_Canada: March 2008 Archives

Associate Editor Amy Alipio teaches us all how to mush...

When I was in Churchill, Manitoba, last October, I went on a dogsledding excursion run by Dave Daley of Wapusk Adventures, which gave us a tiny but thrilling taste of what it’s like to be pulled by a pack of dogs who love to run. As soon as we entered Daley’s yard, the dogs—sensing that they were going to be running soon—started leaping straight up into the air like they had rocket blasters under their paws.

But for the real, blood-sweat-and-tears version of dogsledding, there’s the annual Hudson Bay Quest. The HBQ, founded by Daley and friend Gerald Azure five years ago, is a 400-kilometer (248-mile) dog-sled race between Churchill and Arviat, in Nunavut. Designed as a test of self-sufficiency, racers must carry their own supplies and food for the duration of the race. This year, 20 mushers will set off March 29 with their dog teams across the frozen, often windy, and snowy tundra bordering Hudson Bay, prepared to face temperatures stuck in the minus 20s Fahrenheit. I spoke to Daley to get the lowdown before the race.

How is the Hudson Bay Quest different from other dog-sled races, like the famous Iditarod?

Well one thing is that we let the Inuit racers race with their traditional sleds and fan hitches. In a fan hitch, the dogs are each attached to the sled by their own line, in a fan formation. The more typical hitch system, used in the Iditarod and Yukon Quest races, is the gangline, where dogs are attached to one single line, usually in pairs.

What inspired you to found the race?

Living in a remote community, we do watch the famous dog-sled races, and we wanted to have our own Iditarod or Yukon Quest. I’m a Métis, and I saw it as a chance to get together the aboriginals of the north  and revitalize traditional northern dog sledding. It’s not as long a race as the Iditarod but it’s pretty grueling. Every year so far we’ve had a blizzard at some point during the race. When I started, there were four teams out of Nunavut; this year there are 12. A lot of guys that hadn’t raced in awhile are getting back into it, and young people, a new generation of dogsledders, have sprung up. This is our opportunity to showcase our northern racers, although we do invite teams from the south. We have a lot of repeat racers too. Every year the race has become more and more popular.

Everyone's got their eyes on this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing (and how one of the world's smoggiest cities will cope), but Vancouverites are already strategizing how to green their own Pacific city for the Winter Games in 2010. The city is planning to emphasize local employment, constructing the Richmond Oval's roof entirely out of British Columbia-sourced wood, and redeveloping a former industrial area, among many other sustainable initiatives.

My eyes are on the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Center (VCEC), which is expanding its 133,000-square-foot building to cover a total of 1.2 million square feet (that's four city blocks). The new LEED-certified building will feature a fish habitat, an on-site water treatment and seawater heating and cooling system, gray and black water recycling systems, as well as a six-acre "living roof," which will be home to 400,000 indigenous plants.

The VCEC's earth-savvy efforts [pdf] earned it one of Canada's first "Go Green" certificates, and they also will purchase "Green Power" certifications--electricity generated in British Columbia from sustainable sources. By the time the expansion is completed in 2009, the convention center will be one of the greenest convention centers in the world.

Sometimes bigger really is better. That's a gold medal in my book.

Photo: Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Center

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