Issue 287: July/August 2012 by Up Here magazine

WIN

A TRIP TO

CANADA’S ARCTIC PAGE 9

SUN! SAND! SEX IN A CANOE!

YUKON GOLD SEEKER Zach Bell, Olympian P14

SUMMER FUN ISSUE

‘WHEN WE WERE STARVING’ Last days of the Garry Lake Inuit P72

JULY/AUGUST 2012

24 THINGS WE

LOVE ABOUT SUMMER (including, of course, skinny dipping)

‘W WHAT I DID ON MY

SUMMER VACATION’

Eva Holland cracks a beer with Skagway’s seasonal workers P40 Patrick Kane nearly drowns at the North’s best paddling fest P48

COME EXPLORE US ONLINE

W WWW.UPHERE.CA DISPLAY UNTIL AUG 31 PM40049058 R09357

CANADA $4.95

ᔪᓚᐃ 9 ᓄᓇᕗᑦ ᐅᓪᓗᐊ! • July 9 is Nunavut Day! Taaqnirmun Aullaqtirvia 9 una Nunavut Ublua! Le 9 juillet est la journée du Nunavut!

JULY/AUGUST 2012

up here up here

contents

LIFE IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

FEATURES

32 Hot damn, summer is here! After enduring the polar deep-freeze for the past eight months, Northerners are ecstatic for the warm season. From sun and sand to salmon bakes and citronella coils (buzz off, bugs!), here are the 24 things we love most about summer.

40 ‘I found the sweet life’ Every summer, hundreds of seasonal workers flood tiny Skagway, Alaska. They scrub toilets, scrounge for tips and flop in slum-camps. EVA HOLLAND cracked a beer with them and discovered they’re the luckiest people alive.

Me and the wonderful whitewater wayfarers

Each August, scores of kayakers converge on the NWT’s Slave River Rapids for the North’s most epic paddling festival. PATRICK KANE jumped in a boat to join them – and quickly found he was in way over his head.

58 At the gates of a strange kind of heaven It’s the first thing you come to when you cross into the North: a tidy building in a clearing in the forest. Congratulations, you’ve reached the 60th Parallel Visitor Centre. Welcome to the madness. BY

KATHERINE LAIDLAW

WIN

A TRIP TO

CANADA’S ARCTIC PAGE 9

ISSUE SUN! SAND! SEX IN A CANOE!SUMMER

YUKON GOLD SEEKER Zach Bell, Olympian P14

‘WHEN WE WERE STARVING’ Last days of the Garry Lake Inuit P72

72 ON THE COVER: Peter Sheldon hucks a ’bee in a backwoods pool. Photo: Patrick Kane

JULY/AUGUST 2012

24 THINGS WE

THIS PAGE: Whitewater kayak pro Leif Anderson strikes a pose beside the mighty Slave River. Photo: Patrick Kane

LOV LOVE ABOUT SUMMER (including, of course, skinny dipping)

‘W WHAT I DID ON MY

SUMMER VACATION’

Eva Holland cracks a beer with Skagway's seasonal workers P40 Patrick Kane nearly drowns at the North's best paddling fest P48

COME EXPLORE US ONLINE

WWW.UPHERE.CA W DISPLAY UNTIL AUG 31 PM40049058 R09357

CANADA $4.95

GN_CL GN_Cl

JULY/AUGUST 2012

contents

28 COLUMNS

24 ARCTIC DISPATCHES Ice fishermen keep it ‘reel’; picking through the past in Norman Wells; skiing with Scruffy on Frobisher Bay. 28 OUR PEOPLE. Bookworm? Nope. He’s the Arctic’s most agressive antiquarian – and he’s rewriting the polar past. BY NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

DUE NORTH 14 GOLD SEEKER A Yukon cyclist pedals for the medals at the London Olympic Games.

72 LOOKING BACK When a good father brought the gospel to the Barrenlands, it was bad news for the inland Inuit. BY JENNIFER KINGSLEY

15 FLUSH WITH VICTORY Have Yellowknife’s city fathers sent honeybuckets down the drain? Alert

16 ON THE MOOOO-VE Why muskoxen are horning in on the boreal forest. 20 MAC BOOKS Two new manuals point the way down the mighty Mackenzie.

76 EXPOSURE True, the Merv Hardie river ferry is no luxury liner, but it’s still the North’s best-loved boat. BY PATRICK KANE

Axel Heiberg Ellesmere Island Island

78 LAST WORD He thought he’d found a perfect pooch. Then the tail wagged the dog. BY TERRY WOOLF

Grise Fiord

IVVAVIK NATIONAL PARK VUNTUT NATIONAL PARK

ALASKA

Fort McPherson

Beaver Creek

Carcross

Norman Wells

Teslin Haines

Atlin

Watson Lake

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Victoria Island

Kugluktuk

Gjoa Haven

ARCT

Repulse Bay

IC CI

Whatì

THELON GAME SANCTUARY

Wekweètì Behchokò YELLOWKNIFE

Fort Simpson Jean Marie River Detah Lutselk’e Fort Providence GREAT SLAVE LAKE Nahanni Butte Fort Trout Hay River Fort Resolution Liard Lake Kakisa Enterprise Fort Smith Fort Nelson WOOD BUFFALO NATIONAL PARK

ALBERTA

Baker Lake

Quaqtaq Kangiqsujuaq Kangiqsualujjuaq Ivujivik Kangirsuk Aupaluk Akulivik Kuujjuaq Tasiujiaq Puvirnituq Salluit

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES Gamètì

Kimmirut

Coral Harbour

UKKUSIKSALIK NATIONAL PARK

NUNAVUT Wrigley

IQALUIT

RCLE

Cape Dorset

Tulita

NAHANNI NATIONAL PARK RESERVE

Pangnirtung

Kugaaruk

Bathurst Inlet

GREAT BEAR LAKE

AUYUITTUQ NATIONAL PARK

Igloolik Hall Beach

Taloyoak

Umingmaktok

Fort Good Hope

R iver

Haines Junction

Ulukhaktok

Cambridge Bay

Ma c k e n z i e

KLUANE NATIONAL PARK AND RESERVE

Keno Mayo Pelly Crossing Carmacks Faro Ross River WHITEHORSE

Baffin Bay Qikiqtarjuaq

Tsiigehtchic Colville Lake

Clyde River

Pond Inlet

Baffin Island

Paulatuk

YUKON

Dawson

TUKTUT NOGAIT NATIONAL PARK

Inuvik

Aklavik

Nanisivik Arctic Bay

Sachs Harbour

Herschel Island

Tuktoyaktuk Old Crow

Resolute

Banks Island

Beaufort Sea

SIRMILIK NATIONAL PARK

Devon Island

AULAVIK NATIONAL PARK

Chesterfield Inlet Rankin Inlet Whale Cove Arviat

Hudson Bay

Fort Chipewyan

SASKATCHEWAN

MANITOBA

Sanikiluaq WAPUSK NATIONAL PARK

NUNAVIK (QUEBEC)

Inukjuak

6 0 T H PA R A L L E L

Churchill

LEFT: iSTOcK TOP: cOURTESY KAKSLAUTTANEN hOTEL & iGLOO ViLLAGE RiGhT: cOLiN WAY

QUTTINIRPAAQ NATIONAL PARK

Umiujaq Kuujjuarapik

GN_CLEY_UPHERE_Layout 1 12-03-26 10:50 AM Page10:44 1 AM Page 1 GN_Cley_FullPage_AboveBeyond_v6_Layout 1 12-03-26

LEFT: iSTOcK TOP: cOURTESY KAKSLAUTTANEN hOTEL & iGLOO ViLLAGE RiGhT: cOLiN WAY

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᕗᑦ ᐱᒻᒪᕆᐅᑎᑦᑎᔪᖅ ᑭᓇᐅᓂᑦᑎᓐᓂᒃ Uqausivut Pimmariutittijuq Kinaunittinnik

Uqauhiqqut kinaungmangaangutjutikput

(

Our Language, Our Identity Notre langue, notre identité

qsualujjuaq Kuujjuaq

AVIK BEC)

www.cley.gov.nu.ca

)

up here up here up here LIFE IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

JULY/AUGUST 2012 • VOLUME 28 NUMBER 5

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Editor aaron spitzer aaron@uphere.ca SENIOR Editor Katherine Laidlaw k_laidlaw@uphere.ca Associate Editor eva holland eva@uphere.ca art director John Pekelsky jp@outcrop.com Photo Editor Patrick Kane patrick@uphere.ca graphic Design Beth Covvey beth@uphere.ca Advertising Sales director kathy gray kathy@uphere.ca Advertising Sales marlee currie marlee@uphere.ca Advertising Sales Stephan Hervieux stephan@uphere.ca AD SALES: 867-766-6711 Fax: 867-873-9876 Publishers Marion LaVigne & Ronne Heming Up Here is published eight times a year by Up Here Publishing Ltd. in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada. Contents copyright 2012 by Up Here Publishing Ltd. Reproduction in any form is forbidden without written consent of the copyright owner. Contact: Suite 800, 4920 52nd St., Yellowknife, NT X1A 3T1, Canada Phone: 867-766-6710 Fax: 867-873-9876 Toll free in Canada: 1-800-661-0861 or www.uphere.ca Editorial contributions: We welcome contributions, but can assume no responsibility for unsolicited material. Material should be emailed to aaron@uphere.ca. Canadian Postmaster: Up Here is mailed under publications mail Agreement No. 40049058 Registration No. 09357, Postage paid in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Date of issue July 2012. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Dept., PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5. Email: circ@uphere.ca ISSN No. 0828-4253. Registered with the National Library of Canada. Indexed in Canadian Periodical Index and Canadian Magazine Index. Back issues available on microfiche from Micromedia Ltd., 20 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 2N8, Phone: 1-800-387-2689 Subscriptions: $29.97 per year in Canada, $39.97 per year in the US, and $47.97 per year for other international orders (prices in Canadian funds). Single copy price $4.95. Visa or MasterCard accepted. Call toll-free in Canada: 1-866-572-1757. Or send name, address and payment to: Up Here: Life in Canada’s Far North PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5, Canada Phone: 416-932-5070. Moving? To ensure uninterrupted delivery, send your change of address six weeks prior to moving. Email: circ@uphere.ca Occasionally Up Here makes its mailing list available to carefully screened companies whose products or services may be of interest to our subscribers. If you prefer not to receive these mailings, we can remove your name from the list we make available. To let us know, just send your subscriber label with a note or this notice to: Up Here, PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5

SPEC TUK ULAR P.O. BOX 120 TUKTOYAKTUK, NT X0E 1C0 T: 867.977.2286 F: 867.977.2110

6 up here JUly • August 2012

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities.

Printed in Canada

2012 UPHERE PHOTO CONTEST

HIT US WITH YOUR

BEST SHOT!

up here up here up here

CATEGORIES: SCIENCE & NATURE • PEOPLE & HISTORY • TRAVEL & ADVENTURE • ARTS & CULTURE Contest Rules: Include a cover letter with your name, address and daytime and evening telephone numbers. Include any stories you have about a particular image, such as the amusing or difficult circumstances under which you took it. We’d love to hear the stories behind the photographs. Photographs must have been taken in Northern Canada. DIGITAL SUBMISSIONS ONLY! Mail us a CD or thumb drive, or contact photo@uphere.ca for online submission options. Images must be at least 300 dpi when at 8x10 inches, in JPEG format. Please do not submit prints or slides. Send your digital entries to: photo@uphere.ca or Up Here Reader Photo Contest, Suite 800 4920-52nd St. Yellowknife, NT X1A 3T1

may 2012 up here 7

« field notes » Let there be heat Full disclosure: though this is our “What I did on my summer vacation” issue, we didn’t prepare it in summer. as I’m writing this, it’s May. Here in yellowknife, houseboaters are walking on frozen Great Slave lake and gullies are choked with snow that fell in October. Up on Baffin Island, the weather station at Cape Dyer is reporting a windchill of minus-20. On the yukon’s Mount logan, the forecast is for a blizzard. yet summer is so close I can taste it. Each night, dusk slides into dawn with less darkness intervening. Seagulls are thronging around pools of open water. the bald eagles are back too, and those gangly early-season mosquitoes. like the birds and bugs, I’m so ready. Parka packed away. Bike tires inflated. Seeds and soil ready for planting. already, the whole summer is booked – camping, road trips, a million projects. Everyone up here is vibrating with giddy energy. a few years ago, after friends moved down to Hawaii, they said this is what they missed. Paradise is great, but it’s nothing compared to the ecstatic anticipation of summer. So, as we northerners near the end of our long wait, it’s been exquisite torture to prepare this issue, thinking and dreaming about the hot season. to bring you the summer in all it’s glory, we sent Katherine laidlaw to the nWt’s 60th Parallel Visitor Centre to greet the influx of summer tourists (“at the gates of a strange kind of heaven,” page 58). We deployed Eva Holland to Skagway to infiltrate the strange sub-

culture of summer workers there (“I found the sweet life,” page 40). and we put photographer Pat Kane in a canoe and pushed him into the biggest whitewater festival north of Sixty (“Me and the whitewater wayfarers,” page 48). I hope by the time you’re reading this, summer is well under way. Kick back in the hammock and enjoy this issue.

aaron Spitzer, Editor

contributors

PATRICKKANE (“Me and the whitewater wayfarers,” page 48 and “Last days aboard the M.V. ‘Merv’,” page 76) has been Up Here’s photo editor for six years, as well as a prolific freelancer for such publications as Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail. This month, he bids our magazine a fond farewell. Say it ain’t so, Pat. What’s next for you? Becoming a famous, filthy rich, jet-setting freelance photographer, of course. I’m going to continue photographing the people and places of the North, bringing their stories to an audience across the country and around the world. What was your favourite assigment during your time here? There are too many! I’ve sailed in a navy ship from Iqaluit to Pond Inlet, had $2 beer in Alert, hauled a seal to shore with an Arctic circus troupe. The list goes on. Any last words for our readers? Hire me! Also, keep reading and being engaged in Up Here. The staff pores over ideas and puts a ton of care into each issue so our readers can experience the people, places and stories from the best part of Canada: the North.

