"What Time You Get Up?"

I thought today was going to be my same usual routine: go to work, work on the recycling video, Ramen noodle lunch, come home, eat dinner, go to the gym, write the blog. Except for a few deviations from the plan (like mooching off the staff appreciation luncheon), the day went exactly as I thought it would... until I came home from the gym.

I was walking past the Youth Centre when I heard the shuffle of footsteps in the gravel from behind me. I whipped my head around to find a sheepish-looking Johnny creeping towards me from about thirty feet away.

"I try surprise you!" he said, giggling. "You going home?"

I responded that I was, and he invited me to go to the neighborhood playground. I asked him to wait outside my house so I could put my stuff down, but when I went back outside he had already taken off to play. Joey (the lady I am staying with) asked me to take a pot of water to the dog next door, so I headed over there before meeting Johnny at the playground.

Many people in Cambridge Bay have dogs, mostly huskies and labs. However, most are not treated as pets. Left outdoors on chains (even in the winter), these dogs are largely ignored. If you ask me, this is a form of animal cruelty. Joey takes care of the dog next door, feeding it and walking it occasionally. I would venture to say that the mistreatment of these animals stems from their use as sled dogs in the past. Not long ago, it was considered acceptable to beat the dogs, similar to the way one would whip a horse to make it go faster. At least that practice is no longer used!

A neighbor's dog chained to his doghouse

It was at the playground that I realized that there is something about a child that erases all the evils of the world. As I was running around trying to tag Johnny, I felt the warmth of his smile and thought that this is what I came to Cambridge Bay for. Johnny has an innocence about him; he does not recognize when other people are lying to him because he does not think them capable of doing so. He always wants to play, and more than anything else, he loves to ask questions...even if they are the same questions. He asked me four times today, "What time you get up?" : )

Johnny always smiles. Always. Well, except when he is around cats, which scare him to death. And I have never heard anything so joyous as the way he greets me each afternoon when the library opens. "HI ABBEY!" he shouts, grinning from ear to ear. Though they took me a while to get used to, I now look forward to his nightly phone calls, and daily phone calls to the Heritage Society, and walks home, and the dinners he invites himself to, because as Renee put it, "These kids need all the love they can get." I know that Johnny is going to be one of the people that I miss the most when I leave Cambridge Bay.

Johnny at the playground