So I lived for a little over 2 years in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories – a very unique, and in some ways, notorious place. I washed onto YK's desolate shores at a pretty dark time in my life. I had just experienced my first ever layoff a couple of months beforehand, and was wondering what was next, meanwhile, tending to my ever-deteriorating mother who I couldn't let know what had happened. I had no need to cause her further anxieties, and this was a problem that she would be powerless to fix, anyway. Along comes a distant job opportunity sent to me from a former colleague. I apply whimsically and before I know it I'm being actively entertained for a design job. Cut back to my mother who suddenly takes a steep turn for the worse and passes away during the week or so that I'm being interviewed. By the time I get the phone call that I've been offered the job, I've just wrapped up my mother's initial funeral arrangements. Two weeks later, November 15, 2006, I arrive in the perpetual darkness and cold of a typical Yellowknife winter, orphaned from my parents and friends and too scared to admit that I'm terrified of my first big move out of Ottawa.

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Jasmine, Karin, and Jenn at Crema Coffee on Dundas.

Got to photograph Alex Debogorski of Ice Road Truckers fame in Yellowknife for Up Here magazine — so far my only brand-name celebrity experience in photography. While my editor shot the shit with him, I set up two shoot-through umbrellas, one on either side of him, and fired away while he recounted any number of stories and tall tales. I shot him in a number of scenarios (including a few misfires in the actual cab of his truck that just made him look trapped) but the closer I had him against his truck the more control I seemed to have over the light. His garage was otherwise a little too cavernous to get an effective portrait.

Right next to the junkyard, living in a pretty tragic-looking shack was Charlie. He "does pots" at the Legion and is a self-proclaimed "puppy-maker" (just make it vulgar and you'll get it). Jason was paying him a visit. He chops wood for Charlie, does a few odd jobs for him, and today was there to give Charlie a buzz-cut. It was kind of sweet, actually. I had not intended to photograph these guys, but they were pretty hospitable so the junkyard could wait.