DEH CHO
This year's morel season brought much lower prices than expected, but a few businesses and communities still managed to benefit from the wave of new pickers who flooded into the territory.

As the season starts winding down, the team leader at the Big River Service Centre, about five kilometres from Fort Providence, said the morels brought hundreds of people through his business during this year's picking season.

"Any opportunity that brings people to the North has to be good for business," said Chris Mitchell.

With a restaurant, convenience store, bar, beer shop, campground as well as free wireless Internet, Mitchell said many pickers would come to refuel, grab supplies and update their social media pages. He estimated the extra traffic from the 300 to 500 pickers coming through the area resulted in a 10 to 15 per cent boost in business.

Brendan Matthews, of the new business Arctic Morels, said this season exceeded his expectations. With prices around $7 per pound for fresh morels, Matthew's company switched to buying, drying and distribution more than picking. He couldn't specify how many pounds they had purchased so far beyond "thousands" and "it's a lot."

For the community of Kakisa, the influx of morel pickers in to the area was a chance for the community to show off their hospitality and local way of life. Chief Lloyd Chicot said beginning in May, people started coming to Kakisa due to the advertising done by the GNWT.

"Many of them came without much money," he said.

Chicot said the first group of mushroom pickers actually showed up during a community meeting.

Residents in Kakisa held two barbeques for the pickers, with duck soup, three kinds of fish, as well as beaver and moose meat.

"It was good for them to experience it for themselves," Chicot said, estimating there were about 120 to 150 extra visitors to the community because of the mushrooms. The Kakisa chief said there were pickers from Australia, Quebec, a few from Spain, two from England, British Columbia and First Nations from Alberta.

Chicot said many of the pickers came too early and the mushrooms near Kakisa didn't start growing until a few weeks ago. But Chicot said there was definitely local involvement in the influx of rookies this year: half of the residents in Kakisa participated in picking as well, including Chicot and his wife.

For Matthews, the best harvest seemed to have been this month due to an accumulation of experience and better knowledge of buyers' expectations.

"The rookie pickers have learned the game," he said with a laugh, "And 80 per cent of the people down south have packed up, left and missed the boat."

By the end of the first week of July, Arctic Morels saw many big, blond morels, some as weighing as much as half a pound. "It was half the size of a football," Matthews said, estimating that at that point pickers were bringing in 50 to 100 pounds after a full day of being out.

At Big River, Mitchell said he did notice that as the season progressed, pickers would spend more money on things such as bigger meals at the restaurant.

Overall, Chicot said the morel season was a good thing to raise awareness about life in Kakisa, especially after the large fires that occurred last year.

"Hopefully. they carried on that message."

While there was an instance of theft at Big River, Mitchell said that wasn't unexpected with such a large group of people.

"When you get that many people from around the world, you're always going to have bad apples," he said.

Mitchell hopes the experience of this year's group of morel pickers will encourage more people to come up next year or the year after. He said he'd especially recommend mushroom picking to university students as a way to see the North and earn a little bit of money for the school year.

"That way they get to maintain their freedom and they don't have to work for 'The Man'," he said, "You know, before life changes and they grow up."

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