Travel Stories > Nunavut
Cambridge Bay (Ikaluktutiak),
North West Territories (now Nunavut)
© Glenn Mair, 1996
The following story is not a polished article, rather just the compilation of a couple of long e-mails I managed to send to friends and family from the remote Arctic in June /July 1996. In Cambridge Bay there are no pubs, and not many entertainment options, a fact that explains the amount of time I found to type e-mail during a four day visit. It has not been edited from its original form (except for Spellcheck), so expect a raw, first-hand, first-reaction account...
Hi there all,
Well for once you won't have to be miles behind on the news. With my new laptop (from work) in my backpack, I am on my way to Cambridge Bay (aka Ikaluktutiak) in the North-West Territories (NWT, now Nunavut). So the e-mail story can be composed as I go.....
Saturday June 29th.
Currently sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine at Edmonton International Airport. Is about 14C and windy, not a bad day at all. Was manic at Vancouver airport this morning - being first day of summer holidays, the line-ups at the airport were almost out the door. Best part of the 1.5 hour flight was coming over the Rockies near Jasper, and seeing all those great mountains that Steffi and I climbed last summer. After that, it was just flat, flat, flat green farmland into Edmonton.
Edmonton: From what I had heard of Edmonton, it has two airports: the little, old Municipal Airport, and the flashy, big, new International Airport. Well, I'd hate to see the Municipal Airport, as International dates from the early 1970's and is fairly small, crowded and poorly designed, just like all early 1970's airports! Like so many "International" airports on this continent, there is a decided lack of international flights. The "International" tag really just means that there is at least one flight per week across the US/Canada border. Indeed, there are only about 5 planes to be seen - all Canadian - and in the half hour I have been sitting outside, I have only heard one landing and one take off. Admittedly, the North West check in counter is open, so there must be something coming!
About the only thing of note here is the Public Internet booths in the airport - $6 per hour on your Visa or Mastercard and you can while away your time surfing the Web or sending e-mail!
Got another plane to catch! More later...
From Edmonton, I was flying NWT Air and there were 23 of us on the 737 flight to Yellowknife. Another 1.5 hour flight - cloudy most of the way. As we approached Yellowknife, the cloud gave way to haze, and started to see a little bit of land, just before the land gave way to Great Slave Lake. Crossing the lake was about the last 15 minutes of the flight, with Yellowknife located on its north shore. The terrain is dead flat - looks like one big, flat granite slab with only slight variations in surface height - some of which are above water, some below. Small pine trees still abound, but scattered between large, bare slabs of rock. Looking into the sun, the edge of the lake looks like a flotilla going to war, as there are so many small islands where the rock surface rises a few centimetres or more above the water surface. The water is clear enough that I can also see the "islands" which don't quite manage to poke through the surface of the water.
Yellowknife airport is a bright blue, long, tin shed - typical of northern airports, with the bright colours used to help make them easier to find in the snow! There is one other 737 here, a Canadian North plane on its way to Cambridge Bay and then Resolute - which is all-but-on the North Magnetic Pole. Other than that: a DC-3, a DC-4 and a Vickers Viscount representing various unheard-of airlines.
It is warmer here than in Edmonton, in spite of the hazy sun - probably high teens. Taking a walk around the airport carpark, the most noticeable thing is the horizon - that nothing at all interrupts it, as there is not even the slightest hint of a hill to be seen anywhere.
The same plane is continuing on to Cambridge Bay - and it appears that we have even fewer passengers now than on the way from Edmonton. Suddenly I realize why northern flights are so expensive! But no, the space is not wasted. I watch in amazement as a hatch opens up about 1/4 the side of the plane, seats are removed, and they start loading freight into the front of the plane. This causes an hour's delay - as most of the freight is lumber and pre-fab construction panel, most of which are too long to fit through the huge hatch. So it takes four guys, two forklifts, and breaking every safety rule in the book to maneouver all these building supplies into the plane. At least this task provides good entertainment for those of us sitting around waiting for the plane.
By the time we get on the plane and take off, at 3:45pm, there are only four rows of seats left in the plane, so with 19 passengers there are only a few empty seats.
From Yellowknife it is 1.25 hours to Cambridge Bay. The flat, rocky terrain, interspersed with many lakes continues on, but the trees gradually disappear. Also, as we head north, ice starts appearing on the lakes - although the ice is cracked and fragmented. In places, it looks as if an ice-breaker had ploughed through some of the lakes, although I am sure that this phenomenon must have some natural explanation, given the remoteness of the areas we are flying over. The best description for the appearance of the ice is like a crazed window, where all the little glass beads are still hanging together.
