In Ungava now called Nunavik (Arctic Quebec) at the age of seventeen.
In the early summer of 1949, I was no longer in the forest. The only trees I encountered were no higher than the length of my hand. I was now in the Arctic, where the earth remained permanently frozen. I was surrounded by a vast horizon, a sight I could never have imagined. Until that day, the Arctic of my imagination had been only a barren and icebound landscape. It was the most forbidding place, shaped in the mind’s eye by heroic tales and films that dramatized the land and its people. Even the numerous and often startling photographs I had seen merely confirmed my impression of a frightfully beautiful, frozen corner of the planet. In the years to follow, the Arctic I would come to know extended far beyond the boundaries of my imagination.
The powerful landscape of the Pangnirtung Pass (Pangnirtuuq), Baffin Island.
CONTOURS OF THE LAND
Arctic. The very word conjures an image of a frozen landscape in the grip of an icy sea. A place of icebergs and polar bears, where winter is cloaked in darkness and summer is an endless moment under the midnight sun. The stereotypical image we southerners have of the polar region emerged from early accounts of whalers and the few survivors of doomed expeditions. These words, written in the golden age of Arctic exploration, reflected what many souls endured at that time: “We seem to be dwelling in some haunted house filled with unearthly and mysterious noises,” wrote Charles Edward Smith, the surgeon aboard the icebound whaler Diana in 1886. “We sit like hares, startled and alarmed at the slightest sound dreading and fearing we know not what.”
Woodcuts and copperplate engravings often illustrated a fantastic world in which life and death teetered on the sharp edge of chance. All the while, somewhere out there lived a people who had adapted perfectly to their environment. They beheld their place as nunatsiaq, the beautiful land. To those who lived in favoured locations, it was nunatiavaluk, a very fine land rich in food and beautiful to behold. Nunarrak, the land, sea, and sky, was regarded as great living thing. Upon and within her dwelled the tuurngait, the spirits, and all things were temporarily imbued with inua, the life force.
The Arctic is often described as a cold desert where precipitation, including melting snow, averages a mere 14 to 26 centimetres annually. Imagine a place with so little precipitation, where winter temperatures average -34° Celsius and can plummet to -60° Celsius; where just below its surface, the earth can be frozen solid for hundreds of metres; where whatever soil thaws in summer is poor in nutrients, and anything that can grow must do so within 50 days.
When you stand upon the Arctic landscape for the first time, you are overwhelmed by its vastness, power, and sheer beauty. Whether you are at the foot of a glacier, on the crest of a mountain, or on the great plains of the central Arctic, you are surrounded by evidence of the unimaginable forces that shape mountains, melt glaciers, move oceans, and drive winds as far as the Gulf of Mexico.
No general profile of the Arctic landscape exists. The shape of the land varies from the great delta plain of the Mackenzie in the west to the imposing mountains of Ellesmere and Baffin in the east. Travelling by airplane from Inuvik to Iqaluit, you can appreciate the grandeur of the Canadian North. You begin the journey in the far west, gazing upon the sinuous delta landscape, an endless maze of twisting rivers and lakes — a surrealistic view of the planet where the infinite number of lakes and twisting rivers reflects images of clouds, as if the Earth were a giant perforated leaf floating on a calm, glassy sea.
As you travel eastward, the landscape changes from the water world of the delta to vast lowlands sweeping toward the coast. They pass in sombre tones of grey and brown, stretching to infinity. Here and there, last year’s snowdrifts lie in the protection of shadows, waiting for the arrival of winter. Below, you see the shadow of your plane continually changing shape as you pass over countless eskers, rivers, and lakes.
Flying over the west coast of Hudson Bay, you note the landscape lies flat, shaved by the glacier that scoured this place a mere 9,500 years ago. You are about to be astonished. There it is: You now behold an Arctic shaped by mountains, snowfields, glaciers, and icebergs. This is the Arctic described in heroic accounts, stories, songs, dreams, and nightmares. At first, you are spellbound. Then inwardly, you come face to face with your utter insignificance. You are exposed to the terrible realization of your vulnerability; everything you have ever learned is irrelevant because, unequipped with the knowledge and skill of how to survive on the land, you are likely to die here in a matter of days if left alone.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
For my generation, getting up to the Arctic was easy. Weather permitting, I could fly to the most remote regions in a day or two. Yet just a single generation before mine, those hearty souls who ventured north were resigned to the prospect that it might take them at least a year or longer, depending on the weather, to reach their destination. At that time, getting to the Arctic was by way of train to the end of the line, then a stomach- churning voyage on a small supply ship, often followed by walking and sledding enormous distances. There was no food supply from the outside world, no global positioning system, no sideband radio. The essentials were simple: Learn from the Inuit how to survive, make no mistakes, and regard hardship, no matter how severe, as a natural occurrence to overcome. Savour a sense of personal triumph, however small. In those early days, grants, steady wages, or sponsors were rarely available to those travelling to the Arctic. Many paid the costs of doing their fieldwork out of their own pocket.
I arrived in Cape Dorset — or Kinngait as it is also referred to — in 1958, when I was 26 years old. At the time, I was working with the Department of Northern Affairs as an industrial designer. The department did groundbreaking work, such as developing the Arctic char fishery, a lumber operation on the George River, and, most important, a network of Inuit cooperatives across the Arctic.
When I arrived, Cape Dorset was a pleasant community of about 700 people, many living in flimsy shelters known as “matchboxes.” The town faced the sea and was blessed with good hunting in the surrounding area. A few people were still living in permanent camps along the coast and came into Dorset to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. At the time, probably fewer than 100 qallunaat, white people, lived in the entire eastern Arctic (excluding military personnel). This number would swell each summer when a few dozen scientists arrived just in time to feed our little leituriaraluit, voracious mosquitoes.
In those days, many Inuit of southwest Baffin Island, historically known as Sikusiilaq, were still living on the land. Though they were equipped with rifles and an increasing number of articles obtained from the qallunaat, staying alive still meant securing enough food to keep from starving, fashioning one’s own clothing and shelter to keep from dying of exposure, and rearing children who were expected to be future providers. Such was the taimaigiakaman, “the great necessity.”
It was with these people of Cape Dorset that I would develop a lasting friendship. Many had recently started living in settlements. They left behind articles designed for living entirely off the land. They brought to Cape Dorset few material goods — perhaps a harpoon for seal hunting, a stone lamp handed down from mother to daughter, and other assorted articles of sentimental value. They also brought vivid memories of their traditional way of life and enduring perceptions of both the physical and metaphysical world that continued to exist just beyond the visible limits of their new settlement.
The familiar expression “going out on the land” meant leaving the often mundane life in the settlement. Going out on the land also meant journeys upon the sea or ice to locations dear to the heart: returning to the places of one’s childhood and family life,
