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As she steps up to the podium as
one of UVic’s top fine arts graduates,
Joanne Dyck is thousands of kilometres
and a world away from her dog
mushing days in the Klondike.
But a glance at the bracelet tattoo
of northern pines and vines encircling
her wrist is all it takes to stir her vivid
memories of whooshing through the
isolated forests and snowy Yukon
wilderness with the yipping dogs as
her only companions.
And then there’s Lucy, the only one
still with her from a treasured team of
huskies that Dyck left behind when
she came to study creative writing at
UVic. “I wanted to find my voice, a
way to tell the stories about my sledding
adventures,” says Dyck. “But
leaving the dogs behind, that was the
hardest thing I ever had to do. It was
like abandoning my family.”
Dyck, now 41, is the kind of person
who has made a point of choosing
difficult paths. Having grown
up in Thunder Bay, Dyck studied
diesel mechanics intending to be a
long-distance truck driver. But she
also loved painting and was evolving
a career as a successful artist—until
she came nose to snout with a truck
full of huskies on their way to a race
around Lake Superior.
“I was hooked. I fell in love with
those dogs and I knew right away that
was the life for me,” says Dyck, who
spent the next nine years of her life as a
musher and a dog sled tour guide and
has a slew of heart-thudding tales of
tumbling from the sled, getting lost in
the forested wilderness and occasionally
falling through thin ice.
Dyck moved her sled dog business
to Dawson City to experience
mushing in new territory but quickly
became caught up in helping to establish
a new community arts centre
in town.
“It was a wonderful place and a
great experience,” says Dyck, recalling
commuting to work via dog sled
across the frozen Yukon river. “But I’m
not sure where we’ll go next…maybe
somewhere hot next time.”
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