Kate Pullinger on working in a copper mine in the Yukon

Kate Pullinger, the author of Landing Gear, dropped out of university as a teenager and headed north to the Yukon. What did she do while she was there? The Governor General's Literary Award-winning author tells The Next Chapter all about it:

One of the first jobs I ever had was in a copper mine outside Whitehorse in the Yukon when I was 19 years old. I had dropped out of McGill University, where I had been having too much fun, as I like to say. My eldest sister was living in the Yukon with her family, and my brother-in-law worked at the mining company, and so he got me this job. I went to the Yukon and I spent the better part of a year crushing rocks in a lab to create ore samples. It was extremely well paid, and very, very boring. I used to spend most of the day calculating how much money I had made. And at the end of that time I took all that money and I went travelling for six months. I eventually ended up in London. It was a great Canadian job to have had!

Kate Pullinger's comments have been edited and condensed.