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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
At an age when many children learn to skip rope or experiment with a yo-yo for the first time, one of Kourtni Rhae-ann Beaulieu's favourite toys is a four-foot-long snake whip.

Kourtni Rhae-ann Beaulieu, 6, spins a four-foot-long snake whip above her head before slicing the air with a snap of her arm near Rat Lake earlier this month. Her dad, Samuel Bourget, braided the white nylon whip by hand last month. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

Brow furrowed and lips pursed, the six-year-old twirls the braided nylon into a loop the size of a basketball hoop, then, without flinching, snaps her elbow and cuts the air with a sharp, whistling swish.

"I never cracked the whip (yet)," she said while enjoying her hobby alongside her dad, Samuel Bourget, last week.

On most Sunday afternoons, the pair practise whip skills together at Tin Can Hill. As Beaulieu snaps her snake whip, five metres away Bourget simultaneously cracks a pair of six-foot-long black bullwhips above his head, one in each hand.

Bourget's duel-whip cracks explode like firecrackers. The sound echoes across Rat Lake, Beaulieu boasts.

"It bounces off a rock and comes back," she explained.

Bourget handcrafted the three whips after reading a few books and doing research on YouTube and other websites.

"I went to Canadian Tire, found some para cord and a little ball chain to give it some weight, and then I went home and started braiding it together," he said. "I've always liked things I can make myself. I'll be in a store and see something and I say, 'I can make that myself, why would I buy it?'"

It took Bourget three days in August to braid his daughter's white snake whip.

"It was a lot of fun seeing things come together as you're making them," he said.

He built his two black bullwhips earlier this month using a mix of thin nylon, ball chain, and lots of hockey tape. It takes him about an hour to wrap each bullwhip, he said.

"My dad had whips way back, so I grew up with the idea of whips but never had the chance to crack one," Bourget said, referring to his early childhood in the eastern Arctic with his father, Raymond Bourget.

The elder Bourget, who moved to the prairies in 2010 after retiring as a senior wildlife officer with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Yellowknife, kept a dog team in Baker Lake when his son was not much younger than Beaulieu is today.

"Dad's whip was 20-feet long," Samuel recalled.

Samuel's dad didn't teach him to crack a whip, but he let him use his bow and hunt with a rifle. Samuel said he got his first caribou at age 10 while living in Rankin Inlet, a few years before his family moved to Yellowknife.

Samuel and his daughter practise archery on most Saturday afternoons by aiming at an orange target they set up at isolated spots along the Ingraham Trail. Samuel bought Beaulieu her own recurve bow this summer.

Eventually, Samuel wants to become accurate enough to bow hunt.

"Give me the whip dad," Beaulieu said, interrupting Samuel's Yellowknifer interview with an outstretched hand.

"You want to use the bullwhip?" he asked.

She nodded rapidly.

"'Please,'" he said.

"Pleeease," she replied.

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