Hello to All;

Well, we’ve now been here in the city of Whitehorse, Yukon for a little over a month now, and what a month it has been since leaving Minnedosa.

For starters, the pack up and move was a success. We hired a 53 -foot semi truck & trailer and driver (Abe) to haul our belongings. They arrived to pick up our stuff the day after my last day of work at Minnedosa Collegiate. My 1989 VW Jetta was the first item to be loaded. After that my brother-in-law, Kelvin, and I built a ramp and the real hauling began.

The move itself went very well. My greatest fears did not happen – that we would be moving on a day when it was +32 C and fraught with mosquitoes. Instead, the rain poured down all day (which hasn’t been anything unusual for Manitoba this spring) and it was a mixed blessing. While we got just a little damp between the house and the truck, it remained cool and it seemed to give the mosquitoes the day off. Thankfully friends, neighbors, and former students came to help. We were done within 4 hours and the semi pulled away from our empty “home”. To all those who were able to make it, my deepest gratitude goes out to you.

In my last message I wrote about how strongly I felt about leaving my employment future up to “Destiny and Fate”. I had decided to quit my job entirely after 12 years at Minnedosa Collegiate and head North to the Yukon to find a new future and adventure for my family and I. Well, as Destiny and Fate would have it, I remained unemployed for a total of 24 hours! During the afternoon after finishing up the loading of the semi truck I received a teaching job offer from the principal at Vanier Catholic Secondary School in Whitehorse.

A month earlier I had applied for a teaching position there that I had entirely given up on it after on- and -off talks with their administration. The last word I had was that they had offered the position to another teacher. As it turned out, that teacher decided that she did not want to leave her present “home” and move away. So a couple of hours after the loading was complete and the semi-truck had pulled away I phoned back to the Yukon and decided to accept their job offer. I’ll be teaching blocks of Chemistry 12, Chemistry 11, Math 9, and all of the grade 8 students in 4 blocks of Math 8. So once again it will be “Mr. Choy”.

I’ve since visited the school and met some of the staff there. Vanier is in a subdivision called Riverdale and is a 15- minute drive from our new home. The school has a population of about 450 students from grades 8 to 12 that come from all parts of Whitehorse. Overall, the school looks great. It isn’t very old and is a quite big (as compared with any schools I had taught at before.) On my tour I found myself looking into their “Small Gymnasium”. Wow, while it was the same size as the one at Minnedosa Collegiate, their “Large Gymnasium” is at least triple its size; plus they have still another gym dedicated to gymnastics. I was also most impressed with how well equipped my new classroom and lab is (it has a dishwasher and skylight).

We arrived in Whitehorse safely and all of our belongings arrived the day after. What a difference it was in unloading than in loading. With bro-in-law Kelvin at work, it ended up being Sharon, the kids, the truck driver, Abe, and I. But, we did it all in under 5 hours. Not bad – though the garage was almost completely filled.

For the next 10 days we stayed at Kelvin’s home just a block away while we completed tearing out of all of the trim, changing some of the layout of the upstairs, and painting the upstairs.

Since our move in we have also taken out all of the old carpets and replaced them with “click” hardwood flooring, replaced all of the trim around the windows, doors, and baseboards with oak trim we brought from Manitoba, cleared away a huge amount of trees from the backyard view of the mountains, reinsulated the window and door frames, and repaired a huge crater in our driveway. This appeared a month before we moved here and no one really knows the reason why – oh well. In all of this, we have had Sharon’s sister and family up from Winnipeg as well as her Mother, Elsie, from the Carman area. They have thrown their valuable help in house renovations also.

You may be wondering how the boys, Jordan and Kelvin, are faring in all this. They have been very happy. They both have very large bedrooms and have been given full permission to decorate them as they wish. I think that they haven’t missed Manitoba that much so far as they have had a lot of their cousins around every day. Kelvin’s highlight so far has been a trip to the biathlon course where he walked the course with his bow and arrow shooting at 3-D foam targets like deer, turkeys, coyotes, and rabbits. Jordan is looking forward to joining a badminton club here and has been having fun with the trampoline, hikes, fishing, and walks around the neighborhood.

Sharon has decided to return to teaching also. She has applied for two different elementary teaching jobs. Due to their hiring protocol that includes hiring aboriginal graduates and rural teachers she hasn’t gotten a position yet, but is still hopeful for one this Fall. If not, then she is going to substitute teach until something comes up.

All-in-all we are very happy to be here in the Yukon. We love our home and its location, the weather has been stellar, and our family is doing fine. I am still intending to write to all of you once life slows down a little. For now, I wish all of you well. Do drop a line if you get a chance.

Kelly

ps. There really are a lot of trees here, I haven’t seen a bear yet, there are next to no mosquitoes, and no, there aren’t any snow or igloos.