The Frozen Corpse of Hector

Everyone who’s ever worked in the North, especially as a manager, has stories to tell. Most of us have had at least one new hire who arrives in town to start work, goes into immediate shock (no…trees! No…roads! Gaaahh…..!) and catches the next plane south (true!). Or an employee in a remote hamlet who suddenly goes Kurtz (true!). Or the person who slowly becomes convinced that everyone who’s speaking Inuktitut is talking about THEM (also true!). Or…

Well, anyway, there are lots of stories. Here’s one.

I had hired DJ despite some misgivings. He was a bit old for the gig – running an entry level TV training program in Nunavut is hard for anyone, and he was a retired broadcaster in his mid sixties, looking for one last life adventure before finally settling down. But he was a nice guy, and a good film-maker, and he’d been covering the north for years. Plus, if he didn’t take the contract, I was going to be stuck in Cambridge Bay for six months teaching it myself. And I really didn’t want to do that. So I hired DJ.

It was a strange six months, but the strangest part came at the very end of DJ’s contract. It was February, and he was getting ready to leave. And then Hector, his aging, ailing Labrador dog, died.

Surprisingly, for a man of his years, DJ had never learned Balbulican’s Fourth Law of Corporate Survival, which is, of course, ALWAYS stay on the good side of the Accountant, the Receptionist, and the IT Guy. His imperious manner had alienated our Finnish Finance Director within a week, and the two spent six bitter months sparring with each other over expense claims, rent deductions, taxi chits, per diems, power bills, vacation pay, supplies, receipts – everything that can become an issue when you’re not extra nice to the Accountant.

DJ phoned the Finance Director and informed her that he was making special arrangements to have Hector shipped south, and he didn’t want that cost charged against his relocation allowance for freight.

She told him that she was most certainly going to deduct the cost of shipping Hector’s corpse from his freight allowance. We have no special policy on extra allowances for shipping dead dogs around the Arctic, she sniffed.

DJ responded frostily by fax that Hector was not “freight”: he was “family”, and that we should be grateful DJ was shipping the body as cargo, and not booking a seat for it. “You’re lucky I’m a widower”, he said. “Otherwise you’d be paying a full fare for my wife”.

Kaija wondered icily in response how DJ’s dear departed spouse would have felt about being compared to the corpse of a frozen Labrador, but reassured him that the exact nature of the relationship between DJ and Hector was certainly none of her business. Whatever the case, if DJ wanted to ship dead Hector to Vancouver, he was goddamned well going to pay for it himself.

Determined to win this one, DJ arrived at the airport on Departure Day with his luggage, and with the frozen body of Hector separately boxed. He checked in his bags, then dragged the Labsicle down the hall to Cargo, where he attempted to ship his late canine friend on the corporate account. He had not reckoned on Kaija’s determination to block Hector’s return, however: the cargo agent regretfully explained that they had received written instructions that Canadian North should NOT accept anything being shipped on the corporate account by JD other than his personal luggage, unless he paid for it himself.

DJ threw a tantrum that some Cambridge Bay residents still remember, right there at the cargo counter. He tore the box open, cut open the plastic sheeting he had used to wrap the late Hector, and stormed outside with the rigid remains of his frozen pal. He planted Hector, upright, firmly in a bank of snow beside the cargo hanger, stalked back into the waiting room, and fumed until he boarded the plane.

I got a call later that afternoon from a very upset dispatcher who told me “my” trainer had left a frozen, dead dog outside their hanger, and what was I going to do about it? I offered to give Hector a decent burial if they’d ship him south, at which point the dispatcher slammed down the phone.

I was later told that Hector sat in the snowbank for three days, balefully eyeballing passers-by, until one day he was gone. I have long suspected that he may have had a happy second incarnation as the trim on one of those lovely Kitikmeot parkas, but I can’t say for sure.