the right pronunciation.

Any how, the kid had a laceration on his thumb that I sutured together. I'm not gunning for surgery, but there is something deeply satisfying about stitching human flesh together.

Tomorrow being Friday, I'm going to try to make it out to Jumah prayer at the local Islamic Centre, and will be bringing my camera along! No real break in the clouds yet.

The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre on the edge of Frame Lake -
the main performing arts centre in the NWT

Tidbits

I have to head out soon to get an H1N1 shot. There are a lot of influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) showing up around here, and according to someone involved with public health in a nearby community, 100% of the nose and throat swabs in her hospital are H1N1 positive. That doesn't mean that it's all H1N1, but it does mean that there's a high chance of catching it when you're working in an ED and half of the people you see everyday are coming in, worried that they or their kids are going to bite the dust from swine flu. That doesn't worry me so much as having to miss a week of electives because I'm too contagious to work with patients.

Saw some interesting things in the emerg yesterday that I'm still digesting.

There will also be some photos of Yellowknife's beautiful Canadian Shield landscape.

Milk is exorbitant around here. Fresh produce, surprisingly, is not.

Stanton Territorial Hospital

Stanton Territorial Hospital must be a nice place to work. Aside from the beautiful scenery of Frame Lake's undeveloped shore along the walking path that takes you to the hospital from my apartment, it's the only major hospital for hundreds of kilometers, with the next larger centre being in Edmonton. That means that it has a variety of services available, including Internal Medicine, Gen Surg, ENT, and Paeds, as well as its own CT scanner (which some towns of Yellowknife's size do not have). For MRI and Nuclear Medicine, you have to go to Edmonton.

The ED is less than 1/3 the size of any of LHSC's, but seems relatively busy during the day. Not hectic, but enough to have something to do most of the time. Of course, that's just today, and since I'm not expecting to get paid for any of this, I don't do paperwork after the patient leaves. Once I've been here a bit longer I'll see if there's anything that sticks out about the patient population.

Some of the internists drive out for a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays to the nearby communities that are accessible by car. I'm going to see if I can get a chance to go with them at least once while I am here.

Slave Lake is actually quite mind-bogglingly large - easily comparable to Superior in its size, and without a doubt much cleaner. On Google Maps, Yellowknife sits on a tiny bay that juts out to a slightly larger bay, that opens out after 10km or so onto another, much larger bay that then joins the main body of the lake, like a fractal pattern. If it were summer I'd like to take a boat out there, but it looks like it's freezing up, and I'm a landlubber.


A construction worker I saw today in Emerg said he had first gone to a clinic in Fort Providence with his injury. Fort Providence is almost on the opposite side of Slave Lake. Construction workers around here must have a high mortality.

Yesterday I wandered around the town. Saw the local mosque, (under renovation) some native art galleries (anything under $30 is Made in India or China, while most local stuff ranges from $300-$25,000), and took another look at the marina, where a lone beaver was busy diving around the Ministry of Natural Resources' docks. We have those in Ottawa. From some of the conversations I overheard today, though, the little guy was lucky not to get decapitated in the course of that great circle of life.

I've been pondering what to photograph while I'm here. On the lakeside walk to the hospital, to the north side lies the untouched beauty of the lake and the islands around it. There are apparently land claims issues around here that remain unresolved, which stymies development. For frivolous reasons, I think that's a good thing, but I'm sure there are local people around who would resent the notion that they be denied prosperity in order to preserve a view that they can get just by driving another 10km down the road.

On the south side lies the town, including a McDonald's and an large supermarket. I don't want to make the place seem like all lakes and snow and trees - I don't want to construct an articifial Yellowknife to take home with me, one that nicely fits the preconceived notions that I might have arrived with.

Then again, I've seen only a few square kilometers of this vast northern country, and I'm still under the tree line, and it's still October. If only I had a longer stay!

There have been breaks in the clouds, but no large patches of blue yet. Aurora Viewing Index - 10%. Curses!

Welcome to Yellowknife!

I arrived here yesterday, my connecting flight from Edmonton touching down under a cloud of fog. There go my aurora-watching plans. Yellowknife is supposed to be quite a dry town, but it's going through a wet spell right now, which will hopefully clear up later this week.

My trip to Yellowknife has been a couple of months in the making, although it happened mostly because I cornered myself into it. I would have otherwise spent these two weeks doing a medical elective somewhere in Ontario, or possibly Alberta, but because I gave one particular medical school in Ottawa (which shall go unnamed) a range of dates in which to give me an elective, by the time I heard back from their intolerably slow electives office, it was too late to fill all the other slots at major universities. It was high time for an adventure, anyways.

