Forced Unplugging: What it Means to be ‘Connected’ in the North

It was the summer of 2008. My first time in Europe. There was so much to experience—the food, the history, the architecture, the culture, the art! Naturally, one would assume I’d want to take it all in. But what was I focussed on? The Wi-Fi signal.

Why this obsession? Well, let’s just say I wanted to keep in touch with a ‘special’ friend back in Vancouver (turned out he wasn’t special after all, but that’s neither here nor there).

I remember it clearly—crouching outside a stranger’s house in some quaint or beautiful or important city in the Netherlands trying to steal their Wi-Fi. And then! I had it! Sorry, I told my family, I’ll catch up with you later. Because, finally, I was connected to the Internet.

That’s right, the Internet. 

This trip with my family took place not long after Apple had released their 3G iPhone. Of course, I got one as soon as I returned to Vancouver. My fixation on connectedness during this trip pre-dated the ‘live-stream-era’ and the ubiquity of smartphones. Wi-Fi required a search. Today, Wi-Fi is a given. Almost a right. It’s rare to find a coffee shop, a mall, or a museum that doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi. Parks, cabs, ferries—there’s Wi-Fi access everywhere. We’ve come a long way since my days of pilfering Internet from the unsuspecting Dutch. 

And then I moved to Beaver Creek... 

Sure, there is Internet up here. But there’s no free Wi-Fi at the coffee shop or the local mall. And not just because Beaver Creek doesn’t have a coffee shop, or a mall. Access to the Internet is different here in two major ways: affordability and speed. 

It’s expensive. And I mean very expensive. In the city, I enjoyed unlimited Internet for approximately $80 a month. Here, 250GB of data costs $156, and believe me 250GBs goes fast. I should note, the plan with the highest monthly usage has a data cap of 200GBs. Additional usage charges are $50 a month for 50GBs or $100 a month for 100GBs. Then you start racking up the overage charges. Tracking daily usage is absolutely imperative if you don’t want to deal with the exorbitant fees for exceeding your data limit.  

It’s slow. I use the Internet for work, school and (of course) staying connected with the world. But here video conference calls are impossible. My partner and I can barely use our separate devices for anything (let alone streaming) at the same time. Heck, I can’t even see what my blog update will look like until after it’s posted because the Internet is that slow. With Northwestel’s best possible package, the download speed is 15/Mbps (and reported speeds can be even slower), compared to the 300/Mbps download speed I had in the city. 

Until a few months ago, I was a city girl. The Internet was part of my life, always, naturally. I’ve never given a moment’s thought to streaming Netflix for hours, or downloading dozens of articles to read (or just peruse), or music to sing along to (albeit, poorly), or FaceTiming with friends abroad (or even just down the street). Access to the Internet is as basic to me as coffee in the morning. I see it as something I need. But in Beaver Creek, it’s not quite like that, so I’ve had to adapt. Yep. No more Seinfeld while I cook. No more Friends to lull me to sleep. The modem gets switched off at night so automatic updates don’t eat into our precious GB quota. I can’t browse and search and scroll to kill time. It’s a precious thing, this connectedness, and I can’t afford to waste it.

When it comes to Internet access, there’s a colossal chasm between people who live in the city and people who live in remote and isolated communities—particularly northern, largely Indigenous communities. In fact, in some communities in Canada’s north, there are reports of Internet prices far higher, and speeds far slower than what I’m used to in Beaver Creek. Residents in Nunavut are particularly impacted. Jacques Latour recently wrote of a conversation he had with a northerner who frequently had $600 monthly Internet bills, and struggled to send or receive emails with PDF attachments (Netflix was out of the question). 

I asked a community member here how people cope and was told that sometimes they just don’t, and that’s just the way it is. They go over their limit and end up with a huge bill that makes them realize they can’t afford the Internet. So, it’s cut. Sometimes they share with family. Maybe they use the minimal data on their cellphone plan. Or they do without. 

I can think about this in a negative light or a positive one.

On the downside, they’re missing out on a connectivity to the world that urbanites take for granted. They can’t access online education, the online job market, news feeds, movies, friends, and so on. They’re even more cut off from the world than distance alone dictates.

On the upside, they’re outside. They’re communicating with their neighbours. They’re focussed on the physical world. They’re doing what I as a city dweller was always saying I should be doing. In other words, they’re seeing “Europe” instead of looking for Wi-Fi signals.

I can also see this as an example of how often we don’t appreciate what we have.

Beaver Creek is a beautiful place. Surrounded by mountains. Trees as far as the eye can see. Rivers and streams that zigzag through all of it. Compared to green spaces in the city, the land here is untouched. Pristine. No sidewalks and bus stops and garbage containers and park benches. No horizon of skyscrapers, no noise of cars and construction. Just nature. Clean and pure and unadulterated.

On a particular drive out of town, I remember pulling to the side of the narrow highway and stopping to look out over rows upon rows of skinny, Charlie Brown-esque trees covered in snow and ice. There seemed to be no end to those trees. Not a structure in sight. Just trees and trees and trees. This experience, as innocuous as it might seem, was significant. It made me realise that ‘unplugging’, even just to the extent that my 250GB plan allowed, might help me appreciate my surroundings just a little bit more.

If I’d been born here, it’s unlikely I would’ve stopped on the highway to admire endless trees. They’d just be the trees I’d been looking at every day of my life. It’s hard to appreciate what’s just everyday average and “normal”. Hard to see it, even. And limited or no Internet would be one of those “normals”. It’s when we go elsewhere that we appreciate what we’re looking at and appreciate what we’ve left behind.

So, here I am. Three months into my Internet-minimalized, eyes-wide-open, awe-struck northern experience. I’m living with less. Minimalizing. But the thing is, I’ve lived an ‘Internet-rich’ life. And I can go back to that life. So, for me, choosing to unplug or disconnect or minimize is a luxury. I moved here by choice. I am content in making-do with less Internet time because I have options. Many people in Canada’s north do not. And maybe it would be a good thing if they could have better access to Internet so that they could choose whether or not to participate in the global conversation that most of us take for granted.

Once again, it’s a case of recognizing my privilege.