The New Year

Little Buffalo Falls

Well, the New Year also brought up a special visitor to come spend time with me and enjoy and explore what the North has to offer. Heather came up for a week and a half and rang in the new years in true Canadian style: in the trailer park. We were also able to go for a little hike with some of my friends outside of town and checkout the Northern Life Museum, which is home to the ever-so-popular stuffed Wood-Buffalo. It sure was nice to have company up here, although I was working for the greater majority of the time.

Myself, Heather, Andrea, Sunny, Troys Grandma & Troy
Troy, Andrea and Sunny (missing Adam in the picture) were the people I stayed with in November

"It feels like summer" is what I was told as I was greeting passengers arriving from Yellowknife last week (no, not Heather - Although I'm sure it felt like summer to her). I chuckled to myself before I realized it actually isn't all that bad here.

Sure feels like summer!

The temperature has been hanging around - 15C for the past few weeks, which has become quite comfortable, compared to Yellowknife which has been sitting somewhere close to -30C. So far it has been quite a mild winter here in Fort Smith when the weather should be very similar to that of Yellowknife. I've also noticed that other places in the north are a lot warmer than usual: Iqaluit has been above 0 for the most part of the fall and winter, there is barely any snow right now, not to mention Frobisher Bay is not even frozen.


I figured I'd share this picture above which is of my roommate, Thomas doing the fuel dips. On a daily basis, one of our tasks is to dip the fuel tanks levels and do fuel quality tests. We need to keep track of their levels, ensuring we never run out and ensure that there is no foreign debris or water going into the aircrafts fuel tanks, which could lead to catastrophic problems.

Up here in for Smith we have 3 tanks of Jet A Fuel and 2 Tanks of 100 Low-Lead General Aviation Gas holding 105,000L and 75,000L respectively. Throughout the winter, we do not use or sell AVGas all that much as it is primarily used to fill up our Cessna singles and the Water Bombers in the summer; however, we can use anywhere between 2000 - 6000L of Jet A fuel on a daily basis. One of the many reasons why we need to know how much is in each tank at all times.