Opinion

Dear editor,

The legislative assembly resumed sitting on Wednesday afternoon, for the first time since residents of Yellowknife and much of the South Slave regions were allowed to return home.

Written by Jordan Abel, one of the six authors who came to town for Yellowknife’s very own Northwords Writers Festival, Empty Spaces is a fleshy, vulnerable novel that provides a poetic exploration of the natural world and our place in it.

This is being written to bring attention to a matter of concern that impacts a significant portion of the population in the NWT: people living with disabilities. This includes individuals with disabilities and families/caregivers of individuals with disabilities.

As I began my early morning workout, I noticed that more and more people are arriving before me (and I’m an early bird). It’s refreshing to see how many people put their health and wellness first, get up at the crack of dawn, and serve their bodies first before serving the world in whatever job they go to next.

Mushroom-shaped clouds with a helicopter carrying a water bucket dancing through them were the first sign that the NWT was in trouble.

So, while we were under evacuation, Jean and I were asked to provide support for members of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) staying at the River Cree Resort and Casino in Edmonton. So, we said, “Well, yaaaaa.”

We were given an order to leave Wednesday night to be out by Friday at noon, less than two days to evacuate the city, so a lot of people left in a hurry.

As I talk to more and more people about their evacuation experience, I am mostly hearing two kinds of stories. One kind of story is mostly a good one, and it goes kind of like this:

So my family and I are home. The house is still standing and everything was just as we left it. That was the biggest relief of all. We were thinking the worst when we pulled into our driveway and thankfully, our thinking the worst was merely an exercise.