Culture
The Good Life
The green of lettuce, the yellow of fresh egg yolks, and the red of the soil after processing livestock. Life in the North has long been about self-sufficiency and today young families continue to choose a lifestyle where everything that ends up on the dinner table comes from just out the back door. Sarah Artis dabbles and joins a pair of families trading the 9 to 5 for something a bit more hands on.
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Firelight
This year’s wildfire season was the worst on record. Photographer Michelle Yarham snapped some beautiful, haunting images near Fraser Lake late in the summer as the fires raged and the daytime skies darkened.
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Colour of the Water
Sometimes adventures take a strange turn and, when they do, they etch themselves firmly in your memories—including the colours. Paul Glover takes us on a trip down the Nass, and the proverbial memory lane.
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Colouring the Map
You know when a place is named for a colour? Blue River, Red Bluff, etc. etc. Sometimes the reason why is not as obvious as you’d think. Jo Boxwell checks out a few colourful northern BC locales.
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Onions, Little and Big
Just outside of Babine Mountains Provincial Park, "The Onion" is a "tick-the-box" kind of hike.
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Lost or Found?
We asked six writers and one photographer (Michelle Yarham) to tackle this issue’s theme in whatever way they saw fit. What they came up with is quirky, funny, poignant, reflective, and uniquely northern.
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Eternal Spaces
These are the graves of sailors and captains. Of fishermen whose blood runs thick with salt. This place tells the story of how they lived. And that is the power of cemeteries.
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The Barn
The first time climbing the ladder is transcendental. Crossing from one world into another. Photo essay by Marty Clemens.
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Creative Space
Whatever we create, the environment we are in leaves an imprint on our work. Many artists crave isolation during the creative process, but some encourage outsiders to interrupt and even influence the direction of the pieces. Six northern BC artists discuss their creative spaces and what makes them so significant to the work they produce.
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Haida Gwaii: The Board Game
Incorporating Haida cultural history, Nang K’uulas develops a new strategy game
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Revolving Doors
What happens when you come to a place temporarily and never leave? Or when you leave everything behind and venture out to northern BC for a job, but it doesn’t pan out? As our economy becomes increasingly reliant on transient workers, Dan Mesec investigates the temporary world in our half of the province.
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Passing Through
Yawning and leg stretching at the visitor centre. The city connects highways and breaks up a train route, but the distances are vast. Some travellers collect brochures and pile them in their car doors. Others invest in small mementos: a printed mug or a wooden Mr. PG. A few leave behind their stories.
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Paint Swatch Writing Contest
Sharpen your pencils & your wit for Northword's first writing contest!
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On Ancient Ice
Tatshenshini-Alsek Park is iconic Canadian wilderness. It’s rugged, remote, and truly remarkable. Perched on a confluence of borders—BC, Yukon, and Alaska—the park is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest protected natural area in the world.
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Edge of the World
The beginning of a thing is often not recognized as such until long after, or indeed until an ending appears on the horizon. Such was the case in the fall of 1994, when four dirtbags pooled their limited resources and headed north from Vancouver and the Kootenays to undertake a month-long sea-kayak trip in Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve.
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The Crawl
Patrick Williston lives in Smithers in a mountainside home with a dark and spidery crawl space. When days are longer, you will find him and his family gunkholing around the Chatham Sea in an old sailboat. This is his first piece of fiction for Northword.
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Beginnings
Check out Northword's latest publication, a collection of northern stories and amazing images.
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Strengthening Families
Mental illness can be as challenging for caregivers and family members as it is for the person experiencing the illness itself.
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No Room on the Bus
"On several mornings, she says she saw five teens get off to make room for younger kids, indicating the bus was overbooked by at least as many spaces."
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A Terror of Tyrannosaurs
The best way to see ancient dinosaur footprints is in the dark. It’s also the best way to feel that tingly sensation on the back of your neck. Jo Boxwell takes us to Tumbler Ridge, where lantern tours of the dino trackways are a mainstay of the growing paleo-tourism industry.
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By Boat
In Haida Gwaii, the dark months of winter mean more time for things like hunting trips. Join photographer Joseph Crawford as he explores abandoned buildings and the subdued coastal landscapes while on a boat-access hunting excursion.
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Avalanches
Travelling in northern BC’s backcountry means taking risks. Why we do we do it? Tania Millen weighs in, as she explores the dark side of risk vs. reward, and nudges us in the right direction for finding balance.
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On Beaches
As the world’s oceans fill up with plastic, the beaches along BC’s coast are quietly accumulating garbage. Talon Gillis's photos offers us a glimpse into a group of individuals working to protect and restore impacted habitat.
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Simbiyez Wilson
Her name means “child of the stars.” And Witsuwit’en singer-songwriter Simbiyez Wilson seems to be living up to the name.
