She found her soulmate in the Arctic Circle, 11,000km away from Singapore

Would you quit your job and move to another country for a boyfriend of four months? Or brave the frigid Arctic Circle with someone you met online? Three Singapore women who have taken such extraordinary leaps of faith share how they went the extra mile to make their romantic relationships thrive. Here’s part two of our three-part Valentine’s Day series.

What are the chances of meeting someone living in the Arctic Circle? For Zen Law, 38, and Dana Tizya-Tramm, 34, their geographical locales did not matter when they both found love and strength in their differences.

Online dating can be exhausting: You go through several red flags before coming across a relatively decent profile. Then, you attempt to keep a conversation over text going – which later fizzles out as life catches on.

It’s a process that’s all too familiar to marketing professional Zen Law. She’d been on a dating website for two years, but she wasn’t very active as she wasn’t having much luck meeting potential dates there. But one day, in January 2018, she decided to take a chance on a man living halfway across the world.

“I had just returned from Chiang Mai when I saw that I had a message from International Cupid. I thought, ‘Finally, a young, nice-looking guy is messaging me from that website.’ So yeah, I responded to him,” she says.

It was Dana Tizya-Tramm, a Gwich’in living in Old Crow, a village in northern Canada’s Yukon Territory. The Vuntut Gwitchin are a self-governed First Nations community who are indigenous to north-western Canada and Alaska. At Old Crow, the population of Gwitchin locals measure at fewer than 300.

Dana is quick to point out that “the only reason I was on that website was because there’s no one to date in the Yukon”. He adds: “My small village is 129km north of the Arctic Circle, and 97km east of Alaska. There are no roads here, and the only way to get here is by Ski-Doo (snowmobile) over the snow, or by plane. It takes about three days to get anywhere from here, so it’s a super remote village.”

Dana, who was then working as a political lead for the Government of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nations, was at first intrigued by Zen’s profile which showed her doing yoga and reiki.

“I was scared that she was so ‘straight edged’ that it wouldn’t really mix with my life. I smoke cigarettes, and I smell like gas because I’m always out on the land cutting wood. Zen and I had a couple of messages back and forth, but not too much. We almost did not meet because I didn’t have many good experiences with online dating. At the time, I had a three-month membership on the site and I shut it down the second month. I told myself that I tried [online dating] and it didn’t work out,” he says.

Zen, on the other hand, was not ready to give up. She decided to do a little sleuthing over Facebook, where she found Dana’s profile and sent him a friend request. Her determination to see this through stemmed from “being fed up with my dating life”.

“I was like, okay, I’m not going to give up this time. I’m going to track him down on Facebook, all the way to Canada. I’ve got nothing to lose… I told myself that I must take this extra step, just in case [it works out this time],” says Zen.

Her plucky approach helped quell some of the reservations Dana had about online dating. The friend request surprised Dana, but it also reignited his curiosity about her.

He shares: “I told myself, it’s not every day that a gorgeous woman would send you a friend request. So I added her, and we began talking every single day through video chats. And we eventually fell in love.”

Leaving city life behind

Zen and Dana wanted to better their lives at that point. Zen, who was working with a German bathroom brand, was unhappy with corporate life in Singapore. Just a few months before, she had received a paltry bonus, and it made her even more intent on making a change.

Just before his decision to go on the dating site, Dana’s mother had recently passed away and he was working long hours in a stressful job. He was also in a miserable relationship with a “crazy girlfriend who gave me a black eye”.

“She threw a book at me and nailed me in the eye when she was drunk, and she didn’t even remember it. Then I had a bad day with my boss, and I remember coming back to the apartment, thinking that I deserved better,” says Dana.

It felt like the universe had led them here, shares Zen, who was looking for something more meaningful outside of the rat race. She says: “I was happy when I was doing things like volunteering at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.”

