“Half the country doesn’t even know what a Yellowknife is, and the other half thinks it’s Whitehorse.”
Raincouver Vancouver to the Territories
Location Vancouver International Airport
Time March 2006
Just a job so I could take photos of planes
The inner circle play
It wasn't anything more, or anything less. I didn’t have an affinity for getting hot and sweaty inside a cramped space with no ventilation stacking a hundred 32kg suitcases in record time.
It was just a job to give me airside access so I could photograph airplanes from inside the secured area, which sounded infinitely better than standing on a stepladder leaning over barbed wire fences holding a telephoto lens that resembled canon, constantly answering to security guards about what exactly I was doing again.
Close, but not yet
I didn't want to be a pilot. Although that's not quite true. I didn't want the $100,000 debt to become a commercial pilot in 15 years, if I was lucky.
I had a much greater interest in air traffic control though, and I do to this day. The greatest thrill of a familiarization flight I took for my 18th birthday was getting to speak directly with air traffic control over the radio. Apparently my experience from sitting around listening to a scanner all day showed, too.
Unfortunately, my math and reading comprehension proved costly during the Nav Canada ATC application test some months later.
But anyway, playing real life tetris with 32kg suitcases also came with the benefit of standby travel.
Location Stamdsund, Norway
Time March 2007
The aurora chase that was never supposed to be
“Canada! Northern light!”
Arriving into northern Norway by Hurtigruten, I accidentally stumble into the northern lights when the host of my hostel (knowing my nationality, but not my name) yells for me while running up the stairs to my room. He immediately ushers me outside to the wharf in front of the hostel where the entire sky was a green dance.
Here begins the love affair of a lifetime.
Location Å i Lofoten, Norway
Time December 2007
Everything’s perfect in the dead of winter
In a quieter than you can imagine fishing village at the very southern tip of the Lofoten Islands, myself and a couple from Australia watched the fireworks at 12:03am on the 1st of January 2008 as a celebration of the new year. The northern lights arced quietly over the surrounding mountains too.
A wonderful management team back at the airport again allowed me to quietly quit/leave my job for another couple months, still with my flight benefits. I just wanted the darkest, quietest winter days with the cosiest winter nights at guesthouses.
Location ICEHOTEL - Jukkäsjärvi, Sweden
Time January 2008
The ongoing love affair with Scandinavian winters
Nothing felt more perfect than returning for the second consecutive year to the ICEHOTEL in Lapland.
The temperature inside the hotel was a positively balmy -5°, compared to the -27° it was outside where we one night snowmobiled to a cabin in the forest for dinner and aurora viewing.
Location Tromsø, Norway
Time February 2010
The “aha!” moment
When the Olympics came to Vancouver, and the world was flying in, a 36 hour stand-by travel journey out was my dream. From a chance meeting back in 2007 while I was staying a few nights in Tromsø, Kjetil invited me to stay with he and his family these couple weeks. We chased the lights overnight, watched Olympic hockey at 4am back home and enjoyed afternoon drives through the countryside.
If there's one place in the world I feel more attached to than any other, it's Tromsø. And if there's one person I feel more indebted to than anyone else, it's Kjetil.
What I knew, and grew to know more of, about the aurora was because of Kjetil. The love of chasing the lights, photographing them, sharing them with others, and driving through winter storms all for them, is because of him. It is a debt I will never be able to repay, and a gratitude I will never be able to properly express.
Location Fort Nelson, British Columbia
Time April 2010
Everyone is a little bit of crazy
It could be argued that these were two very unlikely sources of happiness - Central Mountain Air & Fort Nelson, BC.
The Fort Nelson taxi drivers from the airport invariably thought I was out of my mind coming here to try to see the northern lights. But a $1 standby flight to northern British Columbia and a little bit of luck during solar storms provided a few memorable nights in this sleepy town.
These years, empty seats on flights north with simultaneous clear skies was the greatest synchronicity in all of the known universe.
Location YVR-YEG-YZF
Time February 2011
Literally just the furthest north on Westjet’s route map
“Good morning, ladies and gentleman, and thank you for waiting. This is a general boarding call for Westjet flight 108 with service to Edmonton and onward to Yellowknife.”
Routine
Between 2011 and 2013, I kept track of the dates of all 25 trips along with the exact aircraft I flew. I’ve kept every single boarding pass. Every piece of winter clothing, including massive Baffin boots, somehow found a home in a 21” carry-on suitcase. This flight had become my religion.
Chai lattes from the Starbucks at the Vancouver International Airport ‘A’ gates eased the pain of such early mornings. Sunrises over the rocky mountains from 38,000 feet became regular but never uninteresting. Window seats were somehow always granted, even on standby.
Not free from heartbreak
Some trips, flights became full while I was already enroute. Many flights were missed, nights were spent in Edmonton Airport, and travel plans became very messy.
Not every trip was fruit bearing; forecasts were fickle. Despite my ingenuity of keeping a dozen different weather apps on my phone for some strong confirmation bias, ‘clear’ turned out not always to be true.
Back home in my little studio apartment, many late nights were spent with entire pots of tea in front of AuroraMax on my computer. Waves of anxiety would regularly wash over my body at the intense longing for the aurora.
It was the luckiest few years of my life, and the years of my life that forever changed my life.