ALISONMcCREESH (“How to stake a claim,” page 16) is a freelance illustrator, artist and cartoonist based in Yellowknife. Influenced by her surroundings, her recent work reflects the quirks and comedy of living North of Sixty. In this issue she illustrated the steps a prospector must take to stake a claim. Despite having never done so herself, she assumes it must be a buggy affair, and that the paperwork must be a bummer to fill out. To see more of her work, visit alisonmccreesh.com.

8 up here July • August 2012

TERRYWOOLF

KARENMcCOLL

(“Man, I ain’t your dog,” page 78) is a Yellowknife freelance videographer with a Gemini Award to his name. He’s also a committed musher: In this issue he writes about his best husky, Trigger – who, though headstrong, “led this entire season and was incredible,” he says.

(“Slippery lope,” page 26) works for Parks Canada in Iqaluit and writes in her free time; she’s been published in Coming Home: Stories from the Northwest Territories. In this issue, she writes about Iqaluit’s spring skijoring race, in which skiers are pulled by their dogs.

July â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012 up here 9

« out there » Oh, to ﬁnd the hand of Franklin In our May 2012 article “The Searchers,” senior editor Katherine Laidlaw entered the strange demimonde of “the Franklin mafia” – a network of obsessive Arctic-history buffs scrambling to solve the mystery of the Franklin expedition. The story earned both raves and raspberries:

‹

LAST ISSUE we brought you the stories of seven aboriginal youths who are making a splash – in the arts, athletics, activism and more. Who’d we leave out? Email us at letters@uphere.ca

like the titanic, the Edmund Fitzgerald and amelia Earhart, what happened to the Franklin expedition will always fascinate. your story held just as much fascination. It’s a testament to how much history captivates us that, even after so many years, people continue to search for

Franklin and his ships. I was quite impressed by the article. Carla Cummins DRESDEn, OntaRIO

I take issue with depicting Franklin as some kind of arctic hero. He most certainly was not. this man was a mediocre officer at best. He refused to learn anything from the Inuit, considering them a bunch of savages, and his gross incompetence caused the unnecessary suffering and death of hundreds of sailors. Norma Watson PRInCE GEORGE, B.C.

When I didn’t hear back from your senior editor, Katherine laidlaw, after our telephone

On your mark, get set, go! Hey, readers! we need your help. On September 4, two of our editors, Katherine Laidlaw and eva Holland, will set off on a hitchhiking race between Yellowknife and Whitehorse. They’ll be given just $200 in emergency funds and will have to thumb rides as quick as they can. But there’s a catch: They’ll have to complete a task at five stops – Fort Providence, Fort Liard, Liard Hotsprings, Toad River and Watson Lake. we want you to suggest the tasks. Is there something cool in those communities they should snap a photo of? Someone they’ve got to talk to? Something they have to do? Email your ideas to race@uphere.ca by August 15. If we pick your suggestion you’ll win a one-year subscription and our limitededition new swag!

Lack experience? Rely on ours. Advising northerners since 1969.

call, I assumed that like many journalists before her she’d either given up on the Franklin story or been put off by my rather brusque comment to “do a little more research and call back.” But a friend today pointed me to the online version of “the Searchers” and I must say how pleased I was. not only did she get every one of my quotes right (almost unheard of) but I think she caught the tone of the current efforts quite well without over-glorifying or belittling the efforts of anyone involved. I take a little issue with the common characterization of the remains at “the boat place” on King William Island as indicative of madness or incompetence on the part of Franklin’s crew, but such details require volumes in themselves and couldn’t be dealt with in a general article. Well done! I’ll now try to find my nearest bookstore that carries Up Here and stock up on copies for my family. Dave Woodman VICtORIa, B.C.

Avery, Cooper & Co. CERTIFIED GENERAL ACCOUNTANTS FINANCIAL CONSULTANTS

4918-50th St. Laurentian Bldg., Box 1620, Yellowknife, NT X1A 2P2 T: 867.873.3441 F: 867.873.2353 CTF: e r t i1.800.661.0787 fied General Accountants Financial Consultants

w w w. a v e r y c o o p e r. c o m 10 up here July • August 2012

Avery, Cooper & Co.

there are some lovely personal portraits in “the Searchers,” and I’m sure readers will get some sense of the “hunt” we’re all on. Woodman is the best of us all – a true devoted searcher who’s changed the picture of Franklin entirely, and backed words with deeds. Battersby and Carney have added their modest slice to things still uncertain, though as I said in my conversation with your writer, they’ve certainly done a good deal to upend a few old truisms. Still, I was deeply disappointed she didn’t include me in these vignettes – aside from Woodman, I’ve been working on this longer and harder than anyone. I feel the time and energy I took to speak with her was wasted. I will not recommend your publication to any of my peers, nor will I co-operate with you in the future. Russell Potter PROVIDEnCE, RHODE ISlanD

Crossed signals as a secularist living in a largely religious world,

I’ve become used to seeing religious symbols in places that I don’t feel they belong. yet, as an archaeologist and land-use mapper I could not help but be irked by the use of the cross to mark historical sites on your map of the northwest Passage (“a route to re-orient,” May 2012). Good maps provide a potent tool for describing how we view the land and our relationship to it. Bad maps just get us lost. Adam Bathe FORt SMItH, nWt

Hippie hooray “turn on, tune in, move north” (March 2012) was one of the most interesting articles I’ve read in some time. While we don’t often think of something from the 1960s or ’70s as historical, this is social history in the making. It represents the coming of age of a generation. When I first came to the yukon, local residents regaled me with stories of “hippies in the bush who didn’t make it.” these were usually told with a tone of condescen-

sion or ridicule. Combine that with pot-smoking lodge operators along the northern highways and it made for some very interesting times. Michael Gates WHItEHORSE, yUKOn

Golden girls In your article about crosscountry skiing (“the Bigger they Come,” March 2012), you mention that Martha Benjamin won the Canadian senior championship in 1963. From there, you jump to the Firth twins, neglecting important history in between. When Canada started its first winter games in 1967, two teenage girls from norman Wells, nWt, Eva and Jeanette lourangeau, were entered in ladies cross-country skiing. they won gold and silver medals, skiing against adults. the morale in norman Wells spiked about 100 per cent and there was nearly 100 per cent turnout at the airport when they arrived home. Arthur Warshawski EDMOntOn, alBERta

online extras

PATRicK KANE

our photo editor, Patrick Kane, ride the Merv Hardie ferry across the Mackenzie River during its last season before the Deh Cho bridge opens up.

WATCH

some of Elijah Tigullaraq’s insightful advice to Nunavut’s latest crop of newcomers.

READ

us your own tales of summer adventure and we’ll post them on our website!

SEND

us on twitter @upheremag to join the conversation about all things Northern.

July • August 2012 up here 11

12 up here JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012

findings from the frontier

duenorth A YUKON OLYMPIAN? HONEYBUCKET BRAWL HOW TO STAKE A CLAIM THE NORTH’S A BEACH

P14 P15 P16 P18

when photographer Staffan Widstrand tagged along on a rafting expedition down the Firth River in the Yukon’s ivvavik national Park, he was in for a wild ride. Boaters brave frothing waves, Class-iV drops and a 40-kilometre-long canyon – plus grizzly bears that come to prey on the Porcupine Cairbou Herd.

July • August 2012 up here 13

« due north »

ONE TO WATCH

A man who moils for gold Watson Lake native Zach Bell is the Yukon’s golden boy. The cyclist is heading to the Olympic Games in London, England, and has a solid shot at number one. “I’m in a position where if I can get it right I can win the gold medal, but … there’s 10 guys right now that can totally justify saying the same thing,” he told the Toronto Star this spring. “I just want people in the country to know that I’m going to do my absolute best to step on the top step, and they can count on that.” The 29-year-old former world cycling champ, who now makes his home in North Vancouver, has come a long way from his log-cabin-inthe-forest beginnings. A star athlete growing up in Watson Lake, Bell took up cycling at the University of Calgary, where he was studying on a wrestling scholarship. Once he discovered his affinity for biking, he quit the wrestling team and put pedals to the pavement full-time. In London, he’ll compete in the “omnium” event, recently added to the Olympic Games, which puts its athletes through six different races – one as short as 250 metres and one as long as 30 kilometres – over two days. And he’ll have an exciting surprise waiting for him after his run at the gold is over – he and his wife are expecting their first child this fall.

BY THE NUMBERS

Sum of the summer What’s that orange ball in the sky? Oh, right, we forgot – it’s the sun, here to bring light and heat back to the North. Here’s how its return adds up:

39.4

Temperature, in degrees Celsius, recorded in Fort Smith on July 18, 1941 – the hottest temperature recorded North of Sixty.

621

Hours of sunshine Eureka, Nunavut, received in May 1973 – the sunniest month on Earth. 14 up here July • August 2012

20.03 11,544

17.3 11:1

Air conditioning units installed in 2006 at the municipal office in Kuujjuaq – the first community in Nunavik with air conditioning.

Hours per day of sunshine Eureka got that month.

Number of lakes larger than three square kilometres in Canada’s territories.

Drownings per 100,000 Nunavut residents from 2005-07.

Ratio of the Nunavut rate compared to the Canadian national average.

Height, in feet, of the biggest wave ever surfed in Yakutat, an Alaskan town just across the border from the Yukon.

102

Weight, in pounds, of the world-record lake trout caught in Lake Athabasca in 1961.

55.41 54

Cost of a watermelon for sale in 2008 in Nain, Labrador.

Length in kilometres of Labrador’s Wonderstrand, the North’s – and probably Canada’s – longest beach.

Rank of “sun protection” among Parks Canada’s recommendations for gear to pack while hiking in Quttinirpaaq National Park, barely 800 kilometres from the North Pole.

MARcELO hERNANdEZ/cP iMAGES

PLUMBING

The scoop on the war against poop Has the Northwest Territories’ capital succeeded in banning the bucket? In our June 2009 issue, we brought you a story about the City of Yellowknife’s controversial campaign to phase out a loved (and loathed) Northern institution – the honeybucket. For years, houseboaters and shack-dwellers in Yellowknife’s Old Town eschewed running water and flush toilets, resorting instead to rustic – and rank – five-gallon pails. The contents were collected by a city

“honeywagon” and deposited in the local sewage lagoon. Sanitary concerns, however, prompted a change in municipal policy – much to the chagrin of some Old Towners, who felt they were being singled out as dirty hippies. Yet the city says it’s overcome the resistance. As of this winter, it replaced all registered honeybuckets with composting or propane toilets.

The city doesn’t deny that a few hardy Yellowknifers may still be pooping in buckets – but, says Dennis Kefalas, director of public works, their clandestine bathroom habits are now breaking the law. In the NWT’s biggest city, the era of the honeybucket may finally have gone down the drain.

QUoTeD

“To find they didn’t have enough parkas, this is Canada for goodness’ sakes.” – Arctic defense expert Rob Huebert, responding to internal army documents revealing that Canadian Forces have too few warm tents, heaters and jackets to operate in the Far North.

Age of Yukon beach babe Azalea Joe when she posed in the sand for Playboy in 2000, becoming the first Northerner to appear in that magazine.

470,000

Just a few of the igloos that we call home cOURTESY KAKSLAUTTANEN hOTEL & iGLOO ViLLAGE

Cost to buy your own fishing retreat: Tukto Lodge, on Mosquito Lake in the NWT Barrenlands.

‘Do you live in igloos?’

Record time, in minutes and seconds, a paddler has completed Yellowknife’s annual four-kilometre Latham Island Paddle Race.

In our second installment of Dumb Question from a Southerner, we answer the most common question we receive: Do y’all live in igloos? The answer is yes, we do. On a lark, a friend of ours spent 30 days living in an igloo right

26:24

DUMB QUESTION

here in Yellowknife. It was cold and cramped and his girlfriend didn’t like it, so he moved back into his house. Houses are wooden structures that don’t melt in summertime. That’s what the rest of us live in. It’s true that up here, igloobuilding is sometimes taught in schools, and hunters sometimes use igloos as temporary

shelters. But as far as real igloo-dwellers, there aren’t any left. The last nomadic families of Inuit moved into modern towns in the 1960s and ’70s. Today, only a few Northerners – including Inuit art icon Kenojuak Ashevak and Nunavut MLA Louis Tapardjuk – can claim to have lived in an igloo.

July • August 2012 up here 15

« due north » HOW TO

Stake a mining claim Want the gold in them thar hills? Follow these easy steps. These days, there’s a second gold rush happening in the Klondike, and you just might strike it rich – by staking your own little slice of Eldorado. Step 1: Check the maps at the mining recorder’s office to make sure your plot is open for staking. Also, keep in mind you can’t stake over other active claims, in someone’s yard, in burial grounds, on First Nations settlement land or in parks.

iSTOcK

Ovibos moschatus: Are they just happy to see us?

WILDEST THING

Why muskox are moving in

Step 2: Cough up two bucks for a set of claim tags and fill in your name, the date, and where your land is, using an etching pen with a carbide tip or the point of a nail. Make sure your writing is legible. Nail your tags to your stake post. It’s illegal to remove or change tags and posts on other claims in the bush, so don’t do that.

They’re a High Arctic icon – so how come they’re heading south?

16 up here July • August 2012

“Muskox are really neat animals. It’s really cool to have them down here,” says territorial biologist Allicia Kelly, who’s conducted aerial surveys of the animals. She says as odd as it seems, their incursion isn’t so shocking. Before the fur trade, they were indigenous to the southern NWT; demand for their ultrawarm hides wiped them out. “So, by the time the 1900s came along, there wasn’t much in the way of muskox in the trees,” she says. It seems, then, that these fabled Arctic ungulates are just staging a southern comeback. And, Kelly says, their visits will likely continue – until hunters, wolves or lack of habitat bring their expansion to a halt.

Step 3: Stake it! But make sure you know the rules. Claims can’t be more than 1,500 feet by 1,500 feet, and the boundaries have to be at right angles. Posts can’t be less than two inches by inches. And if you’re using a tree as a post, it has to look like a post – square off the sides with an axe. Step 4: Now for the hard part. It’s time to record your claim by completing all the required forms. Make sure you do at least $100 worth of work on the claim within one year after you’ve staked it, or it’ll lapse. (You’ll need a form for that, too.)

