Sadie Lester

In the early 90s, we were students learning to be guides in the park. We went up for a hiking trip and a canoe trip. Later on, I went up as a cook for the Management Board.

You know, me, I was really lucky with the Board—being a cook, staying in camp… I told them I didn’t only go up to be a cook. I wanna go hiking and do things, too! They were really good about that. They let me go hiking with them and I got to see the country up there.

The last time we went up, we were at the lake; halfway in between that lake is Nunavut! We canoed across. We fried our fish up outside, and it was so awesome to be in the lake, half of it is Nunavut and half it is NWT. It was that year Joe Robert went up for bear monitoring; Donna came as a cook’s helper, and I went up as a head cook. And it was a learning experience because all of those board members had different diets, and you gotta cook different meals for them. But it was a good experience; in our community, we don’t have all these different people with special diets, so you gotta be careful of what you cook.

TUKTUT NURRAIT TANMAAQTARVIKTIGUN UQALIAQSAQ NAITTUARAALUK

TUKTUT NOGAIT IN ONE WORD beauty of the land and the preservation of the caribou, because the caribou always migrate, and they have their babies up there, too. Just the beauty of the country we own.

My favourite location has gotta be the Falls, it’s so beautiful. I love everything about the park but the highlight was being able to stand right beside the Roncière Falls. We were beside the falls, but we didn’t know there was a way down where you actually could stand beside them. It was just—the cliffs, or the hill, was a little way down and we didn’t know that if we went by a certain way we could actually go right down by the falls.

It does look like cowboy country—it’s straight flat rock this way, cuts straight up, straight flat again beside the Falls. When you look this way, it looks like canyons from a cowboy movie. And you look this way, there’s only one spot in the park, beside the Falls there’s rough rocks. In one part, it’s like somebody took sandpaper and just smoothed all the rocks out. It’s just unreal! That’s the first thing I thought of was “cowboy movie” with them canyons.

I never did see live wolverine in my life, so much caribou, them peregrine falcons, bears, wolves… Lots! It’s unreal to watch wildlife. Even that bear we saw. Caribous from far away gathered, but the bear never bothered, it probably wasn’t hungry. Boy, they scattered from miles far away from that bear.

The Park is named after our caribou—the migrating of the caribou, the calves, the younger calves. It’s about trying to preserve the caribou, especially the land. Because you need to have respect and keep it clean, and it’s just the beauty, the peacefulness… just like, there’s so much to explore every day.

You know, a lot of people live here in Paulatuuq all their life and they never ever get the opportunity to go up, see the country we live in. I’d like to have more trips, especially in the summer, for people in the community to go up and enjoy the beauty. Visitors get to learn the respect—you know, not to dirty the park. You know not to even fiddle with and leave anything behind there.

I like the worker we have up here now for Parks (Stephanie Yuill) because she always has scavenger hunts daily, or every second day, to get everybody involved! It would be nice if they could push for more trips up there for the people. My one wish ever since I got sick… I never ever went back to the park, but my one wish is to go back up there, just to be like a tourist and enjoy the beauty, enjoy travelling the different places.