When Eva and I first sat down together in Klaus's office she was shy and a little hesitant with me but also warm and sincere. Curious about and interested in the world around her, Eva has developed a strong confidence about her work. "I know that I have helped every one of my students", she said with conviction. "Sometimes they graduate from our class then go on to upgrading and sometimes they drop out once they've learned all that they wanted to but they always learn something. I had one student who had a learning disability, who couldn't seem to get past a certain level. But I know I helped him in other ways just by giving him attention. That helped him see life in a different way, different than just being put down by his friends."

"Sometimes the tutors get frustrated. There's no room here where we can do some one-to-one work and have it be quiet. And the two tiny washrooms we have are not adequate for all the people who use this building but I still feel good about the work I am doing. The students make us feel that way. They help us put up with all the other stuff because they are why we are here."

Klaus came to tell me he was warming up the truck; the next stop on the itinerary was Buffalo Head Prairie, about 25 km south of La Crete. Before we headed south Klaus took a minute to pick up his mail at the La Crete Post Office. I thought of Dave Saunders and the Fairview Post Office as Klaus hurried into the tiny building. There was no stopping to chat with neighbours on the front steps today; it was too cold for conversation.

On the way to Buffalo Head Prairie Klaus told me more about his life in the North. He and his wife Susan and their five children moved up north from Calgary 4 years ago to homestead 640 acres of land at Thompkin's Landing, another 40 km south of Buffalo Head Prairie. The family spent their first summer living in tents (and are often still referred to as "the tent people"). A local farmer offered them an older house he wanted removed from his property which had been built in 1941 by one of the first settlers in the area. The house is heated with wood and there is no running water but it has electricity and is now very much home to Klaus and his family.

To help make ends meet Klaus had taken a job as a paid tutor with the literacy program in La Crete, working with Eva and two other tutors for a year. "Being a tutor really put me in touch with some wonderful people. I made some pretty good friends, especially with some of the men I tutored. They knew that I was the 'new kid on the block', a rookie learning the ropes about farming. They seemed to enjoy giving me a helping hand. I doubt they would agree with me but they taught me more about homesteading than I think I ever taught them about literacy. It was really a wonderful trade-off." Klaus chuckled and added, "People still laugh at my mistakes. At least I gave them something to talk about for a while."

It was snowing hard now and the visibility deteriorating. Even though I knew there were trees and hills in the area all I could see was thick white blowing snow. Klaus was surprisingly calm; he told me driving and weather conditions like this were pretty typical in the North for this time of the year. "Living up here is an adventure and I like that," he said. "There is always an element of the unknown and that makes it challenging and fun."

The Basic Education Centre at Buffalo Head Prairie, a little trailer parked by the local elementary school, is more often referred to as "The Chicken Coop". The trailer, now nicely sided, had at one time been a tar-paper shack used as a church for an oil camp. In the blowing snow it really didn't look much bigger than a chicken coop.