ALiSON MccREESh

Muskoxen are practically a four-legged myth – they’re ridiculously strange and shaggy, and so elusive in their High Arctic stomping grounds that for years, few humans could hope to see one. But now, suddenly, they’re coming to a town near you. Over the past decade, they’ve been wandering south from the remote tundra, turning up near villages along the Mackenzie River and Great Slave Lake. Residents of Tulita and Fort Resolution suddenly have muskoxen on their doorstep. Last autumn one was photographed just a few dozen kilometres northeast of Fort Smith, on the NWT-Alberta border, sending townsfolk into a tizzy.

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JUly • August 2012 up here 17

« due north »

ADVICE

Moving North? Read this ﬁrst Hot tips for Arctic greenhorns Each August, hundreds of qallunaat head to the territories to work in schools and government offices. Many are due for a culture shock – but now there’s help. Pond Inlet educator Elijah Tigullaraq is assisting newcomers in making the move, penning articles full of homespun but helpful advice. Originally aimed at teachers, his email list now includes hundreds of dedicated readers across the North. The Nunavut government even uses his essays as a training tool for new recruits. among his teachings: is a belief that Inuit regularly swap wives. This writer is not aware of this today. ✱ It

✱ Many people believe that pilot biscuits originated in the North with the Inuit. Actually, these biscuits come from Newfoundland! ✱ Aged walrus meat is extremely high in protein, iron and vitamins. Igunaq (aged walrus meat) has been traditional medicine to keep the digestive system clean, as it flushes away anything in its way. It is also great eating for those who have acquired the taste and can go beyond the smell. ✱ Driving a snowmobile in the spring can be dangerous if you’re sleeping. ✱ A hangover is nothing compared to ‘sweats’ a person gets in the middle of the night from eating raw meat.

Battle stations atop Prince of Wales Fort MiKE GRANdMAiSON/GETTY iMAGES

FORTIFICATIONS

Polar bears, belugas and – a castle? With its cannons aimed at ice ﬂoes, Prince of Wales Fort defends the North It’s the Arctic’s strangest structure: a nearly 300-yearold stone fortress, its high walls bristling with cannons, sprawling on the tundra near Churchill, Manitoba. And even more remarkably, it was a battlefield of the fur trade. In 1782, its three-dozen Hudson Bay Company traders were ignominiously kicked out after being ambushed by a trio of French warships. Today, Prince of Wales Fort is a national historic site – and,

says Parks Canada interpretive guide Duane Collins, a shock to Churchill’s tourists. “It comes as a surprise that Europeans lived on Hudson Bay far longer than in centres like Toronto,” he says. “And it’s a surprise that it played such a pivotal role in Canada’s history. The fur trade here was international commerce – it was worth fighting over.” Around 2,000 visitors tour the fort each year; the easiest way is with a local guiding

THE UP HERE MAP

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Charting the sweet season North of Sixty The names wouldn’t lie, would they? Clearly, the North is full of bright, balmy, blissful places. So pack your flipflops and head on up – it’s not so cold here after all.

Swimming Point

Want to join Tigullaraq’s mailing list? Email him: etigullaraq@gov.nu.ca.

Picnic Lake Summer Isle Sunny Lake

Steambath Lake Beachview Creek

18 up here July • August 2012

company. In summer, Lazy Bear Lodge (lazybearlodge. com) and SeaNorth Tours (seanorthtours.com) drop by as part of their half-day beluga-watching excursions. Also, this July, Heartland Travel (heartlandtravel.ca ) is offering a three-day “Night at the Fort” package, with a round-trip flight from Winnipeg and a camp-out inside the fort’s storied walls.

Hot Weather Creek

Sunneshine Fiord Hall Beach Sun Island

White Beach Point

Tropical Creek Paradise Gardens

Sandy Beach Lake

Sand Castle Peak Pleasant Inlet

One Land, Many Voices Self-Guided Tours (any time): Weekdays from 7 am - 6 pm Weekends from 10 am - 6 pm Guided Tours: Summer (June 1 to August 31) Weekdays 10:30 am, 1:30 pm, 3:30 pm Sundays 1:30 pm Winter (September 1 to May 31) Monday to Friday 10:30 am Audio tours of the Legislative Assembly are available in the official languages of the Northwest Territories, as well as in Japanese.

TTY iMAGES

For more information, visit www.assembly.gov.nt.ca or call 867-669-2230 or toll-free 1-800-661-0784.

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« due north » TELEVISION

A show that’s golden How a Discovery Channel star hit paydirt in Dawson How have the locals welFirst there was the Klondcomed your crew? ike gold rush. Now, there’s People that are interested in another: Discovery Channel’s business really love us. There reality TV series Gold Rush. are a few people that don’t like The show was formerly known us, but that’s how it is. We’re as Gold Rush: Alaska until starting to see a lot of visitors one of the crews relocated coming because of the show. I to the Dawson City area last just talked to a big group from summer. Season Three is Oregon, which is my home state. filming now; Up Here spoke to crew chief and series star Todd Hoffman about his time in the Klondike. So how do you like Dawson City? I really like it. I’m from a small town, too, about 9,000 people, so it’s good. what’s it like mining in such an iconic Todd Hoffman’s nugget of truth gold rush town? cOURTESY diScOVERY chANNEL It’s been a pleasure, i know you’re out on your because it’s got a better balclaim a lot, but do you have a ance between the government favorite spot in town? controls and the miners. We A lot of the crew’s meethave a really good safety reing place is Gertie’s, but I like cord, and that’s due to the way Sourdough Joe’s. My dad [coyou guys work in the Yukon. It’s star Jack Hoffman] likes the a really good system – 10 times little ice cream shop there. better than Alaska.

BOOKS

Manuals to the mighty Mac A pair of guidebooks part the waters of the NWT’s big river When paddlers point their bows northward, they usually head for the historic rivers of the Klondike or the virgin drainages of the Barrenlands. The North’s mightiest river – the Mackenzie – barely gets a nod. That’s a shame, because more than any other waterway North of Sixty, the Big Mac matters: people live along it, goods flow up and down it, an entire ecosystem is watered by it. To understand the North, both old and new, you need to paddle it. Luckily, two new guidebooks show the way. Michelle Swallow’s beautiful Mackenzie River Guide is a bright and glossy instruction manual to the Mackenzie; largeformat and spiral-bound, you’ll want it on your lap as you float

along. It brims with maps and practical info – about places to camp and things to see and do – as well as intriguing sidebars, such as a recipe for french-fried rabbit (“ … dip pieces of rabbit into batter…”). Somewhat more detailed and only slightly less entertaining is Trans Canada Trail Northwest Territories by prolific Northern author Jamie Bastedo. Covering the Slave River as well as the Mackenzie, this book, too, is laden with charts and practical details, plus all the hallmarks of Bastedo’s previous works – clever writing, exhaustive historical research, and a zeal for Northern culture and natural history.

MOVIES

The horror, the horror Assessing the Arctic’s scary films

Scary but true:This summer, rapper Dr. Dre is producing a slasher ﬁlm set in the Yukon. Called Thaw, it’s about “an ancient evil that emerges from the rapidly melting ice.” This got us thinking about other northern horror flicks. Most stink – but a few are stellar: BELIEVABLE

Snow Dogs Cuba Gooding Jr. inherits a team of talking sled dogs. We can’t think of a more disturbing film.

Insomnia Two L.A. detectives investigating a murder in a remote Alaskan town discover strange things done ’neath the midnight sun.

Ice Road Terror Miners unearth a monster with an appetite for burly blue-collars who drive semitrucks on the ice-road.

The Last Winter Oil drillers siphon Arcticdwelling ghosts that seek revenge on fossil-fuel hungry humans.

Ice Quake Melting permafrost creates earthquakes that destroy the Arctic landscape. Now it’s a race against time before the planet implodes. 20 up here July • August 2012

How I Ended This Summer Suspicion, lies and fear set in between two Russian polar researchers after a cryptic radio message is transmitted to them.

The Edge A model, her rich old husband and a hotshot photographer survive a plane crash. A love triangle ensues and a huge grizzly bear wants in on it.

The Grey Oil workers survive a plane crash and must fight off a pack of wolves as they struggle to find their way home.

The Thaw Not to be mistaken for Dr. Dre’s Thaw, students unearth an ancient Arctic parasite and risk life and limb to control an outbreak of the flesh-eating larvae. Yum!

Rare Exports Set in Finland, a billionaire hires a crew to excavate Santa Claus and his elves. But Santa always knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

C’MON, REALLY?

30 Days of Night Vampires terrorizes Barrow, Alaska during the dark winter. Locals can’t leave town because apparently planes can’t fly at night.

SCARY GOOD

CHEEZY

Iceman An anthropologist uncovers a prehistoric man in the Arctic trundra and finds himself defending it from fellow scientists.

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« arctic dispatches » » Fishing for laughs on Great Slave Lake » An oil town’s archive of antiques » Barking mad racers in Iqaluit clark james mishler/alaskastock

» At this derelict gas station – one of dozens that lie rotting alongside the Alaska Highway – the service isn’t so hot, but you won’t have to endure lineups at the pump.

By Hélèna Katz

Cold casting Chilling with chums at an ice-fish derby The landscape is white on white as the overcast sky merges seamlessly with the snows of Great Slave Lake. Just offshore of Hay River’s Old Town, at the end of a sliver of road that’s been ploughed from the public beach, Mike Young pits his gas-powered auger against four feet of ice. The engine whines and the blade spirals down until water erupts, puddling around the hole’s surface. Young and several other volunteers have repeated this process dozens of times to prepare the lake for Hay River’s first-ever spring fishing derby. Nearly 250 anglers have signed up – an impressive figure, even in a town where 24 up here JUly • August 2012

fishing is both a profession and a favourite pastime. Getting ready for them takes a lot of effort. Young leans on his auger and scowls at two men setting up a large tent nearby. “We’re here working and those guys are getting the fish,” he says ruefully. One of those guys is gregarious Colin Charlton, who says once the derby kicks off, his tent will be the key to staying warm and having a good time. Also important will be staying refreshed. “I’ll have five holes,” Charlton says. “One for fishing and four for beer so it won’t freeze.” The ice-fishing shelters and the relaxed atmosphere are what sets the Hay River derby apart, says Kathy McBryan. She and her aptly-named colleague, Frazer Pike, are spearheading the event.

“At other derbies you can’t have tents and huts. There are so many ‘don’t do’ rules. It’s the North, we’re on a lake and it’s cold. We can’t expect people to just sit out there. We wanted a really fun event.” And fun it is. By the time the derby begins, the lake is crowded. There are scores of warmly bundled anglers, huddled in folding chairs or standing over holes, dipping and lifting their lines. Each has four hours to catch the biggest fish. The prize? A handsome $1,500. Seven people crowd inside Charlton’s toasty shelter. A fire is burning in a little woodstove. “We try to fish in style if we can,” says Charlton’s buddy, Matt Morse. A few feet away, Melanie Boudreau eyes a table piled with snacks.>

MAIN PHOTO: GEROLD SIGL / NWTT, INSET PHOTO: GEORGE FISCHER / NWTT

Where Does The Road Take You?

In the Spectacular Northwest Territories, scenic wilderness is everywhere…even just off the highway. Accessible and breathtaking, our parks – such as Twin Falls Gorge Territorial Park – are just steps away from the highway, offering awe-inspiring sights such as the incredible Hay River Canyon. Our parks may be mere minutes from the road, but our waterfalls, trails and full-service campgrounds will leave you with memories that will last forever.

V I S I T U S O N L I N E AT

www.nwtparks.ca OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011 up here 25

« arctic dispatches » “We have so much frickin’ food,” she says. Outside, a cheer goes up. Twelve-year-old Jessie Lauridsen, who’s driven north for the weekend with her family from High Level, Alberta, has reeled in a four-and-a-half-pound jackfish. It’s the first catch of the day. “In the North, size really does matter,” jokes Pike inside Charlton’s tent. “But it’s all fun and games until someone catches a bigger fish.” Then, Hay River’s Donna-Lee Jungkind gets a bite. She too has hooked a jackfish, but it’s smaller – just a two-pounder. She doesn’t want to hold the slimy thing, and admits she’s actually not much into fishing. She came to the derby to hang out with her family, three generations of which are down here on the ice. Her parents, nieces, nephews and daughter are all congratulating her. Seconds later, there’s another celebration. “Yeahhh!” Charlton shouts as he reels in a six-pack from the hole in front of the tent. In the end, his catch would be bigger than any of today’s fish. Lauridsen’s jack takes first place; Jungkind’s, second. The tents are packed away and most of the huts are skidded off the ice. Trucks and skidoos trundle back to town. That night, the dozens of holes will freeze back over. By aaron spitzer

History hive Stockpiling the past in the central Mackenzie In the NWT’s most jam-packed room, curator Sarah Colbeck seems a little overwhelmed. Hanging on the walls around her are moose and muskox heads, vials of crude oil, beaded Dene vests, even a riverboat schedule from 1935. The floors, shelves and tables are arrayed with pickaxes, antique outboards, a 50-year-old skidoo, random glass bottles, a poster about dinosaurs – ad infinitum. Colbeck, who’s never worked in a museum before, has the job of figuring out what all this stuff is. “Google is an amazing invention,” she says wryly. This is the Norman Wells Historical Centre, a hoarders’ hodge-podge. Norman Wells has lived many lives – aboriginal crossroads, oil-drilling boomtown, staging base for the U.S. Army during World War Two. Each era left a mess of relics, thousands of which have found their way here, to this old building salvaged from the army’s Canol Pipeline project. Even the centre’s front yard is full of mouldering troop trucks and paddlewheelers. The whole place reeks with the rich fragrance of the past. Colbeck, too, is part of Norman Wells’ his26 up here JUly • August 2012

tory. Though born here, she left at age six; now she’s 30 and came back last year to take “the best job I’ve ever had.” In her beaded moccasins she shuffles between the displays, leading the way to her favourites. There’s a photo of a Junkers ski-plane – the first aircraft to visit the NWT, and the first to crash (Its pilots “fashioned a new propeller out of a sled and some moosehide, and it worked!”). There’s a rifle once owned by Hjalmar Nelson Hamar, a hermit who lived and died in the surrounding bush, and who let kids ride his huskies when he came to town for supplies. By sorting through these artifacts, Colbeck is making sense of her birthplace. Her task is to inventory and organize it all – to make it more “museum” and less “unruly collection.” But it’s not easy: People keep donating things, and it’s hard to say no. Recently she was sent an old medical chart from the nursing station at Tulita, 80 kilometres upriver. It doesn’t really fit with the Historical Centre’s mandate, so it’s in the back room, taking up space. She shrugs her shoulders. “I hate to turn stuff away, but sometimes I guess you have to.” Other times she scores a winner. She points out a rusty, bucket-sized “Hills Bros” coffee can sitting on the floor. A local recently found it under their house and brought it by; after Colbeck poked around on the internet and made some calls, she determined that it dates from when American soldiers occupied the town. She takes pleasure in these small victories: “It’s so neat when I discovered it’s from the ’40s.” Other folks in Norman Wells aren’t quite as excited, perhaps because they live among so much historical detritus. Most of the centre’s foot traffic comes from tourists and outof-town workers, dropping by the gift shop to purchase a postcard or a moosehide wallet. Colbeck says she’s “never really given a formal tour,” and is amazed how many of her neighbours say they’ve never been inside the place. She hopes to attract more visitors by hosting events – school field trips, a cookout on National Aboriginal Day. For now, though, the centre is mainly a storehouse, brimming with wonderful stuff that’s waiting to be sorted, all slowly continuing to get old. By kAREN Mccoll

Slippery lope Going to the dogs at an Arctic skijoring race Louis-Philip Pothier kicks off his skis, wipes sweat from his brow and, chest heaving, announces to the crowd, “Next time, I drag a

his mid-sized Pyrenees. The other skier is Chisholm, desperately clutching her harness, her knees bent and legs wide behind the galloping Parker. The finish line nears and it’s neck and neck – and then Hyndman pumps his arms enthusiastically. He and Bruce Springsteen win by mere inches. The crowd swallows the two teams so fully that the arrival of the third-place racer goes almost unnoticed.

