Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Remembering Bishop John Sperry

In the summer of 2002 I made my first trip to the small community of Bathurst Inlet. The community in partnership with long-time northern family the Warners operated an Eco-tourism lodge in the community, appropriately called Bathurst Inlet Lodge.

It was that first summer that I met a man by the name of Jack Sperry. Everyone knew him as Bishop John Sperry though, because that is who he was, but to those of us at Bathurst, it was Jack. At one time he traveled the arctic, mostly by dog sled, visiting communities along the way. Honestly, I don’t really know what he did back then, other than it was Anglican missions related and I regret that.

I was so fortunate when I was younger to be exposed to the history of the Arctic and its people, but at that age I didn’t comprehend a lot of it. There is so much I think back on that I wish I could have done to hear those stories, the history and about the people. I admire them nowadays, and I’m saddened to hear of the loss of Bishop Sperry.

For a few summers after I remember seeing Bishop Sperry talking with the guests of the Lodge. Telling them stories of the past and how life use to be. And although he wasn’t a native to the north, the detail he processed when it came to the culture and the language was captivating.

I hold people like Bishop Sperry very high, not because of what they may have done all those years ago, but because they continued to share that knowledge. They were so passionate about it that they continued to tell the stories and pass on the history.

On February 7, 2012 Bishop John Sperry received a Diamond Jubilee medal to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 year reign of the United Kingdom. On February 12, 2012, Bishop John Sperry passed away in Hay River, surrounded by family.

To quote Page Burt, another friend for Bathurst Inlet, “he leaves a great void in the hearts of people right across the North, and far beyond.”

Read more here. Photo Credit: JANE GEORGE

A Bloggers Burden

My intentions are good, I promise. And I read all the How-to-blog, blogs on the internet to make sure I do it right. And I know that consistency is not king. Consistency may be queen, or prince or even joker.

With a new job come new responsibility, and my what great responsibility it is. That being said, come the evenings I’m a vegetable. I don’t seems to have the effort to accomplish anything on my list of awesome-things-to-do-in-the-evenings-while-not-doing-anything-else.

'blogging' photo (c) 2010, Sean MacEntee - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I also seem to sleep a lot. I fall asleep around 10pm and wake at 6am. That is 8 hours, not sometimes I stay up an hour later, but it still seems like I sleep a lot. People tell me it is all about routine or exercising or drinking more coffee, blah blah blah.

Either way, productivity is at an all time low in the evenings. I need to fix this, because I got lots of stuff I want to finish. Rebuild YkOnline.ca, write posts for YkOnline.ca, write a letter to Fort St. John, write about my adventure in to gardening, take more pictures. Yeah I got a lot to do.

So then you ask, why is it that you seem to be able to write this post, babbling on about not being able to write, when here you are writing about it.

Well that is a good question, you see, it is 6:45am. As I have always been, I am 10x more productive in the morning.

This has been the dialog in my head.

A Truly Northern Weekend

I have no pictures, because this was a working weekend. Rather, it was a northern weekend. One without electronics, especially considering I lost my iPhone.

Saturday was a busy day. If you were me, along with family and friends, you would have driven 150km out of Yellowknife, past Rae-Edzo (Behchoko). The reason for such a drive was to cut down standing dead, also known as firewood.

Kyle snowmobile

We, and I say this with a grain of salt, because I am only there to help, get a cutting permit for the season so we can heat our houses with our wood stoves.

Leaving town at about 9am, we arrived at our cutting area (the location which is top-secret), break trail in with snow, cut for a couple of hours, haul it all back to the trailer, load it up and drive back to town.

It seems like an easy thing to do, but it does drain your energy. I’m also certainly not going to complain about the amazing -1ºC it was out there, but I certainly got wet and heated up quickly. I prefer this job in -20ºC. I think my gloves and boots are still soaking wet.

Now fast forward to Sunday morning. I’m up at the crack of dawn, you know about 8:30am here in the north and ready to go back out.

I fill our sled toboggan full of firewood and drag it to the front of the house and proceed to stock it up inside the house next to our wood stove. I brought in enough wood to keep us going for the week, burning only in the evening to kill the chill at night.

My next task was kindling. Kindling is also an annoying part of wood burning, because it seems you are always running out. Fear not I fill a milk crate, so again, we should be good until the next weekend.

The last thing I did this weekend was move snow. On a side note did you know this Hay River, NT company will make you snow. No thanks, I got lots. So much so I needed to remove it from the deck on our house. Otherwise in the spring water would be everywhere around the house.

If you have ever shovelled snow, you will know how straining it is. Now imagine 4ft deep snow on a deck 12ft in the air. I had to throw that snow so far.

I enjoyed every minute of this weekend, including my afternoon cooking and baking. My one regret for of the weekend is that come Monday morning I am going to be tired! Instead of being tired though, I’m going to be awesome.

Oh yeah I also blew a cylinder in my snowmobile, rendering it useless and lost my iPhone.

Kyle’s Internet Usage

Shaw Internet Usage

I don’t have Cable, but I do have Internet. For the last 9 months I have only lived with Internet and watch all the TV Shows I follow, online.

When I think back I would say on average I stream 2 hours of video a day and upwards of 6 hours on a weekend. That is a lot of streaming. I use all the Canadian Network Websites, other streaming sites and Apple TV (Movie rentals and Netflix)

On top of the streaming I do upload photos, podcast etc. on a regular basis.

It surprised me when I looked at my Shaw usage for the first time today. In the last 8 months I have only gone over 60GB in a month once. I’m not even sure why I went over, it seems my usage various by 10GB, odd.

This excites me because one of my concerns moving back to the NWT was the *higher* cost of Internet than I’m use to with Shaw. I have a bandwidth cap of 60GB in Yellowknife (apposed to the 125GB I had with Shaw), but after seeing my usage down here, I’m not so concerned any more.

What is your bandwidth cap?

Starting the Moving Process

It is a daunting word, process. Processes are scary, but they have to be done and followed.

By now I’m assuming everyone knows that I have accepted a new job with the communications company Kellett Communications and that the job is based in Yellowknife. If you 

didn’t know, then you should watch the video found here.

I’m excited I’m heading back to Yellowknife, but not so much that I will be living with my parents for a while. Sure, at 21 years old that is not a big deal, but it is to me. I’mindependent and I like my own living space. Heck I can barely handle roommate, unless I know them. I’m extremely thankful for my parents though and their house.

As I wont have my own place for a little while, the moving process has to be thought out a bit more. Do I take all my furniture or get rid of all of it? If I do take it, where will I store it? These are all questions I’ve had to ask.

I decided to get rid of my two couches, my kitchen table, desk and bed thing my mattress is on. I’m going to keep my lounge chair, because it is awesome, and my brand new bed I bought in August.

Then of course there is all the junk I have collected in the last year and a half. SO MUCH JUNK! I’m glad this apartment has a dumpster outside, because it will be used.

I find moving misleading. The packing of the vehicle or trailer is the easy part, but that is part we often see. What we don’t see if people pulling their hair trying to fit all their belongings in boxes.

I’m glancing around looking at all that needs to be packed and I see: electronics, kitchen ware, food, pictures, cookbooks, clothes and bikes. It sure doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up.

9 Days before the trek north. 9 days to get this small apartment packed and cleaned. 9 days.