By CATHERINE DOOK Our System John and I were ready to leave


Yellowknife. Dad swore our old Vandura had a radiator leak and the exhaust was like no other for offensive racket, and I’m sure he was right, but John was more worried about the solenoid and panicked every time he had to turn off the ignition, convinced he’d never start the van again.


Rupert was going to help drive as far


as Edmonton, where we’d drop him off. Te night before we leſt, John and I


had dinner with John’s children at the soon-to-close-down KFC in Yellowknife. John made a speech. “You are all


precious to me,” he said. “I love you all.” “But I’m the most precious of all, aren’t


I?” said Rupert. So John told the story about how an Inuit woman’s son was killed by a polar bear and she wanted to adopt Rupert but his parents wouldn’t give him to her. “Very touching story. You didn’t


give me away when I was born,” said Rupert. Ten he played ‘I spy’ with his


nephew Johnathon and niece Lily- Anne. Rupert won because Johnathon doesn’t know his colours. Tere had been so much rain I was


hoping there’d be no forest fires. I packed the van with an eye to the way John Darling corners. “Honey, there’s something called centrifugal force I think you should hear about,” I told him. We said goodbye to Mom and Dad and daughter Maggie, then we drove by Rupert’s place to pick him up. “How many hours to Hay River?” I


asked. 10 RVT 169 • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 Mom, me, Dad Rupert cheating at “I Spy”! He was playing with his niece Lily-Anne, and nephew Johnathon. “For me, five. For us, about eight and


a half,” Rupert replied. Ten we stopped at Tim Hortons on the way out of town for an extra-large steeped tea, double double, domed lid. Rupert is addicted. Rupert pulled onto the bumpy highway,


blue signs flashing past, sandhill cranes running into the bush, and one black bear cub by the side of the road, ears up and awkward, and a mushroom-picking hippie on a bicycle the Yellowknife side of Behchoko. Te sky was cloudy, it was cool and there was no traffic.


“I have to go to the bathroom,” I


complained. Not on my watch,” Rupert joked, and


then he pulled off the highway onto a little road overlooking a swampy lake. “View while you go,” he said, but I


pulled the curtains anyway. When I poked my head out of the van, Rupert gave me two small stones. “An arrowhead and a fossil,” he said, and I examined them closely. Te arrowhead was thin on one end and slightly thicker on the other, and it was about the right size. Te fossil was a faint swirl embedded on a flattish background – a breath, a hint of life that had lived before man ever stood on this shore. As I looked out over the water I felt young, and insignificant, and surrounded by a creation so beautiful it took the breath out of my mouth. I like old things. “Lucky for


me,” John jokes. Te skyline was ragged with


stands of burned-out trees. Te sky was bright with white clouds. It rained, and then the sun pushed aside the clouds and shone as if nothing had happened. At Fort Providence we gassed up. Tere was a sharp


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