Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 06/99) - Since the Northwest Territories and Nunavut cover vast tracts of land and include diverse people, it makes sense that there would be several different ways Northerners mark the end of summer.

The question of how people know that summer has ended is one that can be answered in many different ways.

In the south, Hay River elder Sarah Lamalice said it does not seem like summer is under way until Sept. 25 -- a date she has marked on her calendar.

"That is when the fish come to the shore and go into the creeks," the 69-year-old said.

"A lot of people put up the fish to dry for winter."

Drying fish as well as caribou and moose meat takes place late in the summer season because the weather is cooler and there are not so many flies.

Years ago, when Lamalice's 81-year-old husband Jim was a teenager, he travelled across the land from around Hay River to Buffalo Lake at the end of summer.

He would pack gear on the backs of dogs that would run across the land. Once at Buffalo Lake, he would continue to hunt and dry the meat.

Up in Gjoa Haven, there is scarcely a window of time that's long enough for meat to spoil in the open.

Gjoa Haven adult basic education teacher, Paulette Tymko, said that though she has lived in the community for five years, she went home to Edmonton for much of the past few months to see family and enjoy some warmer weather.

When she returned on Aug. 16, it was a return to cooler weather.

"Public school went in on Aug. 17, so that could be seen to be one end to summer," she said.

"But students don't start back here until Sept. 8."

Tymko said others in the community probably see the end of summer to be when the snow comes or when the barge makes its yearly visit around Sept. 7 or 8.

Caribou and muskox biologist, Nic Larter, said in Inuvik people usually think of summer as being June, July and August because that is when the growing season usually occurs.

This year there is a bit of a strange phenomenon.

Cool weather and lots of moisture throughout the summer season has meant the plants are still uniformly green.

"Whenever we've done work on Banks Island, if there's a moist fall then during the winter the quality of the food is a lot higher for the animals when they forage," Larter said.

The first wet snow of the season came Aug. 29, and Larter said the next night it went down below freezing to cement the reality that summer -- if Inuvik had one this year -- is over.