Eventually we make it to the North-West Passage, which is also still iced over, but breaking up. Crossing the passage takes about the last 10-15 minutes of the flight, and I get only a brief glimpse of Victoria Island and Cambridge Bay before we land. First impression is less vegetation, more lakes, darker ground and potential to be quite swampy in parts, in contrast to the rocky "highs" and depressions on the mainland.
Cambridge Bay airport is an experience. First time I have ever landed on a dirt air-strip in a jet. Not worth paving it, as for most of the year the landing surface is snow, not the actual runway. The terminal is a bright red tin shed about the size of an four-car garage. The "baggage carousel" is the piece of baked-dry mud next to the terminal. The car park is the piece of baked-dry mud in front of the terminal. On the one side of the runway is a major inlet (West Arm), on the other is a decent sized lake. Two other very small planes here. Across the lake from the runway/carpark/baggage collection area are a few big "golf balls": the local early warning radar station. (These stations are located every 50 miles from Alaska to Greenland, and Cambridge Bay is one of the few stations that is still manned.) The town can be seen a few kilometres away. Beyond that Mount Pelly can be clearly seen - at 690ft and with its long, flat ridge it is the landmark, with the general landscape being a plateau at about 50ft above sea level. In the foreground, the "carpark" contains a motley collection of mud-covered minivans, 4x4's, pick-ups and 4-wheel Yamaha dirt bikes (4-wheelers). Conventional cars do not exist here!
People disperse. I am not the only non-local on the flight, nor the only person who has not been here before. There is one salesman here on business for the first time, and one woman here for the first time to visit some distant relative. She is horrified as she takes off as a passenger on one of the 4-wheelers! The town taxi is not here, but eventually he arrives, and takes those of us left into town.
The town is unlike anything I have ever seen before, although in some ways it reminds me more of some towns in Russia than anything else. Buildings are very basic pre-fab, built up on piles of bricks or pine slabs. Some are painted, some are even painted the same colour all over! There are pre-fab row buildings, which house half-a-dozen or so apartments. Town planning seems near non-existent, with roads wandering through the gaps between buildings. Skidoos, sleighs and toboggans lie around, looking abandonned, outside of houses, next to the pick-up trucks and four wheel dirt bikes, which appear to be the most popular form of transport. The roads are all dirt and strewn with rocks and small boulders - no wonder no-one drives regular cars! Surplus building materials are stacked up by most properties - even ones that looks long-since completed. Extensions, sheds and storage areas are tacked onto houses, and do not match in either design or colour. Bright orange shipping containers are one of the town's more popular "garden ornaments". Gardens are non-existent, although grasses of various sorts sprout where they feel like it. If there is a garage in town, they mustn't do a very good job, as vehicles in various states of disassembly and repair are almost as common in the "garden ornaments" department as the shipping containers. The most distinguishing feature in the town is the big oil storage depot in the centre of town. At first glance, the town looks like it has been completely assembled in the last six months, with the intention of it being abandoned any day now!!!
Get dropped at the hotel (Ikaluktutiak Co-Op Hotel). They had me in their books for yesterday - so were not expecting anyone off the flight today! The lady running the hotel is anglo-Canadian, whereas most of the population is Inuit. The first thing I notice in the hotel office is a wall sign asking "Didjabringyabeeralong?" I ask her if someone from Australia gave it to her - she bought it herself when visiting Australia, some years ago, as her son married an Aussie girl and now lives there!!! The room is very basic - TV, clock, coffee maker - and bathrooms are shared. Expensive for what you get ($99 per night), but I can understand that having seen this afternoon how construction materials get here!!!!
With the plane being late, I have just missed dinner hour at the hotel. Take a walk around town, find the food store, which is also closed and does not re-open until after holiday Monday. I also found out that there is a big "beer dance" on in town tonight - might miss it given that I only had approx. 3 hours sleep last night!!!
Ah well, back to my room to hog into some of those food supplies I brought with me! Watch BC-TV while I eat! (The other options were Edmonton or US channels, or CBC North broadcasting in one of the many native languages of the North, but not necessarily the one spoken here!). Then sit and type this, while listening to long-distance-dedications being made across the Arctic on the radio station broadcast across the Far North. Now 8:30pm and, naturally, is still very light outside, although the sun is behind clouds somewhere near the horizon.
Two things have really surprised me about Cambridge Bay already. First is that it was hot - about 20C when we arrived, although it is cooling off now to the low teens. It seems crazy that as I have headed from Vancouver to the Arctic (69 degrees north) it has been getting progressively warmer every time I have gotten off a plane! Second, mosquitoes, flies, etc. are not much of a problem here - I have seen very few. Indeed, they have been far worse the times I have been in Central BC, including last weekend!