Out of breath, Chisholm gives Parker congratulatory pats. “He didn’t really care about being first, he just wanted to play,” she says, laughing. “He was having so much fun!” Once all the other racers trickle in (including Pothier, who says he’s pretty sure his dog will come back), Elgersma hands out prizes: frozen Arctic char and camping equipment. Oh, and a box of milk bones for the pooches.

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tire!” A huge Viking of man, he just strode across the finish line, formed by two orange pylons on the frozen shore of Frobisher Bay. But he’s missing something. “Where’s your dog?” someone shouts. Like everyone else in today’s skijoring race, Iqaluit’s “gentle giant” started the two-kilometre loop with a fourlegged friend. But unlike the 20 or so competitors who finished ahead of him, Pothier’s Inuit sled dog is nowhere in sight. “I cut her loose,” he replies, gesturing vaguely toward the bay. Skijoring – being pulled on skis behind a dog – is becoming a big deal in Nunavut’s capital, and today’s race has drawn an enthusiastic turnout. The event is part of the city’s annual April festival, Toonik Tyme, which celebrates Inuit culture and the arrival of spring. In fast-changing Iqaluit, Toonik Tyme tends to be a mashup of old and new – a seal-skinning contest one minute, a snowmobile derby the next. This skijoring race is like that: a sort of sleek, spandex-clad version of the ancient art of dog mushing. The race started as chaotically as it ended. At the town’s icy waterfront, a throng of skiers and dogs form a tangled, uneven line. As the racers rein in their animals and juggle their ski poles, race organizer Amy Elgersma calls out, “Everyone ready?” Then, suddenly, three competitors come tearing down the hill, dogs in tow. Panting, they explain that they thought the race would start on Nunavut Time – late. One man gets his leash wrapped around a table, which teeters precariously, threatening to tumble into the crowd. Amid the confusion, one dog stands out. Parker, a handsome Australian shepherd-lab cross, sits attentively at the start-line, his ears perked in anticipation. He’s only been skijoring a couple of times, but that puts him ahead of his handler, Sarah Chisholm. An avid crosscountry skier and dog-team helper, Chisholm borrowed Parker from a friend. She admits she has no idea how the race will go, but she’s keen to find out. Then they’re off. A few dogs sprint eagerly to the front of the pack; others are dragged reluctantly behind their masters, who alternately coax and scold them. One dog stubbornly pulls its skier in the opposite direction. Every time there’s a wipeout, the spectators squeal with delight. The racers vanish into the snowy distance; then, 10 minutes later, they reappear. A shout goes up – two teams are sprinting into the home stretch. Willie Hyndman, a young man with shaggy blond hair, is skateskiing hard behind Bruce Springsteen,

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JUly • August 2012 up here 27

colin way

28 up here JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012

« our people »

THE

TREASURE HUNTER DON’T CALL HIM A BOOKWORM. HE’S THE ARCTIC’S greatest collector, AND HE didn’t get that way by playing nice. IT TOOK A FIERCE spirit, A fat wallet and a madness for the past.

b y nathan vanderkli p p e

he canvas kayak that hangs in Cameron Treleaven’s Calgary bookstore is as lovely as it is unexceptional. It may be delicate, graceful and powerful, but it didn’t belong to an Arctic explorer or a famed guide. It’s not even made of sealskin, the way homemade Inuit vessels once were. In short, the kayak deserves no place in history. That makes it an odd choice for Treleaven, 56, one of the world’s top collectors and dealers of Arctic artifacts and books. His personal collection is, in the words of University of Alberta archivist Merrill Distad, “utterly incredible,” containing “God’s own copies of every significant work of polar exploration.” Treleaven regularly buys and sells books costing more than most people earn in a year. The $2-million cache of documents he acquired from the ancestors of Mountie Sam Steele has been called “the most important collection that relates to western Canadian history in existence.” Next to that, the kayak is a triviality. And yet, in its slender lines are hidden the very reason why Treleaven collects: Through it, he can touch the past. He says the Inuk hunter who he bought it from told him, “I killed lots of walrus with that kayak.” Stand-

ing in his shop, some 3,500 kilometres from where the boat once matched wits with ferociously muscular sea creatures, Treleaven catches his breath: This thing was once involved in dramatic exploits. And it’s his, suspended from the ceiling in Aquila Books, his haven on the TransCanada Highway filled with books and paintings and articles of clothing that all speak of a time that once was. Treleaven looks the part of a bookseller. His frame is slender, his hair and beard greying. But his wintry complexion and worn expression belie a tremendous spirit. He’s not so much a history professor as a sort of genteel Indiana Jones – one who substitutes books for crystal skulls, competitive squash for motorcycle chases, and a hired genealogist for an armed sidekick. “Basically, I’m a treasure-hunter. It’s that simple,” he says. “The way you make money in this business is not selling $5 and $10 and $30 books. It’s selling $10,000 and $20,000 books. I have customers that will buy six-figure books. And we certainly sell an individual item at least once or twice a year for over $50,000.” Along the way, Treleaven has also become a key contributor to the history of Arctic exploration, locating and securing a vast assemblage of primary documents related to the search for Sir John Franklin – some of which, without his efforts, might never have been uncovered. It’s in this way that the line between book collector and historian becomes vanishingly thin. “Booksellers are partners in all of this with librarians and archivists,” says Distad, a longtime collaborator with Treleaven. “There would be no great libraries without great collectors.”>

colin way

JUly • August 2012 up here 29

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30 up here JUly • August 2012

« our people » Treleaven is driven by a competitive instinct to secure documents and items – collectors call them “ephemera” – that no one else has. It’s a personal quest, though its importance extends far beyond one man’s passion. By building his collection, Treleaven has made himself a conduit to a bygone era, with items that serve as essential resources for authors and historians. Ken McGoogan, author of four bestsellers about the search for the Northwest Passage, says Treleaven’s “Arctic collections have proven invaluable.” As one example, “he provided access to a long-lost logbook by Elisha Kent Kane, the American who found Franklin’s winter camp. No historian has seen that primary document since the 1850s.” And there’s still more to do. Treleaven is in touch with the living ancestors of explorers like Sir George Back and Francis Leopold McClintock, and hopes to one day acquire collections from them. He has a “pretty good indication” where he can find objects that once belonged to Franklin himself that have never before surfaced. The information those materials contain, he says, stands to change how people see history. Treleaven’s drive to collect started early. He began with comic books when he was seven or eight. By high school, he had every Hardy Boys and Tom Swift book ever written. He skipped class to look at books. In university he made his first serious book buy: Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, the Sherard Osborn book detailing the author’s 18-month search for Franklin. As a student, the $150 purchase was enough to make Treleaven lose sleep. Looking back, the only mistake he made was not holding on to it: The book had been owned by Nobel laureate Frederick Banting; today it would fetch as much as $2,000. In those years, he studied archaeology and spent his first few working years in the field, studying landscapes in Alberta, B.C., the Yukon and the NWT that would become highways, the Norman Wells oil pipeline and the oil sands. His interest in things Northern was cemented in northeastern Alberta, when his archaeological work took him to the banks of the Athabasca River. Franklin had stopped near modern-day Fort McMurray, but the fur trading post he’d stayed at had never been located. Eager for clues, Treleaven began reading Franklin’s writings. “You’re looking for Franklin, so you want to read what he said, where he stayed, what he did. There wasn’t enough information to figure it out exactly,” he says. “But I became fascinated by it.” Archaeology didn’t last – the pay wasn’t

good enough, and the career outlook too mundane – but the interest in books grew. When he was still in his 20s, Treleaven opened his bookstore. He researched and haggled and collected, driven by a fierce desire “to have the best possible example of anything I can,” he says. The most valuable pieces are those through which, again, he can touch history. “If it’s a printed item,” he says, it would ideally be “signed by the author and inscribed to another explorer.” Such notes in themselves contain historical value, bringing to life facets of personalities and relationships that remain fascinating centuries later. Treleaven has so many of these items that no one else in Canada can match his collection. He owns eight to 10 books inscribed to Elisha Kent Kane – obtained in part because of a close relationship he cultivated with the Kane family, allowing him to secure a large number of the explorer’s possessions. That includes a rare 1840s daguerreotype photograph of the man. But it’s much more than Kane: He has copies of both exploration narratives written by George Francis Lyon and made out to his captain, William Edward Perry, gifts to a commander that are “the finest copies” that exist of those books, Treleaven says. He has virtually every Amundsen book inscribed by the explorer. Treleaven has assembled “a museum of the Arctic in his own home,” says Bjarne Tokerud, a Canadian Arctic antiquities dealer who’s known Treleaven for decades. “It’s his life. His life consists of being in the book business,” says Bob Finch, another polar dealer and collector, who before he retired was known as one of the best on the planet – a spot he now says belongs to Treleaven. “I’ve jokingly accused him of, if he had to give up his wife or his collection, well his wife is gone.” Finch wagers, on a “wild guess,” that Treleaven’s collection is worth $2 or $3 million. The BIGGEST COLLECTION Treleaven has brought to light involves one of the most brilliant characters to ever cross the 60th parallel: Sam Steele, the soldier and superintendent with the North-West Mounted Police who came to fame when he was charged with maintaining law and order during the Klondike gold rush. Treleaven came upon Steele by chance. Wandering through a Calgary gun show, he noticed a dealer selling stacks of old photographs of Mounties. What made them remarkable was their provenance. Each was signed on the back, by either Sam Steele or Harwood, his son.

Had there been only one, Treleaven might have kept going. But there were many of them. They were, it seemed, traces of gold, washed away from what had to be a motherlode. But where was it? The dealer selling the photos refused to disclose his source. And history had suggested it wasn’t there: Harwood Steele, even on his deathbed, had told others he had nothing of consequence. And then “everybody started to die.” The dealer. The man the dealer had obtained the pictures from. The Steele descendant who’d sold the photos to that man. All dead. Treleaven, running out of options, turned to unconventional measures. “I hired a genealogist, and learned a lot about tracking down stuff,” he says. He settled on a woman who, it seemed, must have the trove. He was right and, after writing a letter, received an invitation to the woman’s house in the UK. He discovered that he had “full run” of a collection that spanned dozens of boxes and chests. Steele’s sword was in the front room. The discovery was a “phenomenal thing,” Treleaven says, and he had it to himself – at least, until things got messy. Other booksellers got involved. The family turned on Treleaven, coming to view him, as he puts its, as “the personification of evil.” “But I was a pitbull,” Treleaven says. “I wasn’t going to let this go. Even if I didn’t make any money on it, I didn’t care. This stuff was meant to be back in Canada.” At one point, he got his own store appraised so he could secure a line of credit big enough to write a million-dollar cheque. Eventually he succeeded, helping to broker a deal that saw the entire collection return to Canada, split between the University of Alberta and Calgary’s Glenbow Museum. The university has spent years poring through the collection; it’s just now beginning to make elements of it public, by posting them online. In the end it cost more than $2 million to acquire the Steele collection. Treleaven, who collected a commission for his efforts, had spent 13 years tracking it. Others prizes still await. The Franklin expedition, and the extraordinary search it triggered, is now nearing two centuries old. But that’s a short enough timespan that families may still hold relics of their long-dead ancestors. And polar explorers remain much in demand: The last letter written by Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott just came back on the market. It sold for 160,000 British pounds. For a treasure hunter, the high latitudes are fertile ground. And as Treleaven knows better than just about anyone, books never die.

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DÄNOJÀ ZHO CULTURAL CENTRE

INTERPRETIVE TOURS • GALLERY TOURS • GIFT SHOP Dänojà Zho (Long Time Ago House) welcomes Dawson visitors to explore the history, traditions, and experiences of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in.

DAWSON CITY, YUKON • TRONDEKHERITAGE.COM JUly • August 2012 up here 31

! e m i r t e m Sum hen the living is: ron spitzer uk Text by aa s by monika melnych n illustratio

W easy

fun (in the midnight sun) in a canoe all of the above bug and bear infested

Hot damn, it’s finally summer! Why is it so awesome? let us count the ways. Here, for each hour of each endless blissful day, are the 24 things we love about summer in the north.

GETTING A (SORT OF ) TAN

all winter, northerners scuttle around in the dark, cloaked in parkas. We become sun-starved: Our bodies can’t produce the “sunshine vitamin,” vitamin D, resulting in depression, obesity – even rickets (yes, it’s a real thing). Plus, we look ghastly. Our faces become cadaverous. you can practically see our guts through our skin. So in summer, we make up for it – by getting an “arctic suntan.” no, we don’t strip down and bask at the beach, roasting like rotisserie chickens. If we did, we’d feel like exhibitionists, and

32 up here July • August 2012

plus, it’s still too darn chilly. Instead, we don ballcaps and windbreakers and head out in the sunshine to go canoeing, four-wheeling or fishing. For the first few weeks of this, our noses and the backs of our hands go from white to red to white again, like the light on a cop car flashing in slow motion. But sometime around midsummer, our flesh gets rich and ruddy. We appear hearty – alive. Sure, beneath our hat brims, our foreheads stay pallid as fish-bellies. When we roll up our sleeves, the tanline is ridiculous. and our legs – well what do you want? they haven’t seen daylight since the ’90s.

