Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 28/99) - The barbecue is the quintessential symbol of summer for Canadians.

In the North -- when summer does finally arrive -- most Northerners are loading the briquettes the moment wearing shorts and T-shirts becomes the least bit tolerable.

Getting the most out of our short summers becomes the top of our priority list and sometimes, in our rush to enjoy our barbecues with what little time there is to do so, a minor disaster strikes -- or at least something just as silly.

For this week's Northern Lights, we asked several of our Northern readers to share their barbecuing experiences.

For Debby Brown from Fort Simpson, barbecuing does not make the heart grow fonder.

"I remember my honeymoon," confided Brown, "We had a barbecue by our camper and when we went inside, I guess the awning was too close to it and it caught on fire."

"We're divorced now," Brown added.

Oops! What a way to extinguish the flames of passion. Maybe they should have had coldcuts for dinner.

Jill Melanson, in Iqaluit, figured that they would have some good barbecuing weather at least by Canada Day. Well, guess again.

"It was July 1 and we were having a big party with a barbecue," Melanson said. "Then we had a blizzard and everybody had to move inside. We made the best of it."

Melanson is not the only one who has had to deal with the unpredictability of a High Arctic summer. Dave Armstrong in Inuvik is another person who feels one should take summer in the North with a grain of salt, or is that ice?

"When we're barbecuing, the funniest is thing is when the steak is nice and toasty on the bottom and still frozen on the top," Armstrong said. "Then the bugs come out and you end up taking home a frozen, well-done T-bone."

Judy Cherniak, vice-principal for Kilinik high school in Cambridge Bay, noticed that some of the students had more than a barbecue on their minds when the school was having their annual end of the year feast this year.

"We had some students lying in wait for the teachers with water pistols and water balloons," Cherniak said., "They had more ammo than us, but we were ready for them. We had a water fight and we were brave and we endured. We think it will be an annual tradition from now on."

With so many new barbecue recipes out there, it was only a matter of time before someone thought of a way of barbecuing Kraft Dinner. A friend of Cliff Kimble, in Enterprise, did just that.

"I'm a big Kraft Dinner nut," Kimble said. "A buddy of mine at a community barbecue knew this and made some Kraft Dinner with barbecue sauce in tin foil."

How was it?

"It wasn't my greatest Kraft Dinner experience," replied Kimble, "but everyone got a chuckle out of it. They were calling me the Kraft Dinner kid."

Kraft Dinner kid? Maybe he should try out for a role in a spaghetti western.