And one final comment for the day. That is about the written language - Inuinakton - the written form is quite unlike any other language: being line after line of squares, arrow-heads, triangles, curvy lines and other "hieroglyphic-like" characters.
Went out for another walk at about 10pm. Was cooling off (low teens) but still very pleasant, especially when the sun broke out from behind clouds. The sun was still approx. 15 degrees above the horizon at 10:30pm. Went for a walk along the waterfront, which is scattered with aluminium fishing dinghies (about 10 footers), assorted fishing equipment, and lots of dogs (some huskies) chained up to make sure no one walks off with the wrong person's gear.
Also found out that the mozzies had arrived, but still not as bad as the mozzies I encountered up in Ft St James (BC) last summer. From the maps I brought with me, took some bearings to estimate magnetic deviation for today - approx. 38 degrees west. Will be curious to see how much it changes by Tuesday, as my maps warn that compasses are unreliable in this area due to daily movement in the North Magnetic Pole. The strangest thing, however, was the mist. Everything was perfectly clear, indeed I had been taking a shot of a skidoo trapped out on a piece of pack ice that is now well separated from the shore. Ten minutes later, you could feel cold air drifting in from the bay, and could see mist rising up from the pack ice, creating a very eerie sensation in the low, but strong, sunlight.
Still haven't seen the midnight sun, as I slept soundly all last night, due to only 3 hours sleep on Friday. Ah well, will stay up tonight and watch the sun.
Sunday, June 30th.
Interesting breakfast this morning. Dining room was deserted except for Chris, the manager, so I ended up in the kitchen talking with her while she cooked me breakfast, then she grabbed a cup of tea and joined me while I ate. She and her husband came to Cambridge Bay for 6 months, but that was four years ago. The job at the hotel was meant to fill in a little time before proper retirement. But they are going back to Ontario next year, and will miss the celebrations for Nunavut independence in 1999 (when the NW half of NWT becomes a separate territory, controlled by the Inuit people).
Chris said that the first year here was the toughest, adapting to the lifestyle, weather and daylight (or lack of). The sun disappears around mid November and, although there are twilight periods, does not appear again until the end of January. The strangest thing, according to Chris, is that first day the sun reappears, when it peaks over the horizon for literally seconds before disappearing again. The days then get rapidly longer, until by mid-May it never gets truly dark. It then stays that way until the end of July. To help get through summer, many people put aluminium foil over their bedroom windows, to keep the light and heat out so they can sleep. As for winter, well Chris described that as being like the very worst of Ontario winter weather for three months straight, and occasionally a "bit worse".
I also found out that the town has a population of about 1,400, of which 75-100 are non-Inuit. Many of the Inuit also have "camps" away from the town - shacks where they can go on weekends or as their mood takes them, to fish or trap. The only large game on this side of the island are musk ox; all the polar bears are on the other side of the island and don't venture over here. (Makes hiking here safer than Vancouver!) Caribou herds also pass through, but not at this time of year. Around town, some houses can be seen with hides out drying.
Social problems encountered here are similar to so many indigenous communities world wide: problems with alcoholism, lack of work spirit, and so on. Chris says that the Inuit are very good workers, when they are on the job. It's just their tendency to arrive late or not show up at all that causes them problems with non-Inuit employers. She wonders how a new territory can be run by officials and bureaucrats who take off fishing as and when they feel like it! However, recognizing traditional values, the new government system is being designed to allow people to do just that. In terms of alcohol, Cambridge Bay is not a dry town, unlike some in NWT. There is nowhere you can buy alcohol, but you can bring it in with you if you have been somewhere else (Yellowknife). That's why the beer dance last night was such a big thing - as alcohol was being served (albeit with a six can ration per person).
We also talk about Chris' travels in Australia, as she has been there several times to visit her son & daughter-in-law. She takes February vacations to central Australia and Far North Queensland to get a break from Cambridge Bay weather - talk about from one extreme to another!!!
Eventually get out a bit before noon. Late start, but then I have no worries about getting home before dark, because dark is a month away!!!
Wander through town, along the couple of streets I didn't check out last night. Some of the newer homes on the edge of town look quite good - could almost blend into city suburbia. But they are the exception. "Downtown" (ie: the couple of main blocks on the two main streets) also has quite a few sheet metal buildings, in addition to the pre-fab timber buildings. There is a tiny public library, a school, post office/Royal Bank (complete with ATM, things are changing fast here as up till last year there was only a bank agency but not an actual bank - the bank was in Yellowknife!), curling rink (essential in any Canadian town), fire station, power station (diesel generator) and a few other businesses, including Ross's Construction, which seems to employ about 1/2 the town, based on the number of trucks with his logo on them. Ross's also runs the gas station, where gas sells for 84 cents per litre (40% higher than in Vancouver).
