Relief for Haiti

Dear Friends and Family,

You may have heard that Haiti has recently experienced a devastating earthquake that affected the capital city, Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010. The earthquake measured 7.0 and has devastated the country. Major landmarks including the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral, the National Assembly, and the UN headquarters are all reported to have been affected. According to the International Red Cross there may be as many as 100,000 deaths and over 3 million people affected by the earthquake. This earthquake is particularly devastating, as Haitians already have limited access to basic resources including shelter, food, healthcare, and education.

We, Alysha and Jenny, are appealing to our friends and family to help support those who are is dire need. As many of you know, Haiti is dear to our hearts. While living in Haiti, we learned much about the world including its inequalities and injustices. We also learned about love and hope. It is with love and hope that we ask for everyone to act as global citizens and support the cause. Any amount, $5, $10, $20 or more, can add up to a lot. So, if you feel compelled to give, we encourage you to do so. We suggest MSF (Doctors Without Borders), www.msf.ca.

MSF is a non-profit humanitarian organization, that provides medical assistance, and has been working in Haiti since 1991. In this current crisis, they have already treated 800 people with injures, despite large obstacles such as replacing their damaged facilities with temporary clinics. MSF expects around 70 more international medical staff to arrive shortly, and to open a 100 bed hospital, with an inflatable surgical unit (2 operating theatres) and 7 hospitalization tents. The main public surgical hospital has been damaged severely by the earthquake and is currently not operating.

Please consider,

Jenny Shaw &

Alysha McFadden

The Neverending Story

About a week after we settled into our new apartment, we borrowed The Neverending Story from the library. After the climax of the film, the Childlike Empress tells our hero, Sebastian, that he must rebuild Fantasia by making a wish, any wish he wants. He decides on riding Falkor (the good luck dragon who looks like a giant dog) through the land of Fantasia and through the street’s of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Not that we were incredibly homesick, but this was quite heartwarming. What would we choose to do, if we had to rebuild Fantasia? Not incredibly original, but hey, we miss our old pets.

When Dawson City Dreamt of Us

If you are ever travelling through the Yukon, Dawson City is a must. It’s weird and hypnotic. Time stops and begins intermittently, or so it seems. The sidewalks are still made of wood planks, the houses are kept in their original gold rush style, and dog mushers and trappers still frequent the pubs. With its Arctic Circle proxy, the summers are flooded in near eternal sunshine, while winters ebb to darkness.

We took a trip there in the fall, at the same time we visited Tombstone. We visited the cabins of Robert Service and Jack London (actually, half of it only remains while the other half sits somewhere in California). Edward returned later to help with some of the Olympic Torch Relay coverage. While walking his boss' dog, Smokie, along the Yukon River one morning, he was transfixed by the passing slush ice.

Watch fullscreen.

"I could film that stuff all day," his boss later told him. "I wouldn't mind doing a whole show on it, y'know? It's always different."

Later, Edward had this surreal experience, while walking Smokie down a really wide street towards the public school. “I was wearing my huge down parka, thick gloves, and my -75 °C (-103 °F) boots. The fur of my hood shrouded my periphery. The snow crunched beneath my feet. My suit made movement slow, but comfortable. I called out for Smokie to come back, and then it hit me: a vision of being stretched across the page of an old picture book, while it was being read by my elementary school librarian. The essence of northern living seemed manifested in that moment, the ques of which I gathered from school books, museum field trips, and cultural CBC segments. I had stepped into the page. Time had slowed down. And even if I was just playing the part, it felt good to be northern.”

Clay Cliffs

One of our favourite spots in Whitehorse is on top the clay cliffs, right above Alexander and 8th Ave. From here you can see Downtown, the Yukon River, and the opposing bank rising into Grey Mountain. An even better sight, on a windy day, are the ravens. These clever birds take advantage of the up-wind, that bends over the bluffs and magnifies the effect of their limited wingspan. If you stand on the crest, the ravens fly so close that you feel as though you can stretch your hand and touch them.

To see better picture, visit our Vimeo page.

Our Fulda Challeng

This past weekend we stayed at an inn for Alysha’s staff Christmas Party. In our rush to leave, Edward forgot to bring along his thick winter boots and a pair of gloves. Thinking it wasn’t worth turning around for, as the inn was only ½ hour out of town anyways, we kept on driving. When night fell, the conditions got real nasty: thick snow, poor visibility, no map, opera playing on the CBC, etc. Luckily, we arrived safely.

The next day had clear, partly cloudy, skies, with dramatic sunlight ripping over the surrounding mountains and lake. As we were leaving, we heard an odd thumping. We pulled over to find our back passenger-side tire had a frozen divot. The tire had actually frozen flat. Unsure of this oddity, we called our travelling partners, Niki and Land, to take a look.

After a few minutes in the cold, it was clear that Edward was in no shape to change a tire. His hand had started bleeding and his fingers were to numb to open the band-aid package. Alysha tried to treat him with a frozen alcohol swab. The band-aid was also too cold to stick.

Thankfully, Land took the helm of changing the tire. Alysha and Niki played travel scrabble in their truck, and Edward took pictures to document the event, apologising for making Land do all the work. “No problem,” he replied. “It’s good practice for the Fulda Challenge.” (Incidentally, Land has been selected to represent Team Yukon to compete in this year’s Fulda Challenge, the full explanation of which will have to be saved for a future entry. Least to say, it’s a very unusual attraction for German Tourists. For now, you can check out their website here).

The moral of the entry is, as Land graciously imparted, “If you are going to travel on the highway, you have to be prepared to travel off the highway.”

Attempting the X-Country Ski

Having Wednesday off, we went to the nearby cross country trails to pick up X-country skiing. We hope to get better.

To view video in higher quality, click here.

To see the band behind the music, see Breathe Owl Breathe's My Space and their Beautiful Blog.

Sharing Floor Plans

When we first started shopping for places to live, Alysha commented on how desolate a lot of the neighborhoods looked. Vacant of large trees and fences, she pointed to how the homes “kind of look like prefabricated ginger bread houses that are just plopped everywhere.”

And like a weird reoccurring dream, where all the patterns repeat themselves, the walk down our street brings you by the same house again and again, except with different siding each time.

We have friends who take pride in the fact that their house is a popular wartime model. “These houses can be found all over Canada.” claims Land (that’s his name, but that’s a whole other blog entry in itself). Its cookie-cutter floor plan is fairly basic, matching functional design with ample living space, making them great and dependable houses. Their neighbors have the same one but flipped. Together they share a driveway. On the other side lives Land’s brother River (ibid.)lives in the same model, but also flipped. They actually know a lot of people with the same plan and even share ideas on modifying them. “We know one guy who turned the closet upstairs into a bathroom,” Land explains. They are considering some major renovations pretty soon.

Another popular plan is the duplex. Out of the 38 houses in our neighborhood, one is a townhouse, 18 are regular houses, and 19 are duplexes.

This one (pictured above) sits across the street from us. Our neighbor-friend Ann, who works auxiliary at Alysha’s clinic, lives there with her husband Ante. They met on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway while he was on his 3 year bike tour for Peace in Croatia and she was biking from Whitehorse to Vancouver. They use half of the duplex to live in and the other half to run their B&B. Fittingly, they call it La Bicicletta. You can read more of their story here.