What Photography Teaches Me about Surviving the News Cycle

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Seeing a herd of caribou up close is remarkable on its own, but add the cold (it was minus thirty degrees that day) and travelling by snowmobile to reach them, and it makes for an unforgettable experience that will stay with you for a lifetime. I grew up fighting bullies in the shadow of a steel plant in a Northern Ontario border town. That sounds dramatic. What I’m saying is that I grew up in a rough neighbourhood, where there was a lot of prepubescent schoolyard bullying. Nobody came out of it unscathed, physically or emotionally. We learned hard lessons but acquired some intangible skills from those strange formative years: how to trash-talk, when to fight back and when not to, how to make allies and lasting friendships, and how to win the respect of someone who promises to “pull your arms through your butthole at recess.” One of those golden schoolyard rules: if a bully ever threatens you, never show up at his house uninvited while he’s playing Nintendo with his friends and ask, “Can we be besties?” Instant laughter. Automatic mockery. Cue the atomic wedgie. You can imagine my horror (and waves of repressed memories) when, last November, I saw a photo of then prime minister Justin Trudeau sitting around a table with then US president-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. “He’s done for,” I thought. “It’s wedgie time.” Since then, the American president’s barrage of disrespect has famously escalated to real threats to our sovereignty. He’s also threatened to take Greenland by force, if necessary, and he is no doubt interested in Canada’s minerals, many of which are in the North, where I live. I don’t blame Trudeau for any of that, but using my keen bully radar, I can say that he didn’t exactly help. His fatal error in dealing with Trump was hitting the panic button. All of this—Trudeau’s failed attempt to charm Trump, and Trump’s ongoing talk of annexing Canada—has increased my anxiety. And my anxiety has only compounded since the start of the year. Our premiers won’t (or can’t) stop flying to Washington every time they hear the word “tariff.” This adds to my anxiety. Elon Musk giving Nazi salutes and waving a chainsaw. This adds to my anxiety. Wayne Gretzky’s MAGA-ness. This adds to my anxiety. The atrocities happening in Gaza. This adds to my anxiety. The US disparaging Ukraine. This adds to my anxiety. The revolving door of pundits and the doomscrolling all add to my anxiety too. The news, the noise, the nonsense. It’s a bit much. A group of friends plays cards and streams a hockey game at Mackay Lake Lodge, NWT. Even when I’m working at a remote cabin, it is hard to truly escape the rest of the world. Starlink, the internet service company owned by Elon Musk, is used by many Northerners for safety reasons and for entertainment. On this trip, it was mainly used to connect with family back home and to watch hockey while we played cards, joked around, and told stories. Who needs to doomscroll the news when you are in one of the most peaceful places in Canada? The architecture in the North is simple and at times colourful, like this home in Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. One of my favourite things to do when visiting a community is to walk the streets to clear my head, get my bearings, and find splashes of colour where you might not expect them. I love looking for and photographing slices of life when I’m travelling for work. Here, a boy rides his bike in Tuktoyaktuk. I live in the Northwest Territories now and have the luxury of looking at this chaos the way Statler and Waldorf watch The Muppet Show from their balcony seats: everyone on the stage seems inept, and it’s easy to poke fun from above. The population of the NWT is roughly 50 percent Indigenous—Dene, Inuvialuit, Metis, and many others—and the anxiety Canadians feel about annexation is one felt by the population here since the first Hudson’s Bay Company post was established at the Slave River Delta over 220 years ago. In late March, former Liberal attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote in the Toronto Star that “for Indigenous peoples, the current, hostile rhetoric of Canada becoming the fifty-first state, the suggestion that borders be re-drawn, and that the economic interests of America must come first, echoes through hundreds of years of colonization.” For settlers who have never experienced this kind of stress, welcome to the club! The whims of an imperialist leader are background noise to the brutal circumstances we deal with in the North and in many Indigenous communities every day: trying desperately to find our murdered and missing relatives, fighting for clean drinking water, pleading for affordable and healthy food. Fear and anxiety about the United States? There are more important things