Paying Dues

I've joked about working up in a camp for a couple of years now, never really sure how serious I was. However, the more money we spent in Europe the more it started looking like the best option, so when Genevieve's parents offered up their basement in Edmonton for a year that was kind of the catalyst. I've never liked Edmonton, I don't enjoy the cold, and working in a camp sounded like hell to me, but the idea of a new challenge after our year in London coupled with the ability to make twice as much money with half as many bills was enough to send us to the frozen north.

I knew a bunch of people who were working or have worked up north and got plenty of advice and companies to try, but when it came to getting a job it ended up being as simple as emailing about a dozen postings I found online and picking the offer I liked best. It's a workers market right now, which was really nice. The idea of working in a uranium mine in the middle of nowhere northern Saskatchewan was scary, but the money was better than anything in Fort McMurray, and it was 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, which is pretty sweet. Turns out I much prefer the 15 degrees it is underground to the -40 it is above, so that was a real bonus I hadn't planned on.

I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I left. The information I was given was pretty well useless. I packed all kinds of winter gear I wasn't sure if I'd need, because I sure as hell didn't want to be unprepared. The address they gave me for the small private hangar near the Edmonton Airport was bogus, so finding that place took some time. That whole first day, flying out of Edmonton on a tiny propeller plane over 2 hours of flat frozen nothingness and landing in this dirty oasis, I was completely out of my element. It was a trip.

It's a little hard to explain what this place is like, I think in a way it's exactly how you would imagine it and completely different at the same time. It's a collage of shitty temporary buildings scattered on the tundra around a couple small towers that stand over shafts that lead to another world half a kilometer down. There's one permanent building where the kitchen, gym, some administrative rooms and some residences for permanent staff are. The rest of the place is a mess of Atco portable modules. The camp I'm in is about 40 years old, was moved here a few years ago and will likely crumble into the ground where it stands. The rooms are dirty, the walls are paper thin and the bathrooms are disgusting. The duct from the furnace goes through every room, so snores, farts and coughs flow freely throughout the place. There's also a lot of pigs here with little respect for the place or other peoples comfort, which can be frustrating. Anyone who has backpacked Europe, it is far worse than any hostel I have ever seen. Far worse.

The people up here are a mix, many seem relatively normal, like I would consider myself. Others seem to be the exact amount of fucked you would expect from a life long camp worker. There are just as many met expectations as there are surprises up here. A surprise I should have expected was the number of natives working here. Probably around a third are Saskatchewan locals from the nearby (1000km radius) area. Makes sense when an employer this size opens up shop, and it's really good to see so many working hard and making a decent living. I just hope anyone whose job affects my safety is here because they're the best at what they do. I also hadn't expected to see so many women, around 1 in 10. There's a lot of work being done here besides the trades underground, if you don't like your office you should see these ones. It'd be a strange place to be a woman. There are a lot of people working here from all over Canada, it's not quite like meeting people from all over the world when traveling, but it has been really cool to learn more about other cities and provinces. Newfie accents are always a treat too.

The food here is alright, I'd heard camp food was pretty good, and I'm told this is some of the best. I wouldn't rave about it, but there's always choice and it's rarely gross. It does take effort to have reasonable portions and some healthy options when you have the choice to eat all the fried unhealthy junk you want every day. The Christmas and New Year's dinners were quite a treat, almost enough to forget where you were for a minute. There's a nice gym that some of the guys play ball hockey in once in a while, which has been a lot of fun. Really puts to shame how rarely we played back home considering here we're working 12 hours every day. It's not easy on the body, but it's good to do something other than work, eat and sleep once in a while.

The first time I was squeezed in the cage with 20 other guys to descend 500m of darkness to the mine is something I won't forget. There's no rails except where you stop, so the cage lowers on cables in silence, swaying side to side, water dripping all around. It's eery. The mine itself is more open than I expected. The passageways are wide enough for full sized scoops to race up and down with buckets of rock and mud. There are many open areas, where I do most of my work, that will house all the various equipment and machinery when the mine is operational. Some of these areas are quite large, it's amazing to think that every bit of rock went up that small shaft, and every piece of equipment came down it. All the heavy machinery and lifts would have to have been taken completely apart and reassembled. There are 2 levels to the mine, and I would guess around 50 km of tunnels. An experienced miner told us it was a small mine in a world sense. I never want to be an experienced miner. It's dark, dirty, noisy, and the air quality isn't too great. Some of these guys are hacking up a lung all the time. I don't want that. When I'm involved in a task it starts to feel like a relatively normal place, but if I go for a walk down a quiet dark corridor with no one around and start thinking about everything in between me and the surface it can be a little scary. For now though, it's interesting to see, and it's damn nice to be warm. It's still cold enough to see my breath, but it's perfect to work in. I still spend around half an hour a day walking between various buildings on the surface, which is plenty. I'm some glad I'm not out working in that. I felt my face and eyes literally freezing on my -49 wind chilled walk last night. Interesting to go through a 90 degree change in about a month, from 45 degrees in Sicily to -45 here.

This is my first industrial job, and the first large company I've worked for. It is a huge difference from the commercial environment I'm used to. There, profit margins are small, and productivity has to be high. Things get done by any means necessary. Here, safety is key. I had 3 days of orientation before even going underground, and everything we do is documented and reviewed and signed off on. Some of it seems like bullshit, some of it seems like good habits to make, all of it is new to me. A big part of my day is spent on paperwork and formalities, things get done much slower here. I'm told the oil industry is the same. I've never worried about my job before, but there are no second chances here. There's too many people for the one's in charge to even know if you're particularly good and worth keeping, so if you make a mistake with a safety rule you're gone. Seen it a few times already.

Staying healthy is going to be difficult here, I've gotten sick the last two times. There's always something going around, and there's so many people living so close together. I also got a couple random nosebleeds last time, apparently they can be caused by cold, dry air. Being from a rainforest I guess my nose wasn't prepared. I gotta say, when somewhere is so cold that your head starts spontaneously bleeding, that might be your body saying 'it's too fucking cold for human beings here!'

There are few good things about being here, and the money is really the only one that matters, especially not spending a dime for two weeks. But the other is the wildlife. I've seen lots of snow grouse, and a few timber wolves, which are massive. Bear season is coming too. My favorite are the foxes though, I've seen them about 10 times now, sometimes 2 of them playing in the snow, other times one will walk within a few feet of me, just checking me out. Fox days are good days. Even the tiny arctic trees are kinda cool, and all the frozen lakes from the plane. I'm patiently waiting to see the northern lights too, been checking the space weather site for solar storms, nothin' yet.

It's funny to work a rotation like this. The couple days leading up to work feel like the ultimate Sunday drag, day 7 is the ultimate hump day, and the days before leaving are like you're going on vacation. It's hard to be up here and working like this, but it's also nice to be able to plan things for the time off without interrupting work or pay. The frustration of something lining up with work (like Tragically Hip tickets we bought months ago) is offset by the joy of something lining up with time at home (like all three Canucks games in Edmonton).

When I say home, I guess I mean Edmonton, but that's another thought.