And so in October 2018, Zen, who was already leaving her marketing job, made the decision to relocate to Old Crow. By then, the couple had been in a long distance relationship for seven months, with a meet up in Singapore in August that year.

From tropical Singapore to the subarctic, where temperatures average at -34 deg C during the height of winter – it was a bold move to say the least. “One of the reasons I came here was because I was attracted to nature and the wilderness,” she says.

At first, Dana was a little concerned about how Zen would take to living in Old Crow − it’s the only place in Yukon that cannot be accessed by driving there. The village is also only equipped with the bare necessities: an airport, one grocery store, a bank, and a mail post.

“I’ve been really conscious about how city life would transpose into our life here. There are no restaurants, and there is no other place to spend your money, none of that stuff,” he emphasises.

Life can be tough in Old Crow, as its inhabitants rely heavily on the land as a means for survival. They have also been dependent on the Porcupine caribou, a migratory reindeer species, for food and hide for thousands of years. However, habitat degradation caused by climate change and other activities like oil drilling are threatening the herd.

“When I met Zen in person for the first time, the clothes and makeup that she was wearing were very ‘city’. She was so beautiful – I was intimidated. She had rips in her jeans because that’s the way she bought them. In the North, when you have a pair of jeans that’s ripped, it’s because you’ve been out on the land,” says Dana.

But Zen did not hesitate in learning about the Vuntut Gwitchin’s way of life. The freezing weather posed a challenge initially. “It was -32 deg C one night, and my toes were so painful they went numb,” she says.

While she was there, Zen learnt how to ride a Ski-Doo and snare a rabbit. She also eventually learnt how to use a rifle to hunt.

“She set four snares and got three rabbits. I’ve never seen that before – it was crazy!” says Dana. The rabbits were given away to the Gwitchin elders, as it is the tribe’s culture to share one’s first catch.

After nine months in the Yukon, Dana proposed to Zen and following a traditional Vuntut Gwitchin ceremony in July 2019, they held their wedding in Singapore in August.

For Dana, there was never any doubt that Zen would thrive outside of her comfort zone. “Zen is a really strong woman. Her former co-workers would make fun of her and give her nicknames like ‘lioness’, but to me, it came across as part of her strength. She’s a gai ha’ii tri’njoo, which in our language means ‘lady of the sunrise’,” he says.

Part of a tight-knit community

Both Dana and Zen had troubled childhoods growing up. As a First Nation youth in Canada, Dana grappled with a history of oppression, as well as Indigenous and generational trauma. “My mother was traumatised by the age of four, and developed drinking problems later in life. This was the environment that I grew up in,” he recalls sombrely.

His mother was abused at a residential school, a network of boarding schools that removed children from their homes, families and native traditions, so as to assimilate them into the country’s dominant Western culture.

Dana’s teenage years were later mired in addiction and anguish. His parents divorced when he was eight, and his stepfather killed himself due to a cocaine addiction when Dana was just 11. By the time he was 13, Dana was already struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

“When I was 16, I nearly died from an overdose of ketamine; I would go on binges that lasted months. I survived a suicide attempt when I was 18. Three years later, I became heavily addicted to crack cocaine, but I managed to quit cold turkey as I knew it would kill me.”

After his mother's death in February of 2017 from alcohol addiction, Dana underwent alcohol rehabilitation and never looked back. “When my mother passed away, I began drinking hard, which led me to rehab in August that year," says Dana.

He later built a successful career in Indigenous non-profit organisations, and then in politics. Today, he remains the youngest person to be elected as the chief of his tribe when he was 31 years old.

“We both know what it’s like to have a parent who has lived with addiction,” reveals Zen, whose parents divorced when she was 14. “Sometimes, my dad would be drunk and screaming at my mum. That’s what eventually drove them to separate.”

She learnt the importance of being independent early on. Her father, whom she met once a week, “wasn’t there a lot”, and her mother was working to provide for her only child. “I was always doing things by myself, so I think that made me very independent and less needy, in the sense that I wouldn’t open up to people. I hate to ask for help,” she says.