on people’s minds here. But even though we are physically so far removed from the decisions and threats coming out of Washington, we are absolutely impacted by what is playing out in front of us. The thought of our closest ally seizing the land, water, and natural resources in the places where I routinely work makes me angry. What comforts me is a conversation I had with Major Mathew Hefner, a senior adviser of Arctic operations with the US Army Corps of Engineers, when I was covering a joint US–Canadian military exercise along the Northwest Passage for The Walrus last October. Hefner said that the two countries’ military partnerships are so intertwined (along with other Arctic NATO countries) that the US armed forces rely on these alliances to improve their own tactical capabilities in the region. Without this support, America would struggle to defend its own Arctic territory, never mind annexing others. The US, he said, simply can’t retain soldiers experienced enough to deal with far-North conditions—cold weather, limited infrastructure, lack of food options. “Oftentimes, I would bring [reservists] from the United States up here, and at the end, they would say, ‘Thanks, sir, awesome, never call me again.’” Even if the US doesn’t take over the Arctic through boots on the ground but rather by co-opting our minerals and resources, a few things make that difficult too. The North is enormous, and our minerals are impossible to access without billions of dollars in exploration initiatives, equipment, and labour. There are only a handful of active mines extracting diamonds, gold, iron ore, and zinc; adding more mines from scratch would take several years. Did I mention most of the Canadian Arctic doesn’t have paved roads? The North’s lack of infrastructure is harmful to Northerners and something the government of Canada needs to prioritize. But, perhaps ironically, our remoteness and isolation might actually be our greatest defence against Trump. A statue of Chief Monfwi stands near the shoreline of Behchokǫ̀, NWT. Monfwi signed Treaty 11 with the Government of Canada in 1921—which covers the North Slave region in the territory. The landscape, the light, and seeing this statue in silhouette takes me to another time altogether; it makes me pause to think about the strength that Indigenous people face in dealing with colonizers of the past, present, and, potentially, the future. A doorway to a youth centre is covered in snow in Gamètì, NWT. For me, it’s fun to look at details that give a sense of place. The pink paint peeling from this door and the unshovelled snow piling on the stairs give this building a personality that I might not think about otherwise. A hockey rink in Yellowknife’s Back Bay is a sight of pure Canadiana. I feel like I’ve seen this rink a thousand times in many towns and cities across the country. The glowing projection of the net’s crease is an added touch that I didn’t expect but was happy to stumble upon. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NWT residents went to great lengths to find comfort through nature. The idea was to touch grass or, in our case, touch snow. It’s a very Indigenous way of dealing with stress, anxiety, addiction, and trauma. A lot of our counselling and mental health supports are built around land-based programming. Nature is a healer. The land gives perspective on what is important. It is easy for me to feel overwhelmed by what is happening in politics and war in other parts of the world, so I find it important to look around and appreciate the ancient land I’m able to walk on, to spend time with my family, and to support and be supported by the people in my community. I take my camera out when I’m feeling anxious about our world and what the future might bring, because it quite literally forces me to focus on my mental health. Photography is not just my job; it’s how I meditate. Over the past several months, I have used my camera to look closely at the land and the wildlife. I also use photography to record my friends. It gives me the time to reflect on what is important in my life and to document the things that I sometimes take for granted. It is humbling to pause and take note of what we can easily lose. In that sense, photography is a way for me to reconnect with my spirit. Recognizing the beauty in the people and the land around me doesn’t make the hateful politics disappear, nor is that the intention. The goal is not to tune everything out. But being close to nature gives me the energy and clarity to take the blows, give support to families being devastated by war and tariffs, and every other awful thing going on in the world. And, of course, it gives me the strength to fight the bullies. With thanks to the Gordon Foundation for supporting the work of writers from Canada’s North.The post What Photography Teaches Me about Surviving the News Cycle first appeared on The Walrus.