But we’re proud of our face-andhands tans. Even we, in our way, are sun-worshippers.

2 OF ANIMALS

SEEING GAZILLIONS

anyone who talks about the north’s “abundant wildlife” is lying – sort of. For nine months of the year – the cold months – the north is a biological asteroid. But that all changes in summer. For a brief few weeks, hundreds of millions of creatures flap, buzz and splash in the arctic, making it a riot of life. longtime nunavut bird biologist Mark Mallory calls the transition

JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012 up here 33

“striking – a change from relatively low numbers to really large ones. It’s tough to think of anywhere else where you get as much of a change.” after a winter with just a handful of ravens and ptarmigans, at least 50 million birds flock north to breed and feed. On akpatok Island in Ungava Bay, some 1.5 million thick-billed murres cling shoulder-to-shoulder on the cliffs. near

hectare. yet even these mozzies are, after so long an absence, initially greeted with joy. In May or June, it’s common to hear northerners exclaim: “Guess what? I just killed my first mosquito of the year!”

PLAYING IN WATER THAT'S WET

according to nukapinguaq, a famous Greenlandic dog-sledder who guided epic treks through the High arctic in the early 1900s, “there is one real difference between white men and Eskimos. White men always think of ice as frozen water, but Eskimos think of water as melted ice. to us, ice is the natural state.” that’s why, in the north, open water is such a big deal. after nine or more months when rivers and oceans are hard as stone, summer breakup is greeted with ecstasy. Sometimes it comes gently, with the musical tinkling of “candle ice.” Sometimes it’s ferocious, as house-sized floes are shattered by the spring flood and hurled downriver in a maelstrom. But what comes after is always the same: a joyous frenzy of activity that can only happen during the brief weeks when the water is open. So pull on your swimsuit, find your fishing rod, un-tarp your boat, and head for the water. It’ll freeze back to normal all too soon.

4 the Koukdjuak River on Baffin Island, a third of all the geese in Canada gather to rear their young. Mallory describes the noise and action in these colonies as “a constant cacophony.” It’s not just the skies that get crazy. tens of thousands of salmon swim into the territorial rivers. Seals by the millions shift north from the labrador Sea. Belugas and narwhal press into the High arctic, pursued by killer whales. Bowheads congregate to breed: Once, 145 of the giant whales were spotted in Baffin Island’s Isabella Bay in a single day. and then there’s the bugs: In the Hudson Bay lowlands alone, there are a god-awful 40 million mosquitoes per

34 up here July • August 2012

CHILLING WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING

Down south, air conditioners are everywhere – and that’s not hot, says Stan Cox, author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World. Cox argues air conditioners isolate people form nature and make them antisocial and sedentary – they’ve even been linked to obesity. also, they gobble energy: a half-trillion kilowatt hours per year in the U.S. alone, which is more than the total energy usage of africa. Worst of all, air conditioners cause global warming, leading to more air conditioners, ad nauseum. So it’s awesome that the north doesn’t need them. Many of our communities, of course, are naturally air-conditioned. Even in July, Resolute, nunavut averages just 4.3C; its hottest day was barely room temperature. (On

some summer days, the arctic seems set to “max cool”: On July 5, 1939, the Fort Ross trading post near taloyoak, nunavut, dropped to minus-12.2C.) Even in the Subarctic, where it actually gets warm, most northerners cope just fine without air conditioning. In June 2004, when Whitehorse was hit by a record heatwave – eight days of 30°C and above – people survived. they opened their windows and cranked up their fans and drank pure, cool yukon icewater. they lazed on their shady porches and swam in lakes just a few degrees above freezing. and when those things didn’t work? that’s when they cracked the Chilkoot lager.

WATCHING THE SUN NOT SET

Of all the wonders of the northern summer, none is more celebrated than the midnight sun. In Dawson City, yukon, on the longest day of the year, that celebration is taken – quite literally – to new heights. It all started on June 21, 1899, when at least 150 Klondikers (“many of whom were ladies”) climbed to the top of the town’s aptly-named Midnight Dome to watch the sun fail to go down. Ever since, this mountaintop party has been an annual ritual. according to Dawson’s Cameron Sinclair, each solstice he and hundreds of other locals and visitors gather atop the dome to camp and party. the scenery is heavenly: 360-degree views of the yukon River, the goldfields and the Ogilvie Range, all bathed in golden light. Sure, Sinclair admits: During the wee hours, even from atop the 900-metre summit, the sun flirts with the horizon. “But you can still see it,” he insists. “It just ripples behind the top of the peaks.”

GETTING IN 36 HOLES AFTER WORK

When a pair of Dawson City residents set out 15 years ago to build the northernmost grass golf course in Canada, they had to clear swamps, boulders and boreal forestland. the result, the top of the World Golf Course, was a beautiful, smooth nine-hole playground. But they hadn’t counted on the Klondike’s slumping permafrost. nowadays, what were once flat fairways have become rolling hills. are Dawson golfers bummed? no way. their course is always new – it never plays the same way twice. and the same could be said for the north’s 22 other golf courses. If it isn’t shifting terrain that’s the hazard, it’s bears, ball-thieving ravens or 300-metre-long sand traps. What’s not a challenge is darkness. In the perpetual daylight of the arctic summer, you can play round after round after round.

7 TIME IT IS

NOT CARING WHAT

Most of us spend our lives as slaves to calendars, clocks and alarms. Even when we remove our wristwatches, we can still tell the time. If the sky is bright, it’s midday; when it’s dark, it’s night. not so during the northern summer, says Jerry Kobalenko, Canada’s foremost arctic trekker. “If I’m out on the land for a month or two, I have no idea what date it is, or day it is. time is irrelevant under the midnight sun of the High arctic, because the only difference between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. is that the sun is a little higher in the afternoon. there’s also a perverse pleasure to eating breakfast at 10 p.m.”

In the perpetual daylight, he says, your body develops its own schedule. “an eight-hour travelling day leads to the usual 24-hour cycle, but more marathon efforts, e.g. 12 hours, turn the day 28 hours long. that’s when you start working your way around the clock. the most practical thing about the midnight sun is the flexibility it gives travellers. Raining when you get up? Just go back to sleep for a few hours until it stops raining, then begin your normal travelling day.”

8 REALLY MAD

MAKING MOZZIES

While camped on the tundra a century ago, naturalist Ernest thompson Seton once counted 30 mosquitoes on six square inches of his tent. Observing that the tent’s “whole surface was similarly supplied,” he calculated that 24,000 mosquitoes were trying to get in. Studying the bug-blackened netting from safe inside the tent, he likely felt the weird satisfaction that every northern camper feels: too bad, bloodsuckers! Buzz all you want – you aren’t getting me tonight!

STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

Summer roadtrips happen everywhere in Canada, but only in the north do you own the road. the epic Dempster Highway, for instance, sees fewer than 100 vehicles per day. Wanna photograph that roadside grizzly? need snacks from your hatchback? Have to take a pee? Just stop – whenever, wherever – and do it.

10 AS A CALENDAR

USING FIREWEED

Epilobium angustifolium – fireweed – is the north’s iconic flower, appearing in everything from homemade jelly to corporate logos (Fireweed Helicopters, Fireweed Plumbing, etc.). like us, it’s a hearty “pioneer species,” thriving on rugged mountainsides, river banks and wildfire burns. and like us, its approach to summer is bright, joyous – and measured. Fireweed has been called a “blooming chronometer of summer, brilliantly marking the season’s progress.” Following the final frost of spring, it blooms July • August 2012 up here 35

low on its stalk – an eruption of pink and purple. as summer progresses, the vivid blossoms creep skyward; the bottom flowers wither. When the very topmost petals are flaring, every northerner knows you better have the larder stocked and your firewood cut. autumn is just around the bend.

GETTING SHAKEN UP BY THUNDERSTORMS

Big hellroaring electrical storms are rare up here, and that’s why they’re so fun. Every summer, Subarctic residents can count on at least a few crash-and-bang tempests, often accompanied by hail, jackpine-flattening winds, and lightning that knocks out the power grid. north of the treeline, summer storms are rare – but not unheard of. In august 1993, thunder was heard on northern Prince of Wales Island in the High arctic. Even farther north, at the Eureka weather station on Ellesmere Island, a cumulonimbus cloud – or “thunderhead” – was photographed in august 2004. and, says Environment Canada meteorologist yvonne BilanWallace, in July 2007 a group of 13 caribou were mysteriously found dead outside of arviat. the most likely cause? a series of rare lighting strikes that had recently zapped the area. 36 up here July • August 2012

CATCHING FISH AS BIG AS A DOG

lake athabasca once produced a 102pound trout. nunavut’s tree River contains three-foot-long char. the yukon River has the planet’s richest salmon, dripping with fatty goodness. Great Slave whitefish are so tasty they’re sought after in Manhattan and Helsinki. and the thing is, they’re yours for the catching. the legendary outdoorsman lloyd Bull, who passed away at age 86 this past January, came to the nWt summer after summer, perfecting the art of hooking giant lakers on the shoals of Great Bear lake. In 1995, he pulled in a 72-pound leviathan – the biggest ever caught on rod and reel. amazingly, fewer people fish that lake today than when Bull was fishing it. the monsters are still out there.

13 ON CAR FERRIES

RIDING THE RIVERS

In a land where rivers run free, car ferries are more than just a way across. they’re a cherished northern tradition, a scenic rest stop, a social gathering spot – a quirky, jerky anachronism in an all-toostreamlined world. they’re old friends: the George Black, the Johnny Berens, the Merv Hardie, the abraham Francis,

the louis Cardinal, the lafferty, the Pelly Barge. But sadly, like the frontier itself, they’re threatened. Bridges (the nearly completed one over the Mackenzie at Fort Providence and the proposed one over the yukon at Dawson) are beginning to straddle even our wildest rivers. In not too many summers, the beloved car ferries of the north may all be gone.

BLOWING AWAY THE BUGS

a good stiff wind is the best way to keep the bugs off. Writing about alaskan mosquitoes in his book The Golden Spruce, John Valliant observes that “it takes a good five or 10 knots of breeze to keep them at bay, but even then they will tend to hover in your lee, waiting for the wind to die. Mosquitoes swarm so thickly up there that they can, like clouds, briefly assume recognizable shapes. this is probably the only circumstance in nature where it is possible to look downwind and see a shadow of oneself infused with one’s own blood.”

15 SO IMPOVERISHED

NOT FEELING QUITE

In the north, heat and light cost an arm and leg. according to a survey conducted in December 2010 – before the latest price-hike – the average homeowner in tuktoyaktuk, nWt, spent $8,277 annually on heating fuel. Chances are, they spent at least another $2,500 to keep their house electrified. Of course, those costs aren’t borne evenly throughout the year. they hit hardest during the dark, cold months. In January, your heating and power bill can approach $2,000. that’s why summer is a vacation for northerners’ wallets. Sometime in May the furnace gets switched off; it won’t

be fired back up until September. and, thanks to the midnight sun, electrical costs plunge as well. For a few brief months, we practically live for free.

16 OR TRYING TO

SKINNY DIPPING -

al Pace, owner of Canoe north adventures, has gotten naked in a lot of northern waterways, but he’s never had an experience like last summer. after guiding a group of VIPs – including Prince andrew, the Duke of york – down the Horton River, some of them decided to celebrate by skinnydipping in the arctic Ocean. according to Pace, “Five guys, including the duke, stayed [on top of a ridge] and five of us went down to the beach. We got our shirts off and we’re undoing our pants and this grizzly bear comes walking along the shore. I thought, ‘there’s five of us, I’ve got a bear-banger, I’m not too worried.’ and then this second bear walked out and I said, ‘Holy shit guys, we’re a little out-gunned here.’ What we didn’t know is that up top, the duke was gazing out over the ocean, and he was saying to the other guys, ‘you know, this is my fifth arctic trip and I’ve actually never seen a bear – except for those two, headed right for our gang.’ He got a real chuckle. … and of course, the minute we threw our shirts back on and started to scale the steep bank again, the bears were gone. We never did get to swim.”

FLYING ANYWHERE YOU WANT

there’s perhaps no northerner who knows floatplanes better than Dave Olesen. as a commercial pilot, he earns his living chartering his float-equipped Husky and Bush Hawk, taking paddlers to the Barrenlands and doing wildlife surveys for the government. But his aircraft aren’t just used for work. From early June until October, they’re his lifeline to the Olesen family homestead at the eastern tip of Great Slave lake. Olesen’s been flying on floats for three decades, some summers logging as many as 400 hours at the tiller. He says each year, as the ice begins to break up at his home at the mouth of

the Hoarfrost River, he looks forward to getting on the water. “Floatplanes are a really sensuous way to be involved with aviation,” he says. “On nice days there’s this amazing freedom of being able to land on any lake you want – it’s just amazing.” Flying them isn’t too difficult, he says. Compared to wheeled planes, “the basic principles of aviation don’t really change. the airplane flies the same, it just handles a whole lot differently once you’re on the water. taxiing, beaching, dealing with waves, glassy water – that’s tricky. When I do my safety briefing, I always joke with people that they’re now in the world’s worst boat.” and Olesen admits that, as much as he enjoys the floatplane season, by midautumn, he’s happy for it to end. “you have ice on the floats and you’re falling into the water and snow is blowing,” he says. “you’re very, very glad to get the damn floats off the plane.”

RUNNING RIVERS LIKE A PRIME MINISTER

Pierre Elliot trudeau apparently spent some time as the leader of Canada, but he’s far more famous for his love of northern rivers. He loved canoeing in the wilderness, and his paddling portfoJuly • August 2012 up here 37

lio was diverse, including expeditions down the nahanni, the Coppermine and Ellesmere Island’s Ruggles – likely the northernmost river ever run. Supposedly he made some memorable statements in Parliament, but surely his greatest quote captures what makes northern river-tripping so sublime: “What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel. travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.”

