One of the world’s last great wild places
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
Robert Service
Having just come back from an expedition to the Arctic, I decided to start this off with a quote from Robert Service. And, by the way, in case you are wondering how you would “moil,” it apparently means to “drudge in the mud.” I learned that in a crossword puzzle a couple of years ago.
It all started earlier this summer when I saw an ad in the Walrus magazine that they were sponsoring an expedition to Baffin Island and further north, to be run by Adventure Canada, an outfit that organizes such trips.
I would guess that the Arctic is among the final frontiers of exploration on this planet. There are horrific stories from what has been called an era of “Ships of Wood and Men of Iron” from the 1700’s to the early 20th century, probing the vast icy reaches looking for a northwest passage to the Orient. Then, in the late 19th century, explorers began trying to reach the North Pole, and even when Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909, not everyone believed him.
What I did learn about the Arctic reinforces my understanding that survival here is a skill and this land does not suffer fools. Coincidentally, the federal government just recently announced it will fund yet another attempt to find the remains of the Franklin expedition which disappeared in 1846 with two ships and about 130 men.
This would be one of the great successes in marine archaeology, to find the two ships, the HMS Erebus and Terror, in which Sir John Franklin set forth in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage. Of course, no one returned, which launched one of the greatest searches in exploration history. In the 12 years following their disappearance, a total of eight expeditions were dispatched, financed by everyone from the British navy and the Hudson’s Bay Company to Franklin’s wife.
In the mid-1980’s, University of Alberta researchers discovered the graves of three of Franklin’s men on Beechey Island, where they died in 1846 as the expedition wintered there. Of course there were lots of other explorers, like Roald Amundsen, John Davis, Erik The Red, Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson, to name only a few.
One of my favourites is Alexander Mackenzie who, in the late 1700’s got lost trying to find a way to the Pacific. Mistakenly taking a river (later called the Mackenzie) that ended up in the Arctic, he called it the River of Disappointment. He returned to Britain and spent a year studying navigation before taking another crack at it. Eventually he made it through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, being the first European to do it. A rock in Bella Coola, B.C., can still be seen, the inscription reading, “Alex Mackenzie from Canada by Land 22nd July 1793.”
Anyway, as I was saying, we have just come back from a trip to the Arctic, which included a walk on Beechey Island and a humble view of the legendary graves. If you want to look at an Arctic map, you will find Beechey Island at the southwest end of Devon Island, just above Baffin Island. It is, in fact, way up there.
By the way, Beechey Island is actually a peninsula, and is only an island when the tide is in.
What can I tell you about the Canadian Arctic? The vastness, the spectacular scenery, the mountains. It was wonderful. I can understand now what is meant by “Arctic Fever.” There are people who go there to work and don’t want to leave. I met some of them.
Small communities, like Clyde River and Pond Inlet, are mostly populated by Inuit, many of whom still live off hunting and fishing. We went on a number of walks, but we always had someone with us who had a rifle just in case we bumped into a polar bear. In fact, there were occasional bears, as well as walrus, seals, bowhead whales and lots of arctic birds.
Whenever we went into a community, the locals would entertain us. Throat Singing is very popular but, to be candid, if you were blindfolded, you would think it sounded like a couple making out in the next room.
In Pond Inlet, the local teenagers challenged the ship to a soccer game in the gym at the local community centre. The kids won by a huge margin, despite our putting more and more players out on the floor until we outnumbered them about three to one. The goal posts were a couple of orange traffic pylons and we kept sneaking ours closer together, but nothing helped.
Nunavut is Canada’s newest territory, as of April 1, 1999. Small settlements dot the landscape, but the region remains one of the world’s last great wild places. Ice caps produce glaciers that spill to a sea frozen for most of the year. Icebergs the size of apartment buildings float past the coastline. Nature tends to humble you here.
Let me leave you with a few Inuktituk words. Kayak, by the way is one of them. And Nunavut. “Nuna” means “land” and “vut” is “our,” all of which gives you, “our land.” Of course, everyone knows that a nanook is a polar bear.
See you next month. Ta-vau-vu-tit, which, of course, means “Good bye”
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