The Arctic Post

Today Calm Air hosted their “bring a traditional christmas feast to…..Chesterfield Inlet”. I guess this is a tradition they’ve done for the past nine years. They hold a lunch in a different community within the Kivalliq region. This year it was held here. About six/seven staff members from Calm Air flew into town yesterday to prepare, cook, serve and clean for the feast. The staff were from Thompson, Winnipeg and Baker Lake.

The Kivalliq region includes 7 communities: Whale Cove, Arviat, Rankin Inlet, Baker Lake, Chesterfield Inlet, Repulse Bay and Coral Harbour.

I heard they brought about 20 turkeys for this event. They asked a few people in the community to cook some of them. Etienne volunteered us to cook one. I decided to cook and carve it yesterday. For two reasons: first off, I haven’t cooked a turkey in many years and I didn’t want to mess it up this morning. Since I cooked it last night, if it needed longer than expected, I would have had the opportunity to continue to cook it. Second, today is my b-day and even though to me it really is just another day, it wasn’t a day that I wanted to get up at 4am to put a turkey in the oven!! Thankfully it turned out really well. It was still really juicy after we carved it up. Now i’m ready to cook one for guests! lol.

We arrived at the school this morning at about 10am to give them a hand. When we arrived they were already elbows deep in turkey, potatoes, corn, stuffing and gravy! Wow, they were an efficient and organized group! There really wasn’t much for us to help with. We kinda stood back and took pictures! lol. They had everything ready to go just before 11am. I’m impressed. They prepared enough for over 300 people. None of them even seemed stressed.

The school hosted the feast. They had it all decorated, tables set up with tablecloths and all. It looked really good. There was a great turn out. They estimated about 300 people attended. Afterwards they drew prizes. The big ticket item was round trip flights to anywhere that Calm Air Flies. They fly within the Kivallig region as well as Thompson, Churchill and Winnipeg.

There was still a lot of food left over. They have decided to freeze all the turkey and give it out with the Christmas hampers this year.

Below are a few pictures I took during the event.

Preparing the potatoes....

Carving all of the turkeys

lots and lots of turkey.....

Starting to take it all to the gymnasium

All decorated

Digging in. Elders eat first.

So many people

The Calm Air crew that did a fantastic job!!

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