The Wells

I’ve had a lot of people say that life here in the north must be exciting. The truth is that life in the north can be weeks or months on end of boredom, followed by a few hours that make up for those boring stretches. I had one of those experiences last week. The company sent me to Norman Wells, the next town up on the Mackenzie River, to work for a week at the Northern Store there.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Norman Wells takes it’s name from the oil wells that Imperial Oil tapped into during World War Two. They are still pumping oil and natural gas today. Most of the houses in town are hooked up to cheap natural gas for their heat and hot water. They pave the main roads using oil (possibly mixed with some other chemicals) to stick the top layer of dirt together. One person told me that biologists have found fish downstream in the Mackenzie are dying from oil poisoning, although skeptics say that there has always been oil seeping from the ground into the Mackenzie.

Norman Wells is the hub of the Sahtu region, thanks to it’s airport. Most people consider it the place to be amongst the five Sahtu communities. It has several restaurants (four by my count), two stores, several gift shops, and a museum. It also has a liquor store and at least three bars. I’ve often heard it described as the “whitest” of the five communities. The population is predominately made up of energy sector workers brought in from the south.

The Northern Store in The Wells (nobody calls it “Norman Wells,” in day-to-day conversation) is a sight to be seen. I’m used to working in a big bright new building with high ceilings and tiled floors. In the Wells, the store was constructed by connecting seven ATCO rental trailers together. There are metal seams in the floor that become insurmountable speed bumps for your shopping cart. The shelving is old and dented, the aisles are narrow, and the fridges and coolers break down on a regular basis. The ceiling leaks all over the place. Midway through my stay, the power in the bathroom stopped without warning. No breakers were blown. Before I left, it came back on for no reason, but when I turned on the ceiling fan it started spraying water that had pooled in the fan’s plastic casing.

Despite its deficiencies, The store has some of the highest sales among similar sized stores in the company. They carry high end items that wouldn’t sell in most other Northern communities. Want crab legs, lobster tails, or premium steaks? They have them at the Northern. The store also has one section of shelving devoted entirely to “Newfie” items such as purity cookies, hardbread, and Lee’s Snowballs. They also sell buckets of salt beef. There are a lot of Newfoundlanders working in the oil business.

The week was uneventful. Work is work, and keeping shelves locked is rarely exciting. The best part of my job is meeting the characters who come in the store. One day, a Newfoundlander named Dudley introduced himself and started haggling over the price of a frozen turkey. He told me that he worked for Aurora college, but he was also the justice of the peace and the coroner. He was often in the store throughout the week. Once he came in to return a defective cordless phone.

“We’ll have to order another one in,” said the manager. “That was our last one.”

“But what do I do in the meantime. I got no phone.”

I couldn’t help interrupting.

“Here’s what you do, Dudley. Get yourself two tin cans and a piece of string…”

“Oh, yiss b’y. Where’d you say you came from?”

The housing there was nice. The Northern Store owns a duplex for it’s employees. I had a three bedroom house all to myself for a week. Around six thirty on Sunday morning, , I awoke to the sound of wood crunching. It was my only day to sleep in, but the sound was urgent enough that I managed to pull myself out of bed and look out the window. I could see that our front fence had been flattened and a white truck was pulling away. He had been backing out of the driveway across the street and had gone a bit too far. I cursed, got out of bed, and called the RCMP. Later that week I had to go give a statement. Apparently there was a second witness and the Mounties told me they had their man.

While all of this was fun, it was my last night in The Wells that made it all worth while. My friend Ron Oe, who took me fishing up on Great Bear Lake last year dropped by the store. I had run into his wife earlier in the week.

“How would you like to take the quads up to the mountains?”

I couldn’t say no to that one. I didn’t get out of work until eight thirty. Ron has two Honda four-wheelers which he bought for a song and then fixed up. It helps that he is a trained mechanic. We topped of the gas tanks and then roared off up towards the dump.

It was a beautiful night. After a week of rain and overcast skies, the air was warm and the sun was low in the sky, giving the landscape a golden glow.

I had never seen the appeal in four-wheeling before. My only experience on one had been bombing up and down a short logging road at my friend’s house when we were teens. Now Ron and I were flying through a maze of narrow trails, sometimes cutting back down the hill, other times launching up steep gravel banks. Before I was usually perched on the luggage racks while someone else drove. Now I was in control, and the feeling was exhilarating.

Finally we got up to the ridge above Jackfish Lake. Without warning, I looked to my right and saw nothing but some tiny trees four hundred feet or so below. But the path was solid and well maintained. I at no time felt as if I was in any danger. We stopped the quads and took in the view. Ron lit up one of his trademark captain black cigars, and I crawled on my belly to the edge of the cliff, sticking my nose out over the edge. Across the valley were even taller mountains. Ron told me that a local helicopter company takes people up there on the twenty first of June. From that height , you can watch the sun swing around the entire horizon without setting. However, tonight the sun was settling low at the end of the valley. Fortunately, sunsets last for hours this time of year, so we decided to head down to Jackfish Lake.

The town has developed the lake beautifully. Ant the end of the road they have a few campsites with fire pits. There is an unobtrusive path leading down to a well maintained dock. A battered canoe and a small zodiac were tied up, free for anyone to borrow. There were also two observation decks built into the side of the hill, where parents could sit and watch their kids swim. The water was crystal clear. A school of minnows was swimming below the dock, and two loons were out on the lake.

Climbing back on the quads, we roared up out of the valley and stopped to take in the view of the town before heading home. Lights were coming on in the twilight. The Mackenzie river snaked southward and northward as far as the eye could see, and the silhouette of the Mackenzie mountains loomed above the river, their jagged peaks finally free from cloud cover that had obscured them all week. I didn’t bother to bring my camera, and at the time I wished I had. Now I know it would have only slowed me down. The most expensive camera available would not have done the views justice. We were gone only two and a half hours, but I would gladly toil for another six months in the store for a few more hours such as those.