When he shattered his arm, his Yukon roadtrip came to a crashing halt. But then the whole territory, it seemed, lifted a hand to help out. By Peter Jickling
It was late September, and I was fired up about my impending trip to Beaver Creek. The Yukon’s westernmost village was to be the first stop in a staggering roadtrip. I’d gotten a gig with the Yukon Bureau of Statistics for which I would be conducting surveys in every Yukon community. It would be, I told myself, a “quintessential Northern experience.”
The morning I was to leave, I awoke to a skim of snow covering Whitehorse. It was the type of early-season dusting you don’t worry about: You know it’ll melt, so instead of mourning the end of autumn you appreciate the change of scenery. With my bags packed and Beaver Creek beckoning, I stepped out into the newly whitened world. Immediately, I slipped on the snow, fell down the stairs and broke my arm.
I was rushed to Whitehorse General Hospital in a state of panic, but gradually, as the drugs kicked in and the pain in my arm subsided, a bigger pain took over: I was not going to Beaver Creek, nor Ross River, nor Faro. My Yukon experience was not to be.
The bone I’d shattered was my humerus. It’s a nasty break, for an obvious reason -- it’s huge – but also for a less obvious reason: It brings out the comedian in folks. About a dozen people said to me, “That doesn’t sound at all humorous.” Hilarious.
At first, of course, I was in a rotten mood. Friends and family did their best to help me out and cheer me up. Lunches were delivered to me, homemade baking would mysteriously appear on my doorstep, and, of course, pillows were fluffed at my command. These compassionate gestures were met with varying degrees of gratitude.
Eventually, however, all this goodwill sparked a realization. It wasn’t just that people were concerned about me, it was that they were eager to fulfill their end of a Yukon bargain. As Northerners, we sign up for a particular social contract -- a result of living in a place so beautiful and yet so harsh. We take care of each other because we need to. The impulse that kept me stuffed with muffins was the same impulse that causes drivers to stop on a Northern highway when another traveller is in need. It goes, quite literally, with the territory.
Three weeks after the initial break, I went back to the hospital for x-rays. My arm had been in a hanging cast designed to keep the bone in place, but it didn’t work. It became obvious I’d need surgery. My surgeon was the same doc who’d delivered me into the world 28 years earlier. After the operation, I spent two days recovering in the hospital. One of the attending nurses was a good friend from high school. Two of the other nurses had been on a canoe trip with me earlier that summer.
I was struck by another Yukon truism: The connections we form in such a tight-knit place are deep, meaningful and surprising. The people you drink beer with on Friday night might be the same people keeping you dosed with intravenous opiates on Tuesday morning.
It’s our unique social code and the deeply-entrenched nature of our connections that make Northern Canada such a special place to live. As Whitehorse becomes increasingly cluttered with box stores and chain restaurants, it’s easy to forget that such codes and connections exist. But they do. In my case, it took a dramatic fall to remind myself of it.
And ironically, though my incapacitation deprived me of one quintessential Northern experience, it supplied me with another. In time, even I began to regard my situation as, well, humorous.