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Future Past
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard
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Fishing for Future
Opening day on the Skeena came late this year. Kitsumkalum fish monitors were there working with recreational anglers to gather data. Britta Boudreau takes us to the river, and gives us a glimpse of what’s at stake if the salmon stop swimming, and who is working to protect the resource.
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The Last Salmon Stronghold
Salmon are a way of life in northern BC. This season’s closures of the sockeye and Chinook fisheries on the Skeena River are causing ripples of fear for a future with no fish in the rivers. Dan Mesec investigates the issues, and the potential cultural implications of declining stocks.
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Creative Connections
From Prince George to Prince Rupert, creative folks join forces to enhance their respective cultures, and northern BC culture as a whole. Collaboration at its best in three northern communities.
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Perception Problem
Prince George’s reputation for crime is a harsh reality for some and a bizarre background for others.
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The Grizzly Business
One of BC’s iconic creatures, the grizzly bear is responsible for a significant portion of our province’s economy. The question is: should we shoot bears with guns or cameras, or both?
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True Coldness
It is being on the edge of everything; being in the North, experiencing true coldness, even fleetingly from the deck of a cozy home in a warming climate.
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Orchestra North: summer music program is serious fun
The audience hushes as the conductor and co-director stride down the aisle. At the front of the room, the orchestra members fall quiet.
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The Collections Renewal Project: Bringing the past to light
I’ve poked around in museum backrooms throughout BC’s Northwest; wearing those white gloves while sifting through old papers in archives and artifact storage rooms.
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Smokin’ Good Fish: Many ways to smoke a salmon
A slight breeze rustles the aspen leaves, and on it drifts the distinct scent of a northern summer. It could be a campfire or a Bar-B-Q, but when the days are long and when the salmon are running, the smell of smoke carries with it the flavour of curing fish and the promise of good eating throughout the winter.
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Growth in aboriginal tourism means cultural opportunities for visitors
Anyone who considers Canada a dull and uncultured country clearly hasn’t experienced the rich heritage of northern BC, where hundreds of First Nations communities provide the region with a history rooted several millennia into the earth and traditions that significantly pre-date European arrival on the continent.
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Stone women: The water girls
what is it with us water girls always looking for the current in the current, the secret in the water that is the water…
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How Raven found his lunch: Stories across cultures of an eternally hungry bird
Corvus corax. We-gyet. Trickster.
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Northern landscapes on the big screen: Local filmmakers raise awareness through imagery
In a place where our day-to-day lives are lived between a vast network of grand landscapes, it’s easy to appreciate the North’s natural environment.
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Artists put creative talent toward social justice
A crowd files through the narrow entrance to the Old Church in Smithers, one by one unpeeling layers of sweaters and coats that protected them from the cold.
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A buffet of summer music
Heading to a music festival often means embracing all styles and genres of music.
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Lost in definition Art lives in Smithers
The creative process is a great and beautiful mystery.
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Music for Life: Festivals in Northern BC
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
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Midsummer Festival, 30 years on: the stuff of legends
It’s 8 p.m. on a Monday evening, and in the Stokes’ kitchen a Midsummer Music Festival meeting has just wrapped up. A teapot and half-empty wine bottle sit on the table. But what flows most generously are the stories.
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Don’t Mess with the Estuary: Skeena mouth threatened by development near and far
Over the past few years, protection of the Skeena River has received a lot of attention.
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Sustainable Mining in BC: Does it really exist?
Sustainable is a word used everywhere these days, thrown around like a corporate-world Frisbee: sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable communities. But sustainable mining?
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Enter the DJ: Electronic music in the North
The room is dark. It’s hot and humid from the combined body heat of hundreds of people crammed into a small space.
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Fishnets and kneepads: Derby’s unique style rolls north
Booty blocking, fresh meat, fishnet burns: you’re unlikely to hear these terms in any other team sport. Then again, few athletic pursuits are quite like roller derby.
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Surprise Home-birth: Baby Carter arrives in a hurry
Amanda Lewis never intended to have a homebirth.
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Dirty Dirt: The legacy of contaminated sites
Have you ever driven by a vacant site in town and wondered why it was empty? Maybe the buildings have been torn down but nothing’s going on.
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Confessions of a homeschooling geek
People all over British Columbia homeschool their children, but here in the North it seems at times to be a bit of an epidemic. If you don’t homeschool, you might assume that the reason lies in some defect in the northern schools, or in the geography of remoteness, or even in a deeply-rooted religious fanaticism that you never noticed before. But none of these theories really proves out. Somewhat mundanely, in the end it’s just that the same qualities which draw a person to the north also draw him or her to homeschooling: independence, resilience, a kind of indifference to isolation, and a delight in making your own—well—entertainment.
READ MORE➦Fall 2018 - The Colour Issue
Orange skies, white rivers, red dirt, and much more.