NOTHING 19 DOING IN THE RAIN Rain is a novelty in the north. Except for the labrador coast, we see little precipitation of any kind, most of which falls as snow. In all of 1949, arctic Bay got just 1.3 centimetres of moisture – a Canadian record. the western High arctic islands receive barely more rain than Death Valley, north america’s driest spot. Of the 100 largest Canadian cities, Whitehorse is the least rainy; yellowknife is second-least. But there’s a bigger reason why rain is great. It gives us a break. the northern summer is a solar-powered frenzy – a desperate race to pack a year’s worth of living into a few brief, bright months. We stay up too late, sleep too

little, do too much, and get wild-eyed and strung out. When a crappy, wet day finally comes along, we’re forced to stay inside, just resting and – what’s that word again? Oh yeah, relaxing. We’re happy to just let it pour.

20 IN THEIR HABITAT

SPOTTING TOURISTS

this time of year, the territories become the summer range of several species of visitors. northerners rejoice at their return and take great sport in observing their habits. Many of these seasonal visitors gather at Whitehorse’s popular Robert Service Campground,

where manager amanda Stehelin has become an expert at recognizing their distinctive markings and vocalizations. this year as usual, she says, “we’ve got Germans,” who come by the thousands on direct flights from Frankfurt, eager to rough it under the midnight sun. Similar in temperament are the increasing number of asians, “whether Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese, going on an adventure trip, some by car and some by canoe. … I’ve got a couple right now from Japan, I think she’s 62 and he’s 65, and they’re paddling to the Bering Sea.” among Canadians, there are two notable breeds, Stehelin says. “I’ve got all my hippies that show up every year, looking for work in Whitehorse and Dawson. and I’ve got all my yuppies that have the $10,000 tents and the $20,000 canoes. I just renamed our coffee shop the Hippie yuppie.” and finally there are the countless RVers, creeping up the alaska Highway in caravans of six-figure motorhomes. Stehelin says they don’t usually bed down at her campground. Clearly, more research into their habits is required.

EATING EVERY MEAL OUTSIDE

So what if it’s raining or the wind is ripping across the tundra? So what if the sun is blinding and flies orbit you like satellites? as soon as the snow melts – and sometimes before – northerners take their meals outside. For some of us, it’s BBqing on the deck and lounging on patio furniture that for eight months was buried by blizzards. For others, it’s at the firepit in the backyard, roasting smokies; or having a fish-fry at the tentframe by the river; or sucking mattaq by the floe-edge. Who cares if the bugs die in your dinner faster that you can pick them out, or if the smells bring ravens and foxes around? there’s just something about filling your stomach under the big, bright, wild sky.

SMELLING THE AROMA OF WILDFIRES

On any hot, hazy day in the Subarctic, there’s a good chance you’ll smell smoke – and where there’s smoke, there’s wildfire. Flames consume staggering expanses of northern timberland and 38 up p here July • August 2012

regularly menace communities. In 2004, in the yukon, more than 1.7 million hectares burned, reducing an area larger than Connecticut to ashes. In the nWt last year, elders in Délįne had to be evacuated when acrid smoke from nearby wildfires made breathing a chore. But despite all those downsides, Smokey the Bear was wrong – you can’t prevent forest fires, nor should you. Most northern wildfires are started naturally, by lightning, and they do a wonderful job rejuvenating the landscape – clearing moose pasturage, unlocking nutrients in the dirt, making the woods a diverse mosaic of old and new growth. another bonus: they’re good for people. Sure, sometimes they burn our cabins, or, yeah, kill us. But each summer, lots of northerners are eager for the fire season to begin. It means jobs. In small communities, where work is often scarce, scores of people find seasonal employment as wildland firefighters. they earn good money, do important work, travel widely, and get to live a robust life in the great outdoors. Finally, fires are good for the soul. When you peer out over the boreal forest and see a pillar of soot rising into the sky, you’re reminded there are forces out there more powerful than yourself. and you take a nice deep breath of that smoky air, and you smile.

NOT WEARING MUKLUKS

Come summertime, we’re all bloody sick of our parkas. We’re sick of boots, mitts and toques. We’re sick of gearing up like astronauts going for a space walk. We’re sick of looking frumpy, formless, unrecognizable. We’re ready to dress for summer. Which is why, as soon as it gets warm, nikki ashton does a booming business. as the co-owner of la Dee Dah Boutique in Hay River, nWt, she’s who local ladies turn to when they want to look like, well – ladies. “It’s been really busy lately. they’ve been coming in; they’re tired of all their winter sweaters

and stuff,” she says. “they’re looking to summer up their wardrobe.” and of course, after ashton outfits them in light, bright fashions, they flaunt it. Suddenly, the streets are full of skin. there’s a buzz in the air; the north becomes suddenly – dare we say – sexy. “I love it. I think it’s really exciting,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can show my legs. I can wear flip-flops, skirts, dresses.’ Dresses are so impractical in the winter: People kind of furrow their brows at you, like, ‘What are you doing?’”

24 MERRY SEALIFT HAVING A VERY

Know what really makes your yuletide bright? Celebrating it under the midnight sun. that’s what happens in more than three dozen communities on the arctic coast when they receive

their annual summer sealift. During the Far north’s brief ice-free season, ships and barges sail from village to village, unloading non-perishable goods (from soup to nuts, not to mention diapers and dish soap) that locals ordered at bargain-basement prices from down south. according to blogger Morena Steeves, who spent the past three-anda-half years raising a family in the nunavut communities of Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset, “Sealift day is almost like Christmas morning, except Santa delivers these presents with a forklift. you crack them open and see two-anda-half tonnes of wonderful stuff you put on your wish list months before.”

July • August 2012 up here 39

■ Another relaxed evening in the summer workers’ tarp-covered “living room” at the Skagway Mountain View RV Park. The spot is a social hub for the community. 40 up here JUly • August 2012

‘I

By Eva Holland Photos by justin kennedy

found the sweet life’

They flock to Skagway every summer – a gypsy crew of summer workers, guiding tours, scrounging for tips, smoking and drinking in their slum-camps. crack a beer with them and you’ll learn a secret: they have the best life ever.

JUly • August 2012 up here 41

THE

train rolled past the campground at 8 a.m. sharp, wheels shuddering, whistle screaming, bearing the first load of summit-bound tourists of the day. I opened my eyes, then closed them, wincing. My mouth was dry; my head pounded. Between my temples were jackhammers, breaking glass, crashing cymbals. I’d only made it back to my tent a few hours earlier, escorted home by a courteous mountaineering guide after every empty beer case had been burned, the crowd had drifted away to their beds and the fire in his company’s front yard firepit had died down to coals and ash. Now, the train’s passage was endless, the whistle shrill and piercing. I groaned, pulled my sleeping bag over my face and tried to lie as still as possible. My head pounded in rhythm with the huffing train. My time among the summer workers of Skagway had begun.

WHITE PASS

Every summer, this small port town on the Inside Passage, a quick hour and a half drive south of Whitehorse, experiences two separate invasions. The first is well-known: Cruise passengers spill off their ships and flood Skagway’s streets by

of new bodies – maybe more than a thousand, nobody seems to know for sure – and a semi-invisible community is formed on the margins of town, away from the picturesque main drag. During the days, the workers sling luggage on the docks and serve ice cream and popcorn and pints, or lead visitors on Jeep safaris, zodiac rides and guided hikes. At night, when the wave of visitors recedes, the workers take over the streets, and the party is on. I’d come to explore this after-hours community. During my three summers as a Whitehorse resident, Skagway had been my playground – I, like the cruise-shippers and like many of my fellow Yukoners, would yo-yo into town for a night or a weekend, shopping for bargains at the Mountain Shop and enjoying the carnival atmosphere of a tourist trap in full swing. Skagway was Whitehorse’s over-the-top, theatrical neighbour, the gaudy Ye Olde Gold Rush foil to our more sober summer-tourism scene. I wanted to see the town’s ■ Left: Veteran worker Tyler inner workings for myself – and Condon grills his dinner – a in summer, that meant finding peanut butter sandwich. Right: the summer workers. Susie Cochran and Leah Rappaport return home from work. On my first night in town, I’d made my way to one of the workers’ social hubs: the headquarters of Alaska Mountain Guides. The company offers everything from brief, beginner-friendly zip-lining outings – popular with Skagway’s cruise-shippers – to serious multiweek alpine expeditions. Their Skagway office is located on a quiet side street where more than two dozen guides live in dorm-style rooms in a pair of big old houses. When I’d asked around about how best to get to know Skagway’s community of seasonal workers, I’d been told by more than one local to just show up at the AMG yard with a six-pack and take it from there.

A couple more cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon appeared from somewhere, and as darkness finally crept up on Skagway the guys called out to every silhouetted passerby, inviting them to join us. “Hey ladies! We’ve got beer! And fire!”

the thousands, milling up and down Broadway, buying souvenir t-shirts (“Alaska: Size Does Matter”), eating and drinking, taking tours of the surrounding area on boats and buses and bicycles. They clutch their passports and ride the train up the mountain and over the Yukon border and back again. They arrive in the morning and disappear in the evening, ebbing and flowing like the tide. The second invasion exists to meet the needs of the first. When the ships arrive, so, too, do the workers – bartenders and waitresses, baristas and shuttle bus drivers, tour guides for a dozen or more outfits. Hundreds of them come by plane or road or ferry, mostly twenty-somethings from the Lower 48, and set up house in crew dorms and campgrounds. Skagway’s year-round registered population of 800 swells with hundreds 42 up here JUly • August 2012

And sure enough, the guides were a friendly bunch. A tall, blue-eyed rookie named Dan invited me inside and introduced me to the group – a half-dozen bearded guys, one already passing around a bottle of whiskey though it was just after 6 p.m., and a couple of brunette women in their early 20s – and I sat on a sagging couch in a dim, crowded living room while the gang played drinking games and swapped gear specs (there was an extended debate on the merits of various ski boots and bindings). They were climbers, skiers, hikers and skydivers. They were from Idaho and Utah and North Carolina, Minnesota and New York and California – anywhere, it seemed, but the North. >

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■ Susie and Leah cook dinner in their vintage camper.

The first question for a newcomer, always, was “Where do you work?” and there would be a moment of surprise when I said I was just visiting, a writer from Whitehorse. In the evening, after the ships had left, every young person in Skagway was assumed to be a summer worker. A college student from California did her best to help me out with the obscure rules and strategies of the drinking game I’d been roped into – she seemed to be well-versed – but I was a slow study and even her name was soon lost in the haze of the evening. Later on, someone got a fire going in the pit out front, and we all gathered on lawn chairs and padded vinyl seats that had clearly been ripped out of passenger vans. Other seasonal employees dropped by; a steady traffic swirled from the nearby Red Onion Saloon to the fire and back, and another group cycled off to a second workers’ gathering, a bonfire out at Yakutania Point, and then returned again. A couple more cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon appeared from somewhere, and as darkness finally crept up on Skagway the guys called out to every silhouetted passerby, inviting them to join us. “Hey ladies! We’ve got beer! And fire!” As midnight rolled by I asked the group whether they did this sort of thing every day. “Pretty much,” said Dylan, a second-year 44 up here JUly • August 2012

worker from Utah. I wondered how any of them managed to save money, or whether the job was just a way to break even on an alcohol-soaked summer of adventure. The answer, I suspected, was the latter. The sun was rising again by the time Sam, a rookie guide from upstate New York, offered to walk me back to the campground. I’d been attempting to keep up with the AMG crowd for eight or nine hours, and my last clear thought, as I slid into my sleeping bag and shut my heavy eyes, was: I’m getting too old for this.

I’d set up my home base at the Skagway Mountain View RV Park, a jumble of sites packed tight together between the train tracks and the tail end of Broadway. This was where dozens of summer workers, those whose jobs didn’t provide housing, made their homes for the summer. It was an odd collection of makeshift lairs: a pair of derelict school buses with cardboardcovered windows (one featuring a bumper sticker that read, “I found the sweet life”), a motley assortment of ancient trailers, and tent sites with elaborate multi-tarp set-ups, for privacy and additional rainproof living space. The whole chaotic colony was in sharp contrast to the Pullen Creek RV Park, right in the heart of downtown, where gleaming white monster RVs lined up in neat rows and where season-long stays are not permitted.>

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July July• •August August 2012 2012 up here 45 OCtOBer/NOVemBer 2011

T H E

S W E E T

L I F E

A housing hierarchy reigned here, and I’d unwittingly shown up with the right gear for my lowly status. I was an FNG – fuckin’ new guy – and I was living for the week in a small pup tent, without even a camping chair to my name. The newcomers tended to live simply, while the veterans acquired campers or trailers and refined their headquarters with every passing year. Not that anyone treated the ■ Left: Fresh flowers among the newbies badly. All around town, empties. Right: Refreshments in I was invited over to nearly every hand, veteran worker Neil Klug campfire or outdoor gathering I and a friend take a load off and swap tales in the “living room.” passed, offered a seat, a drink, and

already knew his way around the seasonal scene. He’d worked seven winters at a ski resort in Colorado, swapping the hill for a golf course in the summer. Spencer had promised to introduce me to our neighbours, and through the evening he did just that. We waved and smiled at every knot of passersby, in the campground and on the street, and often they stopped to join us for a chat or a drink. The first question for a newcomer, always, was “Where do you work?” and there would be a moment of surprise when I said I was just visiting, a writer from Whitehorse. In the evening, after the ships had left, every young person in Skagway was assumed to be a summer worker. The pause never lasted long, though – soon they’d be teasing me about Canadians’ poor tipping habits, or telling me about their last trip over the border to fill up on supplies at Whitehorse’s Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and Superstore franchises. I’d spent the past few summers treating Skagway as an easy outlet from the limited scope of Whitehorse life – a short drive, a rare meal at the Thai restaurant, a stop at the brewpub. It was a quick travel fix, an afternoon change of scenery, and it was strange to realize that for the Skagway crowd,

