Showcase: Journey of Discovery
For this French Canadian, the process of becoming an author began in Yellowknife
A trip to Yellowknife fuelled this French Canadian’s desire to become an author.
The day my father passed away, a few years ago in March, was an eye-opener for me. I realized my own life was crumbling down. I was not happy anymore with my job and my relationship with my boyfriend seemed hopeless back then. I was sad. Lonely. And exhausted. All my life, when facing tough choices, my father had always asked me, “What would make you happy?” So, I asked myself the same question. The answer came right away: writing and going to the North. Things I had dreamed of doing for years.
So, I quit my job as a French-language radio and TV journalist, packed up, and on a sunny but chilly morning in September, all by myself behind the wheel, I headed to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, a city I had never been to before and knew nothing about.
Eight days, four provinces and three time zones later, I found myself above the 60th parallel on a ferry near a place called Fort Providence, overlooking the majestic Mackenzie River. Shivering on the deck, I had lost my bearings already, but I knew I was on board for quite the adventure.
When I arrived in Yellowknife, just like every newcomer, I noticed the very peculiar beauty of the place right away. Rustic but breathtaking. This city sits, literally, on the Canadian Shield, and it shows. You can see the exposed rock everywhere, with its shades of pink. Yellowknifers say, “You either love the place or hate it. There is nothing in between.’’ I fell in love with the city right away.
One thing you quickly learn when living in one of the northernmost cities in the world is to be openminded. It’s not what you’re used to and will never be. It’s normal to have a polar-bear-skin rug and a narwhal tusk in your living room, or to see your coworkers wearing moccasins at the production meeting, or to hear the mayor, at the end of each city council meeting saying, “Stay warm.’’
My first day at work, at CBC North, was a shock. The topics we discussed, well, I had never given them much thought before: food prices, oil prices, the diamond market, Aboriginal elections. I was lost. A stranger in my own country. That’s
how the North can make newcomers feel initially. But I learned, and by Christmas, I could produce pieces on any of those topics as if I had been in the North forever.
It started to snow in mid-october as the temperatures were dropping. By the end of the year, it was -40ºc, the lake was frozen solid and snowmobiles were passing by on the streets. It was as dark as dark can be. I had no real problem with any of that; I’m a winter person. There is nothing I like more than cold weather, snow and ice, but Yellowknife’s winters are challenging. If you go out on the lake for a walk and get lost, you’ll die. If you don’t dress warmly enough, you’ll be in trouble. Here, you have to adjust to nature, not the other way around, and that makes you feel humble.
Things for me changed the day I met Julie. She was from Vancouver and had been living in Yellowknife for a couple of years. All of a sudden, I had a friend to talk to. A friend, who just like me, had pushed herself out of her comfort zone. Julie and I would laugh about pretty much everything and, God knows, our laughter saved us from so many things. You never know what you’ll encounter in the North. It could be coyotes roaming around town, an old-school bar fight spilling out into the street or some mysterious-looking stranger from who knows where running away from who knows what. The North really is the last frontier.
On Saturday nights, Julie and I would go for drinks at the Gold Range, a bar in downtown Yellowknife. A rough one. There, I heard so many stories; some sad, others simply beautiful. For instance, I heard how Aboriginal people “call the lights,’’ by scraping their nails together to imitate the sound of deer hooves, which they claim attracts the northern lights. I also met an Inuk guy who was from a city by the Beaufort Sea. He told me how his culture and language were fading away and how different life was becoming in this part of the world. How kids there, instead of hunting or fishing like their forefathers had done for thousands of years, were constantly on Facebook. It was all they seemed to care about. Then one day, it struck me like a bolt of lightning—i didn’t want all these stories I was hearing to be forgotten. And I realized that the best way to keep them alive was to write about them, using my own story—my journey from Montreal to Yellowknife—as the foundation. I wrote down everything I had experienced living in this unique, small town up north with its wonderful, brave, funny and sometimes odd people. So I started to write, one page at a time, one chapter at a time, and before I knew it, it became a novel. I called it La Saison froide (The Cold Season). To me, that’s what the North is all about—an endless winter with varying degrees of light and darkness, coldness and warmth, where one has to survive the harshness to be able to enjoy the beauty and peacefulness.
Eventually, after almost three years up north, I went back to Montreal, polished up my manuscript and managed to get it published via La Presse publishers, who liked the story. During that time, I also began to host a French radio show about the North. Based in Montreal, I got to travel extensively throughout northern Quebec for the program, which provided the creative spark and new subject matter for two more books, Le retour de l’ours (The Return of the Bear), and Jusqu’à la chute (Until the Fall). I’m still working in French broadcasting, splitting my time between Toronto and Montreal, with book number four on its way.
The North, as you can well imagine, is still in my head and in my heart. I appreciate what it has given me: the power to free myself of everything that is not essential to my well-being; the strength, patience and confidence to write novels, one page at a time, and thereby change my life for the better; and the humility to see that there is something bigger than our individual selves— this planet, which we all share and should not treat as badly as we do. ■