Technology and tradition may sound like an unusual mix, but it’s not when it comes to northern life.
This past spring, Sofia Parra was among a number of industrial design students from Carleton University in Ottawa to make the trip to the Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nation community of Mayo, Yukon.
She met with a group of First Nations women at the Yukon University Makerspace program who were already helping her with the design of Hesper, a coat for the dark days and nights of winter.
Parra started working three years ago on the concept of Hesper, named for the Hesperides constellation containing the morning and evening stars.
The coat lights up, activated by the heat of a human body. It is equipped with a lightweight circuit that allows modules embedded in the material to be powered by thermoelectricity, or the conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage. The heat…
