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| Breakfast / Briefing |
Saturday, September 12 felt like the previous Saturday
with overcast clouds, but there were no strong winds. The staff & cadets of 3045 Army Cadet
Corps would be able to complete its community service requirement by cleaning
up the shoreline behind the airport. (The
event was originally scheduled for September 5th, but had to be postponed
due to bad weather). Performing
community service in cadets fits into citizenship training.
The corps took
on this project two years ago and it’s very likely that we will be revisiting
that area for many years to come. The
shoreline I speak of is located about 8km south of Arctic Bay and it becomes
littered with garbage of all sorts during the summer. When the ice in the bay melts, any garbage or
loose items that have been left there are carried by the current to that
southern shoreline. It makes the area
unattractive and dangerous for arctic wildlife.
That area is a bird sanctuary.
The staff and cadets assembled at the Uquutaq
Centre (Anglican church) in the early morning for breakfast and a
briefing. I arrived wearing my cadpat
combat attire – I was representing the Canadian Armed Forces. Everyone was fed delicious egg muffins with
ham & juice boxes. The briefing was
short & to the point – “We’re going!”
The cadets piled into the back of a pickup truck and were driven to the
airport. Another pickup truck was used
to bring garbage bags, a tent, and lunch meals.
Two atvs with attached trailers were also brought along to assist in
collecting all the filled garbage bags and any large items (wood, bicycles,
rubber tires, etc).
Two senior cadets transported most of the cadets, meals,
and necessary equipment to the shoreline using the atvs and trailers. I was with the group that chose to walk
around the airport towards the shoreline.
Upon arrival, the cadets unloaded all the supplies and set up the white
McPherson tent. When the tent was
pitched, a cadet was placed in charge of boiling water on a Coleman stove so
that everyone could mix it with hot chocolate powder in a mug.
The cadets were divided into two groups. One group was given the shoreline heading
towards Arctic Bay, and the other group was assigned the southern shoreline. Garbage bags, as well as gloves, were handed
out. I led the first group. The commanding officer of the cadet corps
would roam between the groups and the camp site, making sure everyone was
working.
I watched where I stepped because I didn’t want to dirty
my uniform. There is a lot of seaweed
along the shoreline and it does smell in certain places. It always amazes me to see how much garbage
is found in this area, from small pop cans to large rubber tires. Even wood from sealift crates wash up on
shore. We picked up so many different
things that day. Toys, tricycles,
shirts, shoes, chip bags, Rubbermaid containers, plastic bags, plastic food
containers, motor oil bottles, soccer balls, the list goes on. It was really helpful when the sun came out
from behind the clouds because the sunlight reflected off all the plastic
wrappers on the ground. We collected
enough pieces of wood for a very large bonfire.
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| Loading the ATV. |
The shoreline began to look cleaner and “greener” after
several hours of hard work. The atv
drivers were kept busy, driving between groups, picking up garbage bags and
wood, and driving them back to the staging area. The discarded wood pieces were piled up in
one spot while the garbage bags were loaded onto the pickup trucks.
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| Staging Area |
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| Lunch time! |
We gave the cadets a hot chocolate break and a lunch
break. The lunch meals were
American-made Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs).
The meals come packaged in aluminum pouches inside cardboard boxes. The main courses need to be removed from the boxes
and cooked in hot water. MREs aren’t as
good as the Canadian-made Individual Meal Packages (IMPs) but they’ll satisfy
your hunger for some time.
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| A cleaner shoreline. |
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| (Photo taken by Clare Kines). |
We finished cleaning up the area at around 3pm. Unfortunately, there was still plenty of
garbage along the shoreline towards Arctic Bay but we were all tired. That area would have to be cleaned on another
day. We posed for photographs in front
of the large wood pile we created.
Everyone agreed that there would be plenty of wood to burn during the
weekend Field Training Exercise (more on this in a future post). The commanding officer debriefed the cadets
on a job well done and spoke about the reasoning behind their community
service.
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| Debriefing |
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| I can't believe we found an abandoned qamutik. |
The tent was
taken down and was packed into a trailer, along with other materials. Several cadets hopped on the back of trailer
and were driven back to the pickup trucks, while others walked back. Those walking back had to navigate around
large mud puddles. Everyone was home by
4pm.
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| Staff & volunteers. (Photo taken by Clare Kines). |
The beach
cleanup was a success and the shoreline was clean for another year. It would be nice if that area didn’t become
littered with garbage every year, but as long as the community suffers from a
lack of will to keep garbage off the ground, this will always be the outcome. (Littering, as we all know, is a problem
everywhere in the world. Turning a blind
eye won’t make the problem go away).
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| Arctic Bay. September 12, 2015 |
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