Hiedi Irvine: Northern Exposure

Hiedi Irvine flying high

I’m sure there were times during my rebellious teenager stage where my parents were convinced I’d be in court someday.  Like me, they had never pictured it being quite like this.  I am currently a court recorder/court transcriptionist/administrative assistant for a company called Total Reporting Services that gets contracted by the government in British Columbia and the Yukon to do, well, court recordings and court transcriptions.

I had never pictured the day when I would succumb to a 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Friday lifestyle, let alone an 8:30 to 5:00 one, in fact it had always been kind of a fear of mine.  I had pictured travelling, taking poor quality photos with a cheap camera in various places and doing anything from music reporting to picking peppers in Australia.  But, when you plan things, life happens. 

After graduating from St. Thomas, I had a few choices to make.  I had worked as the Arts Editor for the Aquinian for two years, with some great people and gained a lot of knowledge about what it took to be not only a writer but an editor-type.  It was probably the greatest work experience of my life sitting in the basement in the CBC building typing away (and it continued being a great experience even after we were booted from that building into the Brian Mulroney hall computer lab.)  Sundays and Greco went hand-in-hand, and late nights didn’t matter because we were all so passionate about what we were doing.  There was something freeing about being a young journalist, writing about the things you wanted to or the issues that needed to be written about in a non-Irving owned newspaper environment.  I decided upon graduation that although I wanted to head to Australia, I had to be realistic. With my student loan, I could by no means afford such a journey.  I didn’t apply for internships and instead held onto being young in Fredericton, for one final summer.

I worked at the strawberry field on the north side because I could dig my toes in the dirt and be in the sun all day (even being as pale as I am, it was a beautiful gig.)  Then, I had Radiohead tickets and some choices to make.  I had enough money to get to Montreal and a brother there who owed me a few bucks, so I figured as payment, I’d crash there, get a job and learn some French.

Radiohead was a good choice.  I didn’t actually learn much French and learned quickly that if you lived in that city, you pretty much needed it in order to get a decent job.  I worked at a high-end ice-cream shop and Second Cup, living in the rich part of town in a low-cost apartment, where I could drink on my roof, it was beautiful.  I also fell in love with a boy there, so that was nice too.

Like most fun times, my time in Montreal would eventually have to end because money was going to rent and concerts instead of the aforementioned loan. 

One day, my friend and former STU grad, Kelly Lapointe said she was thinking about me.  Why?  There was a job opening in a place I hadn’t heard of in my life.  What did I do?  I thought about it quickly, packed up a few things and found myself in Fort St. John, British Columbia, as a reporter at a daily newspaper called The Alaska Highway News.  When Kelly picked me up at the airport and drove me around town (which took a total of 20 minutes) I was kind of alarmed. This certainly wasn’t Montreal and I had done little research, but I thought, life happens, what the hell?  She showed me the office, which looked like a bomb shelter or an old factory (I wasn’t sure which) but there were no windows and our offices were made-up of orange and yellow dividers from the 70s that looked like something I would have found on the curb and picked up for kicks.  No matter what it looked like, I would be writing full-time again and that idea was something to be grateful for, so I sucked up the poor décor and went with it.  Five months of my being there, my co-worker, Tessa Holloway moved onto Prince Albert to write, since it was 2009, the year of the poor economy, the company chose not to replace her which left myself as the only reporter, outside of Kelly who wrote and edited the sports section.  So there we were, the paper which when Kelly had first arrived only the previous year had five people working in the editorial section came down to three of us being responsible for the daily.  It’s probably because of the economy that my time there was so unique.  For example, my editor was told that in order to sell more, we needed to have good news, all good news, all the time.  Now, as a writer who prefers to write features, I like a good story just as much as the other guy or gal but as a journalist, I’ve always felt that news should be just that – news. It should be about the issues that raise discussion and get reactions and affect people in some way so being told to write only good news felt like a punch in the face.  We kept writing whatever needed to be written about and in Fort St. John. That meant a lot of articles about the oil industry, which tends to be good in a decent economy but was struggling in 2009, especially where we were. 

Hiedi with hockey great Gordie Howe

You learn quickly that caring isn’t always a good quality in  the field, and that when you’re fresh out of university, willing to work 60 or 70 hours a week for a salary based on 37.5 hours, that the more you give, the more ‘the man’ wants.  I had to cover school board, city council meetings, science fairs, you name it, I was there and usually, because of the daily-schedule, I found myself typing everything directly after it took place (keeping in mind that some of those meetings ended at 10 p.m. – it could be a while!) so it usually meant going to bed around 3:00 a.m. and waking up at 8:00 a.m. to do it all over again.

In July, 2009, three-year-old Demetrius Jones took a ride on his toy truck down 12 kilometres of the Peace River. The story made national headlines and since it happened in our own backyard, we got to write some interesting pieces.  Lucky for us, his grandmother whom he had been with on the morning of the incident, gave us an exclusive interview.  That week my streeter question was, “What do you think of Demetrius Jones’s ride on the river?”  Streeters were always the worst because everyone would give you an opinion but never want to provide their picture to go along with it.  That week, I found four people in no time, and three of them were saying it was a miracle.  One teenaged girl said she was glad the story had such a good ending but felt the parents should be charged.  My publisher  picked up the paper and brought it back to my editor and was trying to suggest that we run a correction or something along those lines because she didn’t like that it was so negative.  Luckily my editor stuck to her guns and said, that’s this person’s opinion.  I was thankful for that part, but I have to say that day marked the beginning of the end for my time at the newspaper. 

Mind you it wasn’t all bad. The opportunity was far away from where I ever imagined being as an official first-time journalism gig.  I mean,  really, front page every day and  getting all kinds of exposure on the Canadian Press wire because such unique situations arose in such a small place!  Despite its flaws, it really made me aware of what I was doing and how lucky I was to have such an opportunity.

I learned after the first seven months there that maybe I would like writing more if it wasn’t on a full-time basis.  I found myself writing stories on the same topic to a point where I wasn’t learning much.  Because we were so short-staffed, I didn’t get a  lot of feedback either, so I began looking at other opportunities. 

Truth be told, as little sleep as I got, and as much as I tended to hate the place, when I loved the job, I really loved it.

My boyfriend who had moved from Montreal to Fort St. John with me had said from the evening of our first date that he always wanted to live in Whitehorse.  I had never in a million years ever really considered it, since in my head I only pictured the snow.  But, after Fort St. John, we were ready for it. 

We had enough money for rent and maybe some groceries so we bought a Greyhound ticket and puff, here we are today!  I worked briefly selling cell phones before seeing a posting for the job I have now and it couldn’t suit me more.  I record court sessions, I type lawyers grilling people about what really happened, I get to be flown around the Yukon whenever there are court circuits, which in English means, I bring a mixer, a tape Lanier, a laptop, microphones, and basically set up a make-shift court in the communities.  I either fly or drive with a judge, a court clerk and a sheriff to random places, like Old Crow and find myself having experiences like being taken o snowmobile rides with the only two RCMP officers in town.  It’s a beautiful thing.  And, I get to read about the cases I’ve prepared official transcripts for in the local paper and think, “If they only knew” or “That couldn’t have been written better.”

All this is to say, your life certainly can unfold in unexpected ways in unexpected places if you just dare to live a little.

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Posted by The Beacon on May 10, 2010. Filed under Alumni Profiles, From the field, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.