The Word - Vol 77

North of 60

You would think it would be easy for golfers to get a tee time at midnight. Not if it’s the longest day of the year and you’re in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories! The longest day this year falls on June 20th. The sun never really sets on that day north of the 60th parallel, and the tee sheet will probably be packed for the 76th annual Midnight Classic. 

The Midnight Classic Golf Tournament was originally called the Midnight Marathon. Golfers teed off at midnight at the Yellowknife Golf Club and played as long as they could. In 1970, Sandy Hutchinson made club history with 171 holes of golf played during a 33.5-hour marathon. I guess with such a short playing season, Sandy wanted to get in as many holes as he could!

Why do I even mention this? Well, the longest day of the year is coming up in a few days and it brought back memories of playing in a Midnight Sun Tournament. I’m not quite sure of the year, although I am certain I flew on PWA to Yellowknife and PWA went out of business 35 years ago. Jeez, I'm getting old!

I had never been that far north before and I discovered there’s great pride to say that you live North of 60. That phrase refers to 60ºN latitude which is where Yellowknife is located. 

The longest day of the year north of 60 is a really, really long day.  The sun never seems to set, it just dips down to the horizon and then starts back up. So, when it was tee time at midnight, the lighting seemed to be about the same as 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon.  

For the first 45 years, the Yellowknife Golf Club featured a nine-hole course with sand fairways and the greens were sand too, but oiled, so they were a little darker than the fairways. When you finished putting you would drag a sled type device around the green to wipe out your footprints and the mark your ball made on its way to the hole.  

But since 1995, all eighteen holes have artificial turf greens. I don’t know, I found the idea of a sandy green kind of appealing. It was nothing like I’d ever played on before. The course is a full eighteen holes now, with sand fairways, jackpines, bedrock, and ravens. It’s safe to say you’ll never play golf anywhere like the Yellowknife Golf Club. Oh, and you were given a piece of astroturf to take with you to lay down on the fairways, so you'd have a grassy patch when you hit your ball. It’s tough to grow grass that far north. 

We teed off at midnight and made our way around the course, finishing play at about 3:30 am. What to do now?  Well, I joined some of the PWA flight crew, and some locals and headed off to play baseball. Game time, 4:00am! Another first for me. I had never played ball at 4 in the morning but you can when you’re North of 60! We had a good game, and at 6:30 it was starting to get really bright, sort of a noonday sun! Time to call it quits.

After the baseball game, I decided to walk the short distance back to the hotel. It was then that I came face to face with what looked like a motorcycle gang in black leather jackets walking towards me. No, wait, it was a group of Arctic Ravens! These things were huge! They stood a couple of feet high and had shoulders on them like a football linebacker. Not at all like the crows we’re used to seeing around White Rock. I gave them a wide berth. Two of them jumped up and perched on either side of a 50-gallon oil drum that was being used as a garbage can and started to rock it back and forth till they tipped it over. They went through the scraps hoping to find something for breakfast. 

When I got back to the hotel the desk clerk told me that Arctic Ravens are a protected species, and in mythology, the Great Raven created the universe and commands respect. Well, they got my respect. I wasn’t going to mess with them. 

Sleep was tough, if I slept at all. It was quite disorienting not to have the day end. Everyone owns blackout drapes for the bedrooms, and I can’t imagine how tough it must be to get kids to bed at night when it still looks like midday! 

Not only do the golfers get into the spirit of the longest day of the year, but the local merchants all seem to have “Midnight Sales” events, and I suppose it’s just one of those things you get used to and something to cherish North of 60. Of course, the winters are the exact opposite with just under 5 hours of sunlight on the shortest day of the year, and cold!  

Oh, and did I mention I looked out the hotel window and saw a guy taking his mountain lion for a walk on a leash? No?  Well, that will have to be another story for another time.

Till next week...
Wayne

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