As I head west out of town, I stumble upon a golf course!!! At first all I saw was one "green" (dirt with the rocks removed) with a number 6 flag in the hole, but no sign of a golf course. I thought it must have been the town's "practice green". Then I saw a sign about 50 metres away. It was a finger shaped sign, pointing out across some marshy tundra, that read "Hole No. 7, 446 yards, Par 5"!!! In the distance, I was able to pick out another flag, walked to it, and walked the next couple of holes also. This course has no tee boxes, and no fairways, only "greens". The rugged tundra between the tee and hole guarantee no roll whatsoever, and a damn tough time just trying to find your ball - especially in the marshy parts! I would feel quite safe betting that nobody has ever shot par on this course!! After finding the sign proclaiming that this area of tundra is the "Many Pebbles Municipal Golf Course", I continue west past the DEW early warning station to the airport.
At the airport, at one end the dirt "tarmac" had no fences or warning signs, so I wandered out for a closer look at the couple of charter and cargo planes parked there, and nobody seemed concerned. Continued west on the road, which looped up around the end of the runway, and on along West Arm (of Cambridge Bay). Along here there is some stiff competition for the White Cliffs of Dover, as a couple of steep embankments sloping down into West Arm have still not lost there ice cover, in spite of the warm weather. Pass one junk dumping ground as I keep walking west.
Wander out across the tundra to a high point (that would have been about half-a-dozen feet higher than the road) to see what I could see from there. When I got there, all I could see was more tundra, and another spot a few feet higher that prevented me from seeing further expanses of flat tundra! Decided this was a good spot for lunch, as I was hungry, and the flies and mozzies here were no hungrier than anywhere else I had been today! As a vast expanse, the tundra may look fairly brown and dull, but up close it is actually quite beautiful, with masses of yellow, white and purple flowers, rocks covered in coloured lichens, and "trees" that spread their branches wide and grow to about 4-6 inches high. However a dog would be in real trouble out here, as the nearest real tree is about 1000 miles south of here!!!
Continue on after lunch. There is a little traffic on the road - people in trucks and on 4-wheelers coming and going from their camps. Pass the end of West Arm, and start to pass a few camps. The "camps" are just isolated shacks that are even more eclectic than the houses in town. Indeed, a few shacks till have "NWTHC, Ship to: Cambridge Bay" (NWT Housing Corporation) painted on their plywood walls. So obviously, the camp shacks have been built from the packing cases that the prefab houses in town came in!
Eventually make it to the end of the road, and the coast (North West Passage), about 10km from town. There are lots of camps here, and I sit on the shale beach and watch the fisherman out on the ice. They have had to use their dinghies to cross the approx. 5 metre melted gap between the shore and the pack ice, but then pull their boats up on the ice and walk from there. There are other melted channels and cracks in the ice further out, but nothing that cannot be waded (in gumboots) or jumped. The men are fishing with nets and lines through the cracks in the ice, and the kids run around nearby, with their own fishing lines.
There is also one young obviously-new-couple, about my age. She looks all dressed up for an afternoon outing - out fishing on the ice. They decide to pack it in - the guy helps his girl back across the ice, into their dinghy for the trip back to shore, and they then jump on a four-wheeler back to town! So that's what you do for a romantic afternoon outing in Cambridge Bay!!
I walk up the coast a bit. There are some better shacks up here. One has the right idea, with a big verandah facing the sea and comfy-looking bench seats out on the verandah. Find a secluded cove and decide to do something rather crazy. Has been a long hot walk all afternoon, with the sun in a largely cloudless sky, so my feet are really hot. I pull off the shoes and socks and go for a quick wade in the area close to shore where the ice has melted. Is a vary quick wade, as by the time I have waded out 2 double-paces, the chill has reached the bone and I make a rapid retreat back to shore, where I sit in the sun and enjoy the refreshing after-effect on my feet from their brief immersion. Indeed, the after effect is so pleasant that I'm stupid enough to go in for a second time!!!
After that I head back to town. Traffic has died down, so I make it all the way back to the airport before I manage to pick-up a lift for the last couple of km into town. Along the way, stop to chat with a guy repairing a dirt bike about 6km out of town. His brother owes him a big favour, as it is his brother's bike. His brother had told him that it was a front gear problem. So he had walked all the way from town to the abandonned bike with the parts to fix it, only to find it was a rear gear problem, so he had to walk back to town to get different parts!!!
