Animals!

Those who have been following me on Facebook recently have been bombarded by pictures of moose. Last week there were two moose that had invaded my backyard and the hill across the street from my house. As a huge city kid, seeing moose is a huge deal. In fact it is such a huge deal that I forgot to remember that moose are more dangerous than cars, and they are extremely aggressive. No matter, I was really lucky that day.

The calf that invaded my backyard. I had no idea it was a calf because it was so big.

The cow and calf. At this point I realized the calf was a calf because the cow was huge. It looks like she's suffering from some sort of mange though. It must have been a tough winter.

The Cow.

The "gifts" the moose left on my back steps when I got home.

Later this morning I went out to clean the backyard when I spotted a group of Mule Deer. Mule Deer are everywhere in Peace River, and can be identified by their large, mule-like ears, and the black spot on their tails. They were just chilling across the road and I had no choice but to snap some photos. I tried to catch a picture of the baby fawn, but alas her camouflage in the trees fooled my camera.

Can you spot the fawn? I barely can.

Later she appeared with Mom

 And lastly, the neighbour's cat looked cool.

A trip to Fox Lake

I've spent the past three months of the 2014 on the Northern Circuit. On this circuit, we have court in High Level, Fort Vermillion and Assumption. The Fort Vermillion courthouse covers all criminal charges that come out of the surrounding area, which includes the town of Fort Vermillion, oldest settlement in Alberta, the local Mennonite Community south of Fort Vermillion, La Crete, as well as the reserves of the Little Red River Nation, namely, John D'or Prairie, Fox Lake and Garden River.

This past month, I went with a Probation Officer, Jason, to see Fox Lake, one of the most isolated communities in the area. Fox Lake is a community that has no roads in or out. In order to drive to Fox Lake, you can cross via an ice road in the winter, or by the ferry barge in the summer. In the shoulder seasons when there is not enough ice to build a road or too much ice for the ferry to cross, the only way in and out of the community is by plane. As such, Fox Lake is one of those rare communities in northern Alberta that can be as isolated as communities in the territories. Sometimes, you just have to wait it out, as air travel is extremely expensive for the everyday person, it being upwards of $800 for a round trip.



My coworkers and people have always told me about the conditions of Fox Lake. They tell me it's a difficult place to live, and some of the files that come out there are a bit hard to read about. Recently Fox Lake was in the news for quite a sad case. You can read the article here.

I went to visit Fox Lake to quite candidly see what it looks like. I'm cognizant that what I saw over a couple of hours on a warm winter day cannot necessarily be an example of daily life. All I can write about is what I observed that day.

To get to Fox Lake by the road, you head west from High Level on Highway 58 and keep going from paved road to gravel road. Once you hit the gravel road, it's about 100 odd kilometres until you reach the turn off for John D'or Prairie. Now I learned today that you can either continue on the road for another 60 odd km and then turn off  and head south until you hit the Peace River and the ice road, or you can drive through John D'or Prairie and take a road that follows the Peace River until you reach the ice road. We took the latter path this morning. The road is all gravel covered in snow. I was told by Jason that in the Spring when the road is all muddy from the melting ice, your car will get stuck and many cars have been lost and abandoned on that road. Sure enough we counted over 5 trucks and cars just rusting away on the side of the road. Most of them had been there for a year, with all their windows smashed out, or the car was flipped over.

Once you get to the ice road and cross it you're in Fox Lake.

We took the road into the community, drove past the airport, I took a wrong turn and almost drove into a herd of wild horses. They're wild in the sense that they don't belong to anyone; it's likely, that people feed them and they were abandoned many years ago.

That white horse greeted me with fresh manure.

I was shadowing Jason today, whose job it was to meet with new clients who were given probation, and also set up meetings with clients who needed to be interviewed for various other reports. We set up shop in the local police detachment, which has a mighty 3 police officers for a community of 2,500, an antiquated giant key to lock cells and a photo of HMTQ (Her Majesty the Queen). After all the meetings were done Jason drove me around town and did a house visit.

I noticed that a lot of the housing in the area are trailers. Windows are often boarded up if they can't be replaced and to keep the heat in as it gets really cold. Some of the trailers are in better shape than others, and some people live in duplexes or small houses. There's a map in the police detachment that shows that family groups tend to stay in the same place. Without road signage, I figure you guess the area someone lives by their last name, and work out from there.

One of the places that I found was interesting was the local grocery store, the Northern Store. Jason told me he believes it's a subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company, and it's basically like a mini Walmart. I tried to snap some photos of ludicrous grocery prices, if there were any, and all I found was milk. It's nowhere near the prices my friends in the Territories have showed me. With Spring coming and the ice road still up, they're able to still get goods in by truck. Apparently when the road is closed and the community is shut in, the prices will rise. There are also a couple of private stores in town that store other goods.

Some other buildings I saw around the town were the new school and the Nursing Station. They built a new school in the community because of the growing population of the reserve. Fox Lake is growing rapidly, with many young people in the community stressing the current school size. The Nursing Station, from the best of what I could gather, is like a mini hospital. For anything major, patients would be flown out or driven out to the hospital in Fort Vermillion, or for the most serious matters, to Edmonton.

The old school

The new school

The Nursing Station

Leaving Fox Lake my impression was that it was much better than what I thought it would be. I feel that shows just how ignorant I am about the First Nations Communities up here. I'm glad I went.