“Every year, I say this is my last year. ... Sometimes I feel like I need to grow up and get a real job, but this is just way too much fun. I can make my money and live the way I want.” – Tyler Condon

unsolicited words of wisdom. The beer at the pizza station was cheapest when bought by the gallon, for instance; if you planned on bringing a stash of pot into town, arrival by ferry was easiest, since it avoided both customs and airport security; and, if I was going to sleep around, I’d be better off sticking to the “fresh meat” – fraternizing with the Skagway veterans, I was liable to wind up at the clinic. On my second night in Skagway I stayed close to home, with Spencer Gary, my guide to the Mountain View community. After a long day’s hangover, the evening was a more mellow affair than the first. I spent it sitting in a folding chair outside Spencer’s aging camper, a few sites down from mine. Dark-bearded and curly-haired, Spencer was a freshman bartender at the Skagway Brewing Co. I’d met him there my first afternoon in town. As a 33-year-old newlywed, Spencer was a demographic outlier in Skagway’s worker community – a few years older and a few notches more stable, lifestyle-wise, than most. He was an easy talker with a big, quick laugh – a born barkeep. With a bandana in his hair and a mellow, laidback attitude, he gave off a definite granola vibe – until you got him talking about engines, and then his inner Wisconsin motorhead came out. Though it was his first summer in Skagway, he lived in veteran accommodations: a 1975 camper trailer that he’d hauled up from Colorado, with a fat green stripe down its side. Nobody seemed to mind that he lived large – maybe because of his age, maybe because he 46 up here JUly • August 2012

Whitehorse served the same purpose. “I can’t wait to get to Whitehorse for a movie and some sushi,” I heard a bartender say. And the night before, one of the AMG guides had said, dreamily: “You guys have a McDonald’s up there.” If the pimpness of one’s campground set-up was a marker of status, then Tyler Condon was the king of Skagway. Tyler was 6’8”, a big man with a big personality – both matched by his very big dog, a giant 200-pound Saint Bernard named Bronco – and he had the seasonal life all figured out. He lived in a 1973 Winnebago that still showed off its original brown shag carpet, but the camper was just the beginning. Tyler’s rig formed one side of a horseshoe – a second, parallel trailer two sites over, and a third sitting horizontally between the two, completed the set-up. Between the three, a network of tarps and bungee cords formed a roof and walls, enclosing a mess of couches and chairs. A layer of wooden shipping pallets and a covering of fake miniputt grass formed a floor. A coffee table was cluttered with empty beer cans, a frying pan filled with cigarette butts, an empty pizza box. Folks called the place “the living room,” and like AMG it was a social hub for the community. > CONTINUED ON PAGE 71

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JUly • August 2012 up here 47

ME AND THE

WHITEWATER WAYFARERS They’re those people. You know the ones:

the longhairs who strap kayaks to their bumpersticker-covered hatchbacks in search of epic rapids. Pat Kane is not one of them. When he went to meet the boaters at the North’s biggest paddling festival, he quickly found out

he was in way over his head. >>

48 up here July • August 2012

EaCH yEaR at tHE SlaVE RIVER PaDDlEFESt, a COlOURFUl CREW OF KayaKERS MEEt nEaR FORt SMItH, nWt, tO CElEBRatE anD, OF COURSE, SHOWBOat. HERE, MElanIE lanDRy anD DOUG tOWnSOn StRIKE a POSE OnSHORE.

July • August 2012 up here 49

wo n derfu l whi t ew a t er w a y f a rers

I’ve never been sick in a kayak, but I came close. It nearly happened when I collided head-on with a huge, rushing wave that went directly up my schnoz and out my mouth, over and over, for a solid 10 seconds. In the kayaking world, they call this “surfing.” I believe at Guantanamo Bay it’s called torture. “You alright? Whoa, what a great run!” The voice belongs to the captain of our ship, a seven-foot-tall beanstalk of a man with a toothy grin and an amazing blonde mullet spilling from the back of his silver helmet. His name is Leif Anderson, a pro kayaker from Fort Collins, Colorado, and despite the fact I just inhaled a pint of water, I feel completely safe with him at the controls. I look to the shoreline where roughly 40 other paddlers and onlookers are clapping and cheering and waving at me, as if I had anything to do with our survival. I raise my arms in total victory. “Want to go again?” Leif asks. “Yes!” I roar. “Okay, I’m pretty tired,” he says, “so if we flip the kayak and have to bail, don’t worry, someone will save us downstream.” I think I may be sick for real this time. The Slave River is among Canada’s great waterways, flowing from Lake Athabasca in northern Alberta to Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. It’s at the heart of

an ecosystem unlike any other. Massive wood bison roam nearby. Expansive salt plains and karst sinkholes flank its shores. Cranes strut in its marshes and huge white pelicans nest on its islands. From high above, it all appears so peaceful: a broad, meandering, cola-coloured flow, gently washing northward toward the Arctic. But at the NWT border, just outside the little town of Fort Smith, the lazy river smacks into the rocks of the Canadian shield, creating the Slave River Rapids. And what rapids they are. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to rank the whitewater on the Slave as some of the most powerful – or, in kayaker-speak, “gnarliest” – on Earth. The rapids here have been the site of national and international kayaking competitions featuring the very best in the sport, who race and perform tricks in the huge, frothing waves of Pelican, Cassette and Mountain Rapids, and in the unsubtly named Rapids of the Drowned. I won’t be venturing anywhere near those huge, frothing waves. For the most part, I’ve come to roast weenies and take photos of the soaking, smelly canoeists and kayakers who’ve gathered here for the aptly named Slave River Paddlefest – a weeklong party where “boaters” frolic together in the river by day and, by night, get hosed and sing silly songs at the campground nearby. >

(L) The paddlers break for lunch – hot dogs roasted over an open fire. (R) Genevieve CÔtÉ readies for another run through the rapids. 50 up here JUly • August 2012

JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012 up here 51

52 up here JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012

wo n derfu l whi t ew a t er w a y f a rers

The sign pointing the way to Paddlefest is pretty straightforward: “This way to Paddlefest.” What’s not straightforward, however, is the direction of the arrow: It points down. Apparently, it’s indicating a long, steep, muddy chute down a forested bluff to the shoreline. “Is this for skijumpers?” I ask a passing paddler. Grinning, he shakes his head, then adds, “But it’s great for tobogganing!” A few of us slip and slide our way to the base of the slope, where a clearing reveals the mighty rapids. The sound of so much rushing water is both calming and totally frightening. Someone nudges me and points toward a rocky outcrop upstream. Over the crash of waves, she yells, “We’re heading just beyond that corner.” Carefully, we make our way along the sandy bank, over boulders and fallen trees, until we round the point. I look up from the murky water to see a blinding contrast: The shore is lined with blue, green, orange, yellow, red and even pink kayaks – the most colourful collection of plastic boats I’ve ever seen. The voice over the loudspeaker is muffled, but the gist of the message is to “have fun and be safe.” Immediately, bodies fill the kayaks and the showboating – pardon the pun – begins. “Check out this roll!” yells one paddler, capsizing and then popping back up from the surf. “That wave totally

trashed me last year!” another exclaims. Others shimmy and spin and try flippidy-do-da-type moves to impress the new girls who drove down from Yellowknife this year. “You coming in?” a few ask me. My friend Julian gives me a look as if to say, “Pa-aaat, don’t just stand there, get in the water, you’re embarrassing meeee!” There’s no way I’m going in that water, and not because I’m surrounded by a bunch of crazy hippies, but because the rapids look utterly insane. “I just want to take a few pics of you guys,” I say. “Maybe later.” For the next few hours the announcer, one of the organizers of Paddlefest, Don Jacque, summons paddlers for a slew of events. I can’t make out much of what he’s saying, either because the microphone is broken or because Jacque’s nose is full of water. A few canoeists climb into their vessels and zip through a small set of rapids called the Playground. The new girls from Yellowknife jump on kiddie toys and bob downstream in another race. The more experienced paddlers surf in the larger holes, somersaulting and pirouetting, then high-fiving and pumping their fists. The games go on, the laughter gets louder, the sun shines bright. As I look around at all the dripping paddlers with their goofy grins, I can’t help but admit, “This is really, really fun.” >

(L) John Blyth TOTES his colourful boat TOWARD A RUN CALLED THE “PLAYGROUND.” (R) Julian Morse cuts a sharp turn through the river. JUly • August 2012 up here 53

wo n derfu l whi t ew a t er w a y f a rers

Aaron Jacque gets “trashed” as he attempts to surf a rapid.

Sunburnt and exhausted, we retreat to the campground, which is full of Paddlefesters. Sausages and burgers cook over open fires. Cushhhhuk! A beer is opened. “The best sound in the world,” I say. Not long after, our campsite is full of new friends: Melanie, who did her first kayak roll today, is congratulated by the crowd. She looks at me and whispers, “I didn’t even mean to roll. The water popped me back up when I fell. But don’t tell anyone, okay?” Lee and Julian squabble for the guitar. Camilla sings her favorite tune, “House of the Rising Sun.” Jamie chats about med school. Ben plays a practical joke on a guy named O.J. Doug and Julie plan a short paddling trip for the morning. Jen and John offer them some tips. Aaron sneaks a beer from my cooler, and good ol’ Greg Kosztinka entertains just about everyone with hilarious tales of life in Fort Smith. The next morning, we gather again at the rapids, redeyed but ready for more. Julian gives me that look again. “You know, you don’t even have to go by yourself,” he says. “Leif is taking everyone for a spin in the double kayak.” I glance out at the river and realize that I’m the goofy one, standing here in my shorts and shirt when there’s quite literally the Playground right in front of me. “Fine,” I say, “let’s do this.” When Leif shuffles me into the boat I can’t help thinking how weird this must look. He’s a skinny giant and I’m a stubby fatso. I’m not sure if this disproportion in body types will help us coast through the water or sink us like rocks. With a combined weight of around 400 pounds, I’m thinking the outcome will be the latter. 54 up here JUly • August 2012

“So let’s try a roll,” Leif shouts from the back seat. My job is easy: grab onto the sides and hunch forward so far that I’m essentially kissing the top of the kayak. We flop sideways into the cool, murky water. Three very long seconds pass. Then, finally, we spring to the surface. “That was a bit tougher than I thought,” Leif says. I whisper to myself, “Dammit.” Then we head into the current. Not far to the right, the river is in a frenzy. It seems to drop into a sort of whirlpool; though I can’t see the bottom, I notice foam spitting out of the depths. Leif assures me we’re steering clear of it. “Going in there won’t be very smart,” he hollers. “I completely know what you mean!” I shout back, as if I was a seasoned guide myself. Right about now Leif knows I’m secretly crapping my drawers, so he smoothly paddles us over to the Playground, where we surf and where I swallow water and nearly barf. We never do have to bail, though, and soon I’m back onshore. It’s over and I survived the rapids. No, I conquered the rapids! “That was great!” I say, thanking Leif. Unnecessary adulation comes from the crowd. I’ve never received so much praise for doing nothing but sit in a plastic boat while getting very wet. But what can I say? Everyone is stoked, and truthfully, so am I. By now, the midnight sun is glinting off the rapids. We pack up our gear. The line of blue, green, orange, yellow, red and even pink kayaks snake along the shoreline and up the steep, muddy hill. Behind us, the waves crash as loud as they ever have, and the pelicans soar overhead. And just like that, it’s time for a beer again.

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August 20 th Gold was discovered in the Tr’ondek Hwech’in territory of central Yukon in August of 1896. The finding of the nuggets in Rabbit Creek – later known as Bonanza Creek – touched off the great Klondike Gold Rush.

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The author at the Northwest Territories border. Travel at your own risk. Photo by Garth Mackie

58 up here July â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012

At the gates of a strange kind of heaven BY KATHERINE LAIDLAW

It’s the first thing you’ll come to when you cross into the North: a tidy building in a clearing in the forest. Congratulations, you’ve reached the 60th Parallel Visitor Centre. Welcome to the madness. The first person I see is a discontented Swede. Two jugs of water weigh down her arms and a white bandana holds back her pink hair; binoculars dance around her neck. Her camper has 30 kilometres of gas left and the next gas station is 83 kilometres north of here. Welcome to the great white North. “But what can you do?” she says, resigned to her fate. Her fate is to spend the night here, at the 60th Parallel Visitor Centre campground – the gateway to the Northwest Territories. I meekly offer her a cup of tea and my spork, but she declines, saying she’s got everything she needs in her RV. She’s on holiday with her husband. “I’ve never been to Canada,” she says. They’re both retired, so they ﬂew from Stockholm to Vancouver, rented a camper van and hit the road heading north. > July • August 2012 up here 59

“north of 60”has long held a special

“It’s on our bucket list, that’s why we’re doing the trip,” the man had said, peering over his round spectacles with a grin.

fascination, drawing visitors to the magical divide where the provinces give way to the territories. tourism is the third-largest industry in the nWt, behind mining and construction, and last year, about 10,000 people stopped at this visitor centre to say hello and pick up the free certificate that makes official their traverse across the 60th parallel. to many, this is the Canada they’ve dreamt about their whole lives. and here, at the entrance to the north, a little blue house on the side of the road is the portal to that dream. It’s also where I’ll be working for the next five days, smiling from behind the counter, a friendly Parks employee and a fly-on-the-wall observer. How I spent my summer vacation? Putting the coffee on, writing “arctic adventurer” certificates, and providing answers ranging from “yes, that’s a muskox” to “no, this time of year isn’t the best for catching the northern lights.” the north’s residents are a transient bunch, and its visitors are no different. I wasn’t sure two years in the north was enough to qualify me to work at the border, but I was willing to give it a go. tHE GURU at tHE GatE is Garth Mackie, a lifelong northerner who’s worked across the territory for years, including stints at Diavik Diamond Mine and running the twin Falls campground just up the highway from where he now sits in his office chair. He’s nonplussed when I tell him why I’ve arrived at the centre – no one told him I was coming. “you can camp for free,” he says, waving a thin hand, all blue eyes and teeth beneath his faded blue Edmonton Oilers toque. later, he drives his quad over to my site and unloads a trailer of firewood. after his initial hesitation, he now seems eager to have a camper staying put for a few days. Once the owner of the legendary Hay River bar the zoo (and, he says, an ex-champion broomball player), Garth lives out at the border in the summer and does contracting in the winter. On the side he books concerts; he talks wistfully of a failed attempt to bring Randy Bachman to yellowknife and is mulling plans for a John Fogarty show. I ask him if he has a gun out here. nope, he says, just a slingshot. He says it’ll be all “David and Goliath” if he meets a bear.