Get back into town about 7:30pm, have missed dinner here at the hotel, as dinner is 5-6pm. Wander over to the other hotel (the "fancy" one), hoping dinner there may be later. It is: 5:30-6:30pm!! But there is still someone about, so I manage to buy two cold cans of soft drink and a piece of apple pie to go with the Korean instant noodles I have in my bag in my room! Watch Detroit TV over dinner. Then type this.
Now 10:50pm, the sun is still well and truly up and it is still pleasant sitting by an open window in a T-shirt. I'm about to go out for a walk to see how high the sun is (can't see it from here). More later....
At 11:20pm, the sun is still about 10 degrees above the horizon, as it loops around toward the north. It reaches its low point in the north some time around 1 am (subject to where we lie relative to the true centre of the time zone, and allowing for summer time change), and then its high point in the south some time around 1pm. Thirty minutes more and I can take those long awaited photos! Then time to put the spare blanket over the window, pretend it's dark, and sleep!
Monday, July 1st. Canada Day.
Well I can now guarantee that it doesn't get dark. I woke a few times during the night, and to see it sunny at 3am, for some reason, seemed more bizarre than sun at midnight.
Had breakfast with 2 guys from England - the older of whom is a professional tourist, bird watcher and book writer. Although his first time in Cambridge Bay, he has been other places in the Canadian Arctic, as well as Iceland, Norway, Spitzbergen and other far north areas to watch birds. Hmm, I know birds are nice, but..... Chris also joins us for a chat and cup of tea.
The morning has started cooler, probably around 10C, but who knows. As for what it's going to be, who knows. Ask a local, they look out the window, see the clouds, and tell you it's probably going to be cloudy today!!! But I can understand the problem. There is no NWT-TV (CBC North covers Yukon, NWT, Arctic Quebec and Labrador), and weather reports from further south never have forecasts for places north of Yellowknife (if they actually show Yellowknife at all! There is no local newspaper (But on Tuesday, find a NWT-wide newspaper from Yellowknife, dated Monday that is more a weekly gossip and community events paper than a newspaper). The only real source of weather (other than looking out the window) is the radio, and CBC North Radio is a true mish-mash of programming from Toronto and Calgary with a little "local" stuff thrown in. Even "local" doesn't necessarily refer to your area. While on Saturday night they had weather reports for all Northern Canada, this morning they started with Baffin Island (next to Greenland) and worked west, but ran out of time or details by the time they got to Resolute, which is about 400km east and 1500km north of here!!! And with long distance phone costs and hassles (no phones in rooms here), I rather trust the locals "head out the window" approach, rather than dial up and connect to Environment Canada's web site, where I know I can get a forecast for Cambridge Bay.
Well, the locals were right that "its probably going to be cloudy", as it was for about an hour after I set out (at 9:30am), but the clouds then cleared and we returned to the beautiful, warm sunny weather.
I was heading inland, north-east, today. As I head out of town I chat with three little kids, who act surprised that I don't want to go for a swim (do they think I'm stupid???), but seem genuinely surprised when I tell them I'm going to climb Mt Pelly, which is almost 20km from town. They decide that fishing is a better way to spend the day!!!
On the way out of town I make two brief detours, as the road passes by the metal dump and the cemetery. The metal dump is one of the larger piles of rusting scrap I have ever seen - trucks, skidoos, fridges, dirt bikes, microwaves, water tanks, you name it. Of course, up here there is no recycling capability, and who can afford to freight stuff out (mainly by air) for recycling? So it is dumped, in this metal graveyard where things will survive many, many years before slowly rusting away, given that they spend most of the year in the deep freeze.
The cemetery was also interesting. Remarkably small for a town this size, and very few old graves. But the graves here are well tended, with flowers and photos adorning the simple wooden crosses that give little, if any, information about the dead. But just based on size, there are a lot of infant graves. Over breakfast, Chris had been telling us about the cemetery. Due to permafrost, it is impossible to dig deeper than 1-2 feet (which is why houses sit up on blocks and electricity poles are planted in mounds of rock), so coffins are buried in very shallow graves. This isn't a problem, as the bodies never really decompose - being just 12 inches underground, over summer they never truly defrost before they are frozen again in late summer. Chris said that the only problem is with the occasional body rising up, but when that happens they just stack some more rocks over the top of it!
Eventually get away from town, and follow the imaginatively titled Freshwater Creek upstream. This creek is the fast-flowing outflow of Greiner Lake, an approx. 40 sq.km. lake about 6 km inland from the town. The road continues along the creek and the east shore of the lake to the foot of Mt Pelly, and a number of people from town have their camps out along the lake shore.
A few km further on there are some stone circles, remnants of the pre-town era, when the people always lived in camps, with summer tents of skin anchored down by these circles of rocks.
