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