"So, you're going to Whitehorse, eh?" asked my brother.
"No, Yellowknife."
"Whatever. It's a colour, and then an object. How about in order to avoid confusion, I just refer to it as 'Colour-Object' from now on."

"See which of these mits you prefer. Remember you're going to the Yukon, so don't be cheap." asked my mother.
"Well, actually, I'm not going to the Yukon."
"Where is it then?"
"The Northwest Territories."
"Whatever."

Evidently, Canada's Northern geography is not well known in the rest of the True North Strong and Free. My favourite bit of confusion happened when I was talking to a South Asian friend.

"So where are you headed next?"
"Northwest Territories."
"Oh really!?" he was visibly impressed. "But isn't it dangerous there?"
"Why would it be dangerous?"
"You know, with the army moving in and everything."
Evidently, his Pakistani geography needed some work.
"That's the Northwest Frontier Province you're thinking of."

As I walked into the terminal from the Air Canada Jazz flight, a man with a goatie came purposefully towards me. "Wajid Sayeed?" "Hi, you must be Derek. Just let me grab my suitcase. . . Nope, that's not it . . . Ah, there it is." And off we went into the frozen north.

Not so frozen. While there were occasional chunks of filthy snow lining the over-gravelled pavement, most of it had melted. Aside from being much smaller, the town looked like Ottawa in mid-November. Since I had been following the weather here for a few days before departure, it was not particularly surprising, since the lowest I had seen the thermometer go was -8 degrees.

Derek Orlaw, the fellow responsible for Physician Recruitment around here, took me on a little tour of the town. For a city of only 20,000, the hospital was a quite respectable size. "We serve a giant area here," he said, "People get flown in from communities that are literally hundreds of kilometers away."

"Then I suppose you have airlift here." I hadn't seen a helipad at the hospital.

"Yeah. Lear Jet." Wow.

We went around downtown, with my guide pointing out various landmarks and restaurants. Yellowknife's north and western edges are surrounded by lakes, one of them being Great Slave Lake (named after the people who speak Slavey, not human bondage) and the other being Frame lake, which is the smaller one, but also the major recreational lake. The marina leading into slave lake reveals several little houseboats which people seem to live in all year long.

After we pass through downtown Yellowknife, we reach the peninsula that juts out into Slave lake. "This is where the pavement ends, which means you're on Reserve land from here on." The Reserve, despite being otherwise indistinguishable from the town, was all gravel roads.

We headed uphill on rocky terrain, around a big building that sat in the middle, half of it supported with stilts because of the slope.

"This is the N'Dilo reserve. That big blue building on the left here is the N'Dilo Diamond Company." After the gold had been exhausted, Yellowknife had gone through a period of transition to a mainly government-services economy, until diamonds were found in the late '90s. Or so Wikipedia had said. "They had an agreement with the diamond company to get 15% of the diamonds, so that they could cut an sell them. The problem is that you don't just learn to cut diamonds overnight - it probably takes as long as getting a medical degree does. The aboriginal company went bankrupt a couple of times before they hired help with management, and made a contract with some, it think its Armenians, to teach them how to cut diamonds."

Unfortunately, not a tribe that was breaking any moulds.

"These little teepee sort of things are smokehouses. N'Dilo people use them for game meat; fish, caribou, you name it. That big building in the middle of the reserve is where they keep people from out of town. Some of these people who come from remote communities for treatment have never left their own community. To them, Yellowknife is like New York - it's the big city, it's a culture shock, they'd really get lost if they were just left to fend for themselves, so the people here accomodate them." I wonder how close the cultures are, given that the people on the reserve here are so integrated with the city.

There is apparently a sizable Muslim community in Yellowknife, my guide tells me as we pass the local cab company. Mostly Somalis. Another ethnic community that fails to break any moulds. "We also have a . . . I'm not sure what the right word is . . . a Muslim church building."

"A mosque, would be the English word." I decided not to confuse him with "Masjid."

"Yeah, we have one of those in town. I'm afraid that I haven't had a lot of contact with Muslim people before. " The subject had arisen after he called my mom's cell phone (which I carry) and got my answering message, which, being originally intended strictly for close relatives, began with "Assalamu Alaikum." It was odd that he'd never heard of it, since he said that he'd moved up here from Vancouver, which I had always thought was the Asian ethnic epicentre of Canada.

We arrived at the apartment where I would be staying, went over some of the administrative details, and then parted company. According to the internets, the Aurora viewing index for tonight was 14%: Poor. Damned fog.