Although it is a long walk today (18km from the town to the foot of Mt Pelly), it certainly is not dull. There is more green ground cover here than where I was yesterday, giving a brighter appearance to the tundra. It is also more undulating, with numerous small knolls and ridges breaking the 50 foot-above- sea level mark!!! This means that lakes, knolls and marshy lake-connectors are far better defined than out west, where it was very tough to predict where it may or may not be wet underfoot. Also, the water here is far more animated, with more ice still to melt, water flows between the lakes can be quite significant, whereas out west yesterday the lakes seemed generally fairly stagnant, with any excess having already drained away.
I also see quite a lot of musk-ox, the only big game in this area at this time of year. The musk-ox is the big shaggy buffalo-like creature, that has the mangiest-looking coat of any animal ever known!! But in spite of their size, I had been told that they run from humans, and indeed they do. At one stage I set off across the tundra away from the road to get a closer look at some of the musk ox - always keeping a lake between me and them. It seems so bizarre to see these massive creatures here, in an area where most life forms are best viewed under a magnifying glass - tiny wildflowers, lichens, spiders, flying bugs, etc.
Eventually make it to the foot of Mt Pelly, and start the ascent. Not exactly stuff that mountaineers are made of, but after 18km rambling across all-but-flat terrain, to climb 690 feet in 2 kilometres is quite a radical change! Most of the mountain is just bare shale and pebbles, and the slopes are not steep. Once at the top, I immediately pull on my Goretex, as the wind is just a wee bit cool, and shorts-and-T-shirt are not exactly the ideal form of clothing up here. Still, its not 1/4 as cold as atop peaks in the Rockies last summer - so obviously the extra 2000m altitude counts for more than an extra 15 degrees of latitude in the cold stakes!!!
The views are sensational though. Literally hundreds, or thousands, of lakes. The larger lakes still have some ice in them, and Greiner Lake is still largely frozen over. It's now 2:30pm, and the sun is near its highest point off in the SSW. Looking back towards Cambridge Bay, with the sunlight shining off all these lakes, is an amazing view. Beyond the town, is the frozen North West Passage, with continental North America visible on the horizon beyond that. Off in the north-west Mt Lady Pelly (524ft) is clearly visible, being the only other "mountain" in this corner of Victoria Island. Parts of frozen Lake Ferguson can also be seen, as it cuts its approx. 10x60km swathe through the landscape to the north of Mt Pelly and Mt Lady Pelly. Is quite an amazing feeling, on Canada Day, to seemingly have such a vast tract of the country all to myself. (Although not so surprising given that in NWT population density is something like 60 sq.km. per person - not 60 persons per sq.km.!!!)
Closer by, on the summit of Pelly, there is a plaque, laid in 1989, commemorating all the Inuit who have served in the Canadian Armed Forces. Time for lunch, photos and writing postcards before starting the descent.
On the way out this morning, the road had been dead quiet: two 4-wheelers had passed me heading out of town, and one 4x4 had passed me heading into town. Hardly a lot of traffic in 4 hours! And nearly all the camps I passed were empty, so sources for traffic looked pretty poor! Given this, I was not happy when, as I neared the foot of Mt Pelly, I saw a 4x4 pass by heading into town, less than 3 minutes before I made it back to the road!!! Ah well, looks like a long walk!
However, about 1/4 of the way back to town, a pick-up comes along, and I join the 8 people already in the back of it for the ride into town. Is an interesting trip however, as I sit next to an old woman who has lived in Cambridge Bay all her life, and I get her talking on the changes she has seen. In 1945, when she first came into the town from a camp, the Hudsons Bay Company (now a major department store, but for 300 years a frontier trading company) was the only thing located on the current site of the town. The RCMP (police) and couple of other official buildings were all located across the mouth of Freshwater Creek from the current town. This area is now abandonned, but on the standard government topographic maps I have (drafted in 1960) both sides of the creek are shown as being equally developed. Since then, houses have gradually developed. The arrival of the DEW Line radar station in the 1950's saw a big change on the town, with more outsiders and more planes coming into the town. And soon the town is to change yet again, changing its name from Cambridge Bay to Ikaluktutiak, as all the towns in the new territory of Nunavut gradually revert to their native names.
Arrive back at the hotel in time for dinner (ie: before 6pm). With dinner, there is no menu, the only question is whether you want dinner or not - you get whatever has been cooked that day. Today it was roast beef and vegetables, plus raspberries and ice cream for desert. Not exactly a gourmet meal for the $25 price tag, but after a day's solid hiking it is better than another sandwich made with stuff I brought up from Vancouver. As for the price, well everything is dear here. $2 for a can of soft drink. $2.50 for a standard loaf of bread. Double what you pay in Vancouver. Not surprising given almost everything is flown in, after all shipping is only possible for about 1 month in the year. The English guys this morning were telling me that their flight up here was delayed due to problems in loading a new pick-up truck into the 737! The delivery charges would almost double the price of the vehicle! That, and the 84 cent gas price, explain why the 4-wheelers are so popular - cheaper to get here and cheaper to run.
