Comments | ds_workshop: Life In Northern Canada (Part Deux)

nos4a2no9 in ds_workshop

Life In Northern Canada (Part Deux)

Mar 22, 2008 13:28

Hi everyone!

I promised ages ago to write a follow-up post to my first workshop piece on Life In Northern Canada. sageness and a few other folks had specific questions they wanted me to address, hence the sequel. If you're looking for more general topics about northern Canada, such as landscape and geography, weather, the role of the RCMP, shopping and ( Read more... )

craft: setting, craft

Comments 33

sprat March 22 2008, 21:26:05 UTC

Wow, this is a fantastic resource. Lots of great information here -- including stuff I didn't know, despite being a Canadian myself. Saskatoon is as far north as I've ever lived. *g*

nos4a2no9 March 22 2008, 22:16:44 UTC

Heee! Well, Calgary is as far east as I'd been across the prairies, so you're one up on me there :-) I'm glad you found this interesting.

zabira March 22 2008, 23:30:50 UTC

nos, you are a rocker of houses and a kicker of asses. this is all fascinating information, and i loved reading it. thank you for taking the time to put this together!!! \n/

nos4a2no9 March 23 2008, 03:36:55 UTC

Thanks Z!

sageness March 23 2008, 02:31:36 UTC

Thank you, thank you, thank you ( ... )

nos4a2no9 March 23 2008, 16:58:03 UTC

This is exactly the kind of post I was dreaming of!

\o/ Hooray! You gave me such an excellent series of questions, and I was so hoping you'd find the answers useful.

I'm sorry to have given you something to stress about in the midst of everything else you're working on

Oh, hey, no, don't worry about it. It was my fault I got so over-extended. It was fine, and once I sat down and started to work on this it was a lot of fun to put together. Thank YOU for the opportunity to, once again, inflict all this meta about Canada onto unsuspecting fangirls :-)

The really big thing for me is that as a viewer, I get so much MORE out of DS knowing the darker context it's working against. I mean, yay fluff and all, but every time Fraser invokes Inuvik, he's also evoking this great wealth of history -- dark and light -- and insisting that Canadian viewers acknowledge it.It is interesting! I love the comparison you draw between American TV and popular culture and the arrival of the hiphop scene. There are so many conversations going on in due ( ... )

barbarianwinter March 23 2008, 22:24:52 UTC

Very interesting, thank you for this!

luzula March 23 2008, 23:42:33 UTC

Wow, what a great post! One of my WIPs is set in the north and has some OC:s, so this will be very useful, I think.

For some comparison: In the first half of the 20:th century, Sweden had pretty much the opposite approach to the Sami, our indigenous people--supposedly, they weren't suited to the modern lifestyle and should just stay up in the mountains, live nomadically, and herd their reindeer. And I'm sure you can imagine that wasn't such a great solution, either. I do know that there are still conflicts concerning land use in the north, but I don't think our situation now is as bad as what you describe, at least as regards standards of living. We don't have reservations, and most Sami are pretty integrated nowadays, I think. Though my knowledge is probably sadly lacking, because I'm from the south and it's not a subject that's taught in school much.

And no, I hadn't heard of the Métis, either; that was interesting.

ruggerdavey March 26 2008, 23:15:00 UTC

This led me to wikipedia, and - man - how interesting. The whole subject is very different from the treatment of minorities here. Protecting a job so that it's just theirs (reindeer herding) was pretty surprising. And I have to say that I was really surprised at the images of the modern Sami - I don't know that I've ever seen a native group that looked so white before. Though I suppose I should have expected it since they are from Northern Europe.