Location Vancouver, British Columbia
Time 2013 - 2014
All-nighters a five minute drive from my old apartment
A lime green car named Aurora and license plate frame reaffirming my wish to be in the Northwest Territories. These were the most difficult years since my discovery of the aurora. It had never felt further away, and these few years in Vancouver left a lot of longing for the north, but occasionally my favourite part-of-the-whole would venture down to say hi. These were all-nighters I could never pass up.
Location Iceland
Time Cutting it close to the Yellowknife move (October 2014)
Necessary closure and the undying retirement dream
Why stand pat on savings for the downpayment of my dream home in Yellowknife when I could blow through it over five weeks in one of the world’s most expensive countries? Because I just couldn't help myself from it. So for the second time in a year and a half, I found myself lightly chasing the lights through the land of fire and ice, but this was a time for healing, making peace, and as luck would have it, unexpected inspiration for what was coming next.
Location Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Time May 2015 - April 2022
The no experience guesthouse host beginning the most terrifying years of my life
Sean's Guesthouse was the furthest thing from easy or a straight forward journey, and if I told you the long version, you’d never believe it.
It was, though, why after living the first 28 years of my life in the same one square kilometre of Richmond, BC, I was moving 2,300 kilometres north.
It was my first mortgage, and I planned (read: didn't have a choice) to pay every penny of everything from having guests stay in my home with me, and hopefully join me aurora chasing - since I knew I would be going out every night anyway, as long as I could afford the gas somehow.
And somehow in all of this madness, you found me and came to love and support me beyond anything I could have ever imagined or hoped for.
These years in Yellowknife, even the final 2 of being forcibly closed during COVID-19, were the most special years of my life. I lived my dream, one I had for nearly a decade before the full realization of it. Chasing the aurora as my career, learning so much about all of this, and sharing every moment of it with all with you has been the best experience of my life and one that will live forever with me deep in my heart.
The closest people in my life today I met through my guesthouse and aurora chases while in Yellowknife, and for this I will never, ever, ever be able to express my love and appreciation.
You gave me the experience of my life through 7 of the fullest years of being in way over my head running my guesthouse and aurora chases, and I owe you all a lifetime of gratitude for it.
Location Yellowknife, NWT -> Whitehorse, Yukon
Time April 2022
Leaving it all behind to begin again
Leaving the Northwest Territories was never something I even entertained. For over a decade, it was the life I wanted more than anything else in the world. But that life and that love was being ripped out of my chest by a 2 year lockdown and border closure against anyone wishing to travel to the territory. Lie after lie about re-opening and 2 101 weeks to flatten the curve save the healthcare system despite over 90% of residents being fully vaccinated by spring 2021 had finally crushed my soul and ability to just “hang in there” - all of emotionally, mentally, and financially. I was drowning.
The end was all but written in concrete.
"Well it was actually my mum who said 'Why don't you look at Whitehorse, just to take your mind off this, as a distraction for a while.'"
During what was, with absolute certainty, the darkest, most depressing, and awful months of my life around November 2021, I began daydreaming of Whitehorse.
Four months later, I had signed a purchase agreement for an apartment in Whitehorse. Just weeks after that, my very first home, which had been with me for years before even moving into it, which I loved so, so much, was unconditionally sold to someone else and our days together were officially numbered.
For the first time in years, I felt peaceful. I was no longer crippled with worry and anxiety. Nights of cold sweats became fewer and breathing was easier again.
I will forever love that home, but I needed to go.
The story of the end of Yellowknife for me is as much an emotional and mental one as it was a financial one.
"I think it's the right decision. You never know. Sometimes the things you give up, you can't get back."
Location Whitehorse, Yukon
Time August 2022
The true meaning of beginning again
After a summer falling in love with long rainforest walks and cosy, cosy nights curled up with family, I was finally ready to head back to the north, just a thousand or two kilometres further west this time. I had my car packed with house plants, summer clothes, a few IKEA goodies acquired over the summer months, and of course my camera. And I was off, on a slow, scenic route north, taking more time on a road trip than I ever had.
I lovingly took every opportunity to pull off the sides of highways to admire wildlife, mountain vistas, and rainbows and other dramatic weather and scenery. I settled into cosy accommodation while it was still light out, took the time for country road walks, deep breaths, and delicious take-away dinners. It was symbolic of the new life I wanted - one that was slower, more conscious, and with more every moment enjoyment.
And then, everything changed, again. Or life was just completing the change I had been seeking so desperately.
Between 2020 and 2022, life moved in slow motion. Loss of my business, the social connection it carried, a long term relationship, the love for a city I once cherished more than anything in the world, and finally my first home, made me feel as though my entire life was just going up in flames and everything I knew was going to be gone.
And then on August 18th, 10 days after I had arrived in Whitehorse to begin completely again, anything I had left was literally going up in flames. The moving company’s truck with a trailer full of my belongings from Yellowknife - everything I had packed for Whitehorse, everything from parkas to guestbooks - was in a ditch, on fire, 45 minutes from Whitehorse.
"If you don’t laugh, you’ll just cry (even more)."
I spent days sitting in my brand new, very empty apartment admiring the events that just took place. I was completely astonished. After years of feeling like my entire life was going up in flames and I was losing everything, this was all just surreal.
But so, life began again. The loss of things were mourned, and new things continue to replace them. I’ve fallen in love with the Yukon in a way I had never anticipated, and I’m more in love with the aurora and the north than I ever have been in my life …a couple of things that can never go up in flames, although I probably shouldn’t tempt the universe at this point.