Over dinner, talk with a Vancouver guy who works for a helicopter company in Central BC. (It's the sort of place where you walk into the dining room, sit down with whoever is there, and try to work out why the hell you're both here, but tend not to find out people's names!!) Some company has hired one of their choppers for surveying work up here, but he doesn't know who the company is or what they are surveying - he just keeps the chopper working for the two shifts a day of survey work. Like all work up here, the aim is to finish as soon as possible - to get home and to get away from the expense of staying here. The survey guys work two 12 hour shifts a day - making use of the 24 hour daylight. All the construction workers up here work 7 days a week. No point not working, all you want to do is get the job finished. Anyway, the chopper guy is here for another two weeks, then has to work from a bush camp on the north side of the island for another week before getting to go home.
As I finish typing this, out my window I am watching as three guys try moving a 10-foot-cube shipping crate down a rocky hillside using a four-wheeler! This sure ain't Vancouver, but it wouldn't want to be. All the Inuit I have met are amazingly friendly, warm people - and they have managed to maintain that warmth in spite of the difficulties of life in the 90's, and the -50 degree winter weather!! Cambridge Bay is certainly not a place I would want to live, but given the opportunity of another free plane ticket some time, maybe is a place I would come back to....
Just back in from my evening walk. The clouds have rolled in and for the first time it feels like the Arctic out there, as the wind goes straight through you. However, summer is coming fast. On Saturday night, there was still a lot of ice in the mouth of Freshwater Creek, tonight there is none. The ice also appears to be melting fast in Cambridge Bay. It needs to, as by the end of this month, the NW Passage is meant to be open for its brief shipping season. On the way back in, I run into the chopper guy, back from the airport having got the second shift into the air. He and I talk about the speed of the ice melt, and wonder what has become of the tin cans, sleighs and a snowmobile that were sitting out on the ice off town two days ago, in an area that is now open water.
Meanwhile, I see out my window that the guys have finished moving the shipping crate to its new home, next to a house. They are now busy loading tools, tricycles and other assorted odds and ends into their new "garden" shed! One thing about Cambridge Bay - it is so difficult to get stuff here, that once here, nothing usable goes to waste.
Tuesday, July 2nd.
Breakfast starts out boring today - the workers are all long since gone, and the English guys are heading out as I leave. They have managed to hire a 4-wheeler ($80) from a guy who didn't need his for the day. They are planning to head out further into the tundra to look for different birds (ie: the ones not scared away by the sound of an approaching 4-wheeler).
As I am about to leave, Chris' husband (Frank?) comes in, having just got back from several days out fishing. He and I get talking - re Australia - but also transport here. He tells me that August is shipping month - about mid-August an ice breaker comes through the passage, and about a week later, the annual Sea-Lift barge arrives. The barges are loaded in Hay River, NWT (on Great Slave Lake, south of Yellowknife) and then travel down the Mackenzie River and through the NW Passage to the various communities. The barge normally brings 6-10 new vehicles, mountains of building supplies, and anything else that can be stacked into a container. It also picks up all the empty containers left by last year's barge. If you miss the barge shipment, air is the only option - on a passenger/freight flight, or by Hercules. NWT Air has a Hercules for charter ($5000 per hour). With the DEW line station, the air force also has a Hercules, and can bring freight in (at a price) if they have space left on one of their flights. Certainly then, the cost of missing that barge is fairly high!!!
Spent the day roaming around town, and even got to check out the town store, which was open for the first time since I arrived. It is the original general store, with food, pharmaceuticals, clothing, electricals, CD's, outdoor equipment, the works. And in case they don't have what you are after, there is an extensive catalogue by the door, so you can order that new lounge suite, rifle, 4-wheeler, or outboard motor. The store is simply called "Northern", and its not hard to tell that it's run by Northerners, for the Northern lifestyle. Looking around, a few prices are similar to down south, but for most things price tags are 50% to 100% higher, with some things being as much as 300% higher! There is also a take-out food department, that is a combined KFC Express, Pizza Hut Express (Express = limited menu), ice-cream bar, video library and news agency! This is the only eatery in town, other than the two hotel dining rooms, with their extremely limited meal hours. I try the pizza for lunch, and as warned by one of the guys in the taxi on Saturday, they manage to redefine greasy pizza!!! But still, it is a change from the salami, bread and cheese I had brought up from Vancouver, which is now not the greatest anyway after 4 days without refrigeration!