However, living in Old Crow meant that Zen had to adapt to being a member of a tight-knit community. Dana explains that everyone in the village supports one another – from working together to asking for help from one’s friends and neighbours.

“Everyone, for the most part, welcomed her – especially the guys – because she's beautiful. The elders really love her; they stand up for her all the time. I haven’t won a single argument since she arrived,” he laughs.

Gwitchin elders are the heart of the community, and they are regularly consulted for their advice and guidance. They have embraced Zen as one of their own; and some of the elders have even gifted her with traditional handmade clothing. Says Dana: “Zen’s got some of the most beautiful handmade boots and moccasins that I’ve ever seen. She has beautiful hats and gloves made out of rabbit fur, and these are all made by hand.”

Being the wife of a Vuntut Gwitchin chief

One of the biggest challenges of being married to Dana was that he had been elected the chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin in November 2018, before taking office in January 2019. Zen had just moved to Old Crow during this transition.

Besides assimilating to a new environment and culture, she also contended with the demands of Dana’s job. He wore many hats as the chief – he was the spokesperson for the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, the chairperson of the First Nation executive office and the finance and administration committee, as well as the political lead for the Vuntut Gwitchin government. It was exhausting for both of them.

Because of Dana’s position in the public eye, he was always fielding criticism from disgruntled locals or online trolls. “I’m constantly looking out for him,” she says. Incidents where her husband was being attacked online frustrated her, because there was little that she could do to stand up for him without escalating the situation.

“When he became chief, he’d be so tired that he would always head straight to bed after coming home. Unlike our prime minister in Singapore, the community has a direct line of access to him,” shares Zen. “When there’s an emergency or a life and death situation, he’s the first person who has to take care of it. Sometimes, I felt like I wasn’t really a priority – but it’s not on purpose on his part. His job always came to us,” she says.

Dana knows that Zen’s incredible resilience was crucial in keeping their relationship going despite the odds. “Because I’m getting attacked all the time, there’s not much left for Zen when I come home. She’s been up against a lot – she was put in front of a mountain and told to go along with [the circumstances]. It’s probably too much for the average person, but she did it,” he says.

Together for the long haul

Dana’s term as chief ended in early 2023, and the couple are now focused on raising their children. They currently have their hands full with a 16-month-old toddler, Geneva Rei Tramm-Law, and a four-month old baby boy, Bodhi Jai Tramm-Law.

Zen and Dana relocated to Whitehorse last month, a picturesque city about two hours from Old Crow by plane. The couple isn’t ruling out a move to Singapore in the future because “our children need to see both sides of where they are from”.

“My job changed both of our lives, so it was a totally different route then. But it’s over now, and I have not run again because it’s time for me to step back from that and really invest in our family,” says Dana.

From adapting to new cultures (and climates) to living life in the public eye in a span of a year – it hasn’t been an easy journey for the couple. But as Dana puts it succinctly, their differences have only brought them closer together: “Part of the reason why I married Zen is that she doesn’t put up with my s*** and she calls me out on it. She’s educating me all the time – if you’re going to marry someone, you don’t want to marry a person who’s just like you.”

For Zen, on the other hand, their marriage is an ongoing lesson in patience. “I can be very straightforward with how I talk and for someone like Dana, who’s been through a lot, it sometimes makes him retreat further into his shell. It frustrates me even more when that happens, but I have to tell myself to take a step back and talk about [the issue] another day,” she says.

Dana likens the early stages of their relationship to being in the middle of a tempestuous storm.

“It’s hard to explain exactly how difficult it was for Zen. She jumped right in and started swimming in the middle of the ocean with huge waves. And honestly, we were just hanging on by our fingertips, and sometimes, we just had to wait it out. But I always knew that she’d be there on the other side. That’s the most important thing.”