Hay River, NWT – Boats 1
Hay River, NWT – Boats 2
Hay River, NWT – Boats 3
Hay River, NWT – Boats 4
Hay River, NWT – Boats 5
In January’s winter, huge, huge boats – complex structures, rigged out with all kinds of equipment to make them self-reliant and useful upon the water – have been dragged to ground from the world’s largest lake – the Great Slave Lake; the boats wait, unused, boarded-up and dormant within acres and acres of Hay River’s boat yard. Canada’s Great Slave Lake is large enough to make transport of materials more efficient, faster and more direct when these boats are used than when moving materials around the perimeter of the lake by transport truck. These boats have names – Jock McNiven, Lister, Horn River, and Radium Empress – and in being named do stir curiosity about the origin of such reminiscence in each boat’s appellation. Snowy and overcast, the day yields -26C at 5:00 p.m. on a January winter day in Canada’s Hay River, Northwest Territories; overnight it will get colder. It’s the kind of day when a Hay River resident keeps an eye out for the potential of a stranded motorist, a neighbor, needing a tow from the snow bank or a boost of their car/truck’s battery. People living in Hay River know how to live in Hay River.
Listening to – Enrique Iglesias – ‘When I Fall in Love,’ with words on You Tube, a song our school’s custodian frets at this day’s end upon a Yamaha guitar … good, good schtuff!
Quote to Inspire – “I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.” – Jim Goldberg
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
Like the bleakness of the black and white shots
Hey there …
Bleakness, a quality that seems to associate to hibernation, obscurity, waiting and darkness; Charles Dickens wrote ‘Bleak House,’ about an estate settlement in which the foggy obscurity of legal protocol and propriety separates assets and resources from those who would benefit most directly and according to prescribed intention as expressed within someone’s last will and testament. Imagine a generation as timeframe to move toward probate … and a generation that suffers, waiting in obscurity. Bleak hopes go with a bleak house.
There is a quality of bleakness in the black and white shots; I find the same bleakness in the colour-saturated images, as well. I’m glad it’s something seasonal at play … there’s hope in that.
Take care … 🙂
Mmmm … need to re-read Bleak House. A good book about that time of waiting ….
Really atmospheric, like a sci-fi movie scene. Alien, something like that.
Jim
I thought about these images, too. The colour and black and white of the five boats generated words like other-worldly … and post-apocalyptic; I’m glad they’re merely boats dragged to ground. 😉
Great photos. I do love them.
Hey there, …
I’m enjoying your photos of Finland, too … the cars, the architecture, man in relation to the cold and ice – a very similar climate to Canada’s far north; I’m hoping to take a cruise one day from Denmark and make my way round to Finland and Norway … I don’t even know if this is possible.
Thanks for looking in … 🙂
The idea to visit both of Norway and Finland is great. I can say it with full heart, because I have been by our car twice in Norway. Northernmost parts of both countries are awesome. I visited Nordkapp (North Cape) and in Kirkenes. From our car holiday to Nordkapp, I have not made posts, but from Kirkenes yes.
If You have time, then here starts our adventure. Every post has links backwards / forwards. Very soon You understand that if You hire a car, then it is easy to travel. In some posts of this link, we hiked also.
Beyond the Arctic Circle1.
I love Canada; We have visited in Toronto few times and once from there to Niagara falls on the Canadian side.
Happy travel and blogging. Matti.
Hey there, Matti:
Thank you, thank you for this encouragement. Definitely, we’ll want to hire a car and proceed further.
Glad to see you have made it into Toronto and Niagara Falls.
Take care … 🙂