Check out a few new housing developments - there would be about half a dozen houses nearing completion in different parts of the town. Just from the different styles of housing, with newer housing having a distinctly less "temporary, pre-fab" feel, it is easy to see that development has been rapid in the last few years. This is also evidenced by the new building for the Northern store, the take-out bar, the bank, and a new school nearing completion for the coming school year. All this development is due to the impending separation of Nunavut. Ikaluktutiak will be a major regional centre in Nunavut, not so surprising given it would be among the three or four largest towns in the new territory. The capital of Nunavut is to be Iqaluit, with a population of approx. 3500. Other than that, Rankin Inlet is probably the only other town that may be larger than Cambridge Bay/Ikaluktutiak. From what I have heard of the other communities up here, they tend to range in size from 500 people down.
Also visit the regional tourist centre, which has also been closed since I arrived. They have some fascinating displays on the exploration of the NW passage, and the traditional cultures of the Inuit. Talking with its sole staff member, I am surprised to find the volume of tourism they get here, largely from Europe, but even one recent group from Australia. Relatively little tourism however from southern Canada - not surprising given that the general reaction I got in Vancouver was "Where are you going?". The volume of tourism surprises me because, although the tundra is beautiful and the bird watching is great, there are none of the attractions here that the other Arctic communities offer. There are no huge caribou or reindeer herds in summer, unlike Inuvik/Tuktoyaktuk. There is no giant national park, unlike Ellesmere Island. No sensational hikes, unlike Iqaluit. No polar bears, unlike Churchill. Because of these things, it is the other communities that get write-ups in all the tourist books, while Cambridge Bay rates only a by-line, if that! Considering all this, I expected the locals to be surprised at the idea of anyone coming here as a tourist, but not so. Still, I am glad Ikaluktutiak is a relatively undiscovered gem, as I like it that way. It wouldn't be the same with more than a few tourists here at any one time.
From the tourist centre, I also learn the distinction in languages encountered up here. Around town, most signs are written in Roman characters, although there are some signs in the phonetic alphabet seen so often throughout the NWT. (All signs are also in English) The Roman alphabet is used for the representation of Inuinakton, the regional dialect. The phonetic alphabet, which was developed by a priest/missionary more than a century ago, is used for Inuktitut, the base language understood by all Inuit, regardless of their regional dialect. In translation; Inuk = person; Nuna = land; Nunavut = Our Land.
Eventually, unfortunately, it is time to leave. Go back to Northern to stock up on frozen musk-ox burgers before heading to the airport for the flight to Yellowknife. In this laid back town, I stand out on the edge of the dirt tarmac area and watch as the freight is unloaded from the 737. Doesn't take long to load the little bit of cargo going back the other way. Farewell, the beautiful Arctic sun and board the plane. As we take off into the east, get some final sensational views back over the town and the bay, which has half-thawed in the four days I have been here. Can look back on West Arm, which is still refusing to melt, the DEW station, and the airport, as the huge dust cloud generated by our take off gradually dissipates in the breeze. We then turn and head out across the NW Passage, and within ten minutes are back over continental North America, leaving Victoria Island behind.
All things considered; the heat, the dust, the bugs, the basic facilities, the beat-up forms of transport, the local language; it is hard to believe you are in Canada. But the north is developing fast, as on the way up here I was reading of the spread of the Internet in the north. (Hey, even I managed to get some e-mail out, in spite of crackly satellite-phone links!) Nunavut has its own home page, and a few schools up north are starting to get Internet in the classrooms. This will surely revolutionize an area where radio telephones are still common, and any long distance phone call is, at best, distant and scratchy. But whatever happens in the future, however fast things change, one very common northern expression will always stay true: "Things are different up here". Not better, not worse, just different.
Now sitting out on an embankment just outside Yellowknife airport, waiting for yet another plane. After only 4 days in Cambridge Bay, Yellowknife is just too much culture shock. Coming into land, could see high rise (approx. 10 story) buildings, and paved 4-lane roads. Upon entering the terminal, it was packed, with several flights having just arrived or about to leave. Must have been a couple of hundred people milling about - 20 times more than any group I have seen in the last few days! And so crowded after all that open space. Come out and find a "quiet" spot to sit - overlooking a lake (and a 4 lane road). More culture shock - buses, conventional cars, trees, no 4-wheelers, no dust. At least there is one constant - Yellowknife is also in lake country, so there is no shortage of mozzies!!!! It really amazed me, as a big-city-kid, that I could have such acute culture shock upon returning to a "big" city!!
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this insight into a remote part of Canada. (Obviously you did, or you never have made it this far, having long ago trashed this message!)
Ciao...... Glenn