60 up here July • August 2012

With Garth, who’s wiry, bald, and has a gold hoop earring in his ear, everything is a story. an offhand comment about firewood leads to a tale about when the woodpile started rotting last year at twin Falls, so they gave away the wood to carloads of happy campers. a tourist’s question about whether there’s gas at Indian Cabins, a tiny settlement just south of here, sets him off on a story about the nowdeparted Swedes: apparently, another traveller brought a jerry can of gas to the centre to repay an old debt and Mackie passed it along to the stranded couple. the first morning of my new job, Garth has to go in to town. He takes a gold key from his key ring. “this opens absolutely everything in the park, every lock. Put it somewhere safe.” and then, just like that, the gatekeeper of the northwest territories is me. I ExPECt a DElUGE of tilley-hatted RVers and adventurous young road-trippers, so I straighten up the Hay River tourism brochures, smooth out my grey Parks uniform, and wait. time ticks slowly by and big-rigs hurtle past, leaving dust streaming from their tails. I inhale the smell of fresh lumber – the building still smells new, even though its $1.2-million overhaul was completed two years ago. I spin around in my office chair, daydreaming. the taxidermied animals on the walls seem to take on personalities – the muskox stretches out its hind leg like a ballerina; a black bear climbing up the centre post peers down at me, keeping a watchful eye; the two caribou near the ceiling gaze indignantly, as though asking how on earth they got up there in the first place as their antlers graze the ceiling. Before long, Elsie Bouvier, a short, 66-year-old Métis woman with long grey hair clipped atop her head, wanders in through the back door and begins sweeping. It’s her first day working at the centre, too. She’s a part-time staffer, hired by Garth, with a penchant for bird-watching (“Is that a bunting? I think it’s a bunting,” she’ll say, pulling out her well-worn field guide). Elsie remembers a time when there wasn’t a highway like the one travellers arrive on today – just a dirt track, at best. “I don’t know if they appreciate it, you know?” she says. “It’s not like it used to be.” Elsie is originally from Fort Simpson, though she’s lived in Hay River for years. She was married to a barge worker named Ernie before he died. “He was a river-boat pilot and I was standing on the shore, hair out waving

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like a mermaid,” she says wistfully. When I tell her it’s a beautiful image, she erupts in laughter. “What a story, eh! I wasn’t on the shore. But we did meet there.” Then, finally, we’re interrupted by visitors: four burly Americans with brush cuts, piling out of a spiffy white Ford F-150. They stomp into the centre, two of them greeting me with stern nods. The other two don’t speak. They’ve just come from a bear-hunting trip in

Alberta, the leader, Tom Taylor, explains. Sitting up straight, I smile and offer them coffee and brochures. They indulge in the java and poke around the centre. I ask what they’ll do with the bears they killed. “I got one with a nice blond face, we’ll get that one standing up. And the other one we’ll make into a rug,” Taylor says. I struggle for more small talk: “Are you guys brothers? You have matching jackets.”

“He’s my wife,” one quips. “If he keeps it up, he’s going to be taking a swim once we get to Twin Falls,” Taylor tells me before they march in a line out the door. Seventeen teachers twitter around the centre on a Friday afternoon. Garth is back from town and we’re both manning the desk, but we seem to be outnumbered. “We’re going camping! We’re going to invade Twin Falls with full force!” says a young woman as she grins between the polar bear’s paws for a photo. Then she bounces up to the counter and examines the NWT Parks map on the wall. “How far is it to the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary?” Oh god, I think, as my anxiety from elementary-school trivia competitions creeps up my spine. I invent an answer – um, 20 minutes? “Doesn’t it take more than three hours to get to Fort Providence from here?” she says accusingly, eyebrow cocked. Busted. Before I can placate her with an official certificate, the quietest and scrawniest teacher approaches the desk, coffee cup in hand. “Do you know anything about a metal pole anywhere near here?” he asks. I stare at him, confused. He continues: “Supposedly it was planted in the ground by this guy named Muscany, and supposedly no one can take this metal pole out of the ground. I guess you have to take a quad ride to get there? Near Hay River?” I look across the desk, baffled. Is he talking about … Excalibur? Garth pipes up. “Sounds like an urban legend to me,” he says, nonchalant. “I’m kind of a history buff,” the teacher responds. “It’s obscure, I thought it was worth asking. Muscany means bear poop in Cree.” He wanders outside. Another teacher approaches. “We live in Cold Lake, Alberta,” he says. “We don’t always get out too much.” Later that night, as I’m creeping stealthily back to my campsite, clutching a whistle to stave off my bear-anoia, Garth waves me over to the firepit. He’s got company – Leon, a handyman-turned-hermit with a sooty face and neon-orange coveralls; Andrew, a young trapper who’s eschewed his parents’ life in town in favour of roughing it in a cabin along the river nearby; and Riel, Elsie’s son, a mineworker on break. They’re celebrating, sitting on logs around the fire, rolling their own smokes and passing around beers. Today is Andrew’s birthday – he just turned 30. I also learn that he’s a YouTube phenomenon. His videos of life in the bush, starring himself and his black lab Charlie, have apparently received more than 1.5 million views.

62 up here JUly • August 2012

Elsie eats wild goose in chunks, sprinkling salt onto each expanse of meat. Leon shouts out stories over the fire, recounting the time a black bear stormed into his cabin and he barely awoke in time to shoot it and save his son, who was sleeping just out of the bear’s grasp. Soon, he’s recounting the first time he was arrested, for stealing drugs from the evidence room in the Hay River courthouse. And then, as he gulps down more “sips” – what these bushmen call booze – his eyes well with tears. He recounts a scene from just the other day, when he shared a kiss with his exgirlfriend in a parking lot in town. “It was the hardest thing I ever done,” Leon says, “pushing her away after feeling her lips touch mine. I don’t want to screw up what she’s got going.” Eventually, talk turns to a man arrested a couple years ago for shooting his brother as he sat across the table from him in his cabin. Riel covers his face with a tea towel, leans away from the fire and pukes. Elsie packs up her goose and decides it’s time to go. Riel walks to the car and Elsie hops in the driver’s seat, a tiny woman at the helm of a massive silver pickup. “Honk when you get to 32!” Andrew calls – his cabin is 32 clicks down the highway. And with that, this unlikely group of border ruffians disperses for the night. The next morning, all that remains of the previous evening’s antics are some charred logs. Garth makes me bacon and eggs and I’m wolfing it down as Andy Depner and Michelle Hammell stride excitedly into the centre, her a willowy redhead and him with a glowing mane of curly hair. “I came home and said – do you want to drive to Yellowknife this weekend?” Depner says. They pointed their car north from Wainwright, Alberta. “That was five days ago and now we’re here.” “Well then, you guys definitely need official certificates,” I say, and Hammell’s eyes light up. “We read about the certificates! Neither of us have ever been this far north before!” The pair’s excitement is palpable. I tell them what someone told me when I first moved to Yellowknife. “If you dip your feet in Great Slave Lake, they say you’ll always find your way back to those waters. The North makes lifers out of people.” “Think we’ll see some Northern Lights?” Depner asks, before climbing back into his SUV, jerry can swinging jauntily from a rope on the back. They honk goodbye, leaving smiles on my face and Garth’s. I think of an older couple we saw a couple nights before, slicked with rain, nearing retirement and gloriously giddy to be on an

adventure. “It’s on our bucket list, that’s why we’re doing the trip,” the man had said, peering over his round spectacles with a grin. They’d set off in their camper van for a sixweek road trip from Sherwood Park, Alberta, said his wife, who was sporting a blond bob, a camo hat and a deep green jacket that looked ready for battle. Their smiles didn’t fade when we told them the route they’d planned, along the Liard Highway, would be a less-

than-conventional journey. “The road is open but travel is not recommended,” Garth read to them from a website. “We’ll just go slow,” the man said. “Just pack my bottle of wine! I’ll be fine!” his wife exclaimed. Before long, talk turned to sprucehen fritters – “put ’em in batter and deep-fry ’em, mmmm …” – a sure sign of hungry travellers. The two headed back to their camper for the night. >

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Finally, on my last day, I’m reminded of how small a place the North really is. A lumbering man in jeans and a jeans jacket – the proverbial Canadian tuxedo – stands beside his little wife, who’s peering over her black spectacles at the names in the guestbook. “VanderVeen?” she wonders aloud. “I say VanderVeen because if they’re from Saskatoon, I’m related to them. Maybe they’re a teacher.” The man and Garth get to chatting, and coffee talk turns to the good ol’ drunken days in Hay River. “You owned The Zoo?” The man bellows. “Maybe you’re the sucker who kicked me out! I used to go there to watch all the guys fight with their little girly fists.” His wife rolls her eyes. “You used to go there to fight,” she says. After the couple leaves the centre, I ask Garth, “Did you know those people?” He replies, “I do now.” Later, when Roger Russell, his son-inlaw Andrew Mackie and Mackie’s two sons straggle in, they’re weary. They’re towing a U-Haul behind their car for Russell’s son, who’s moving back North from B.C. Russell’s got a true Northern story – drove up on a lark after university and never looked back. He and his wife Leah are now fixtures at the Gold Range Hotel bar in Yellowknife every weekend, whirling around the dance floor. He talks dreamily of the early days in Yellowknife, and he’s delighted his son is coming home. It takes me a while, but we finally figure out that Roger is the dad of one of my friends in town, the sister of the man who’s making his homecoming on this trip. The two young boys, though, are less keen to talk Northern lore, and once they tire of the playground out front, they fixate on the big-screen TV hanging next to a stuffed lynx on the wall. “Can we watch TV?” one asks. I explain that all we’ve got is a video about the Dempster Highway. This seems to satisfy them, though, and they sprawl out on the centre’s white leather couches and wait. I wrestle with the remote controls, hoping to achieve competency on my last day – because if you can’t turn on a TV, what can you do, really? Finally, after resigning myself to my uselessness, the video flickers on and, in the heat of the moment, I throw my arms in the air in a triumphant fist-pump. Garth, who’s witnessed my entire struggle, just laughs. “Maybe I’ll just have to hire you someday,” he says, handing me his business card. And with my last task complete, I’m ready to hit the road again, certificate tucked under my arm, making it official.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011 up here 70

SWEET LIFE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 46

This was Tyler’s ninth season in Skagway. He was 28; he’d gotten his start in Alaska with a summer in Sitka, at 18, and now he divided his years between Skagway and the Kenai Peninsula. He drove a cab and a school bus in the winter, and in Skagway he drove the SMART bus, a shuttle that ran an endless loop between the docks and the main attractions in town. He’d worked out an arrangement with the campground owners – free rent in exchange for cleaning the bathrooms – and he knew which shower had the best hot water, which summer employers paid well or treated their staff poorly. He seemed to know every face in town. He was a gold mine for an FNG like me. I asked Tyler whether the summer workers actually came away with any money. His answer: not in their first year. “Some of them say they’ll save some,” he told me as we sat in Spencer’s camping chairs the first night we met. “But they won’t.” Later on, though, as you worked your way up the social ladder, claimed a better job and a better housing set-up and eased up on the restaurant meals and bar outings, there was cash to be made. Tyler owned a second camper at Mountain View – a rental property. He was earning money even when he was doing nothing but sitting in the living room, shooting the shit with his neighbours.

routine. Spencer and Tyler and the rest of the gang – even the young AMG guides pounding beers down the block – were kindred spirits of the gold seekers, mountain men and nomads who’ve forever roamed the last frontier. On my final morning in town, I packed up my dripping wet tent, tossed it in the back of my Jeep and headed for home, but I kept on thinking about the odd, dilapidated community I’d left behind. Part of me wished I’d come North sooner, done the summer seasonal thing myself – in Dawson City, say – when I was still in my own drinking-game

prime. Part of me wanted to chuck my apartment lease and my responsibilities and spend the rest of the summer loitering in the living room. I could see why some people kept coming back, year after year. Some of the workers I met, a few, would become lifers in the North, buying homes or building cabins, graduating from their smelly campers and front-line jobs. Others, I supposed, would leave Skagway with little more than what they came with – driving out of town, like me, with nothing but a hangover and some memories.

According to Spencer’s boss, Brewing Co. owner Mike Healy, Spencer and Tyler were part of a newer trend in Skagway summer workers. When Healy had first arrived a decade earlier – himself a summer kid in search of adventure – the workers had been younger and more transient; most were in their late teens or early 20s and were headed back to school in the fall. Now, year-round, older professionals like Spencer were making their way to town, building semi-nomadic lives around the tourist tide. Spencer told me he liked the perverse certainty of pulling up stakes every six months – the knowledge that his surroundings were always temporary. Tyler, too, had built himself a long-term lifestyle rather than a one-off summer job. “Every year, I say this is my last year,” he told me on my last night in town. We were in the living room again, with a small crowd gathered around and a steady rain coming down on the tarp above us. “Sometimes I feel like I need to grow up and get a real job, but this is just way too much fun. I can make my money and live the way I want.” I liked that idea. It was the sort of sentiment that had driven people to move North for decades, even centuries: the lure of a do-it-yourself lifestyle, freed from the usual southern JUly • August 2012 up here 71

« looking back »

cOURTESY R.c. EPiScOPAL cORPORATiON

» Father Joseph Buliard moved to Garry Lake to net not just fish, but

Inuit converts. His harvest would be their undoing – as well as his own.

‘He came and dwelt among us’ Sixty years ago, a hapless priest brought God to the Barrenlands. Then the locals met their maker. By JENNIFER KINGSLEy

n august of 1949, a floatplane buzzed low over the north shore of Garry lake in the heart of the Keewatin District – part of mainland nunavut today. It banked, descended to the water and skipped to a stop by a small island. a skinny man with thick glasses climbed out and stepped on to the tundra. Dwarf birch and willow tangled at his feet, eskers snaked off in the distance and the lake stretched to the horizon. this island would be his new home. He was Father Joseph Buliard of the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate, and he was here to establish Canada’s most remote mission. that much he knew. What he didn’t know was that within 10 years, due to forces set in motion by his arrival, this land would be emptied of its people, and he would be gone too. Buliard was born and raised in France, but by the time he reached

72 up here July • August 2012

Garry lake, at age 35, he’d already been in the Canadian arctic for a decade. He’d served as a priest in the remote settlements of Repulse Bay and Baker lake, ministering to Inuit who’d gathered around the Hudson Bay Company posts there. now he had a more ambitious assignment. the plane had brought him into the wilderness – about halfway down the 1,000-kilometre length of the Back River, where the water collects into a series of enormous lakes. the north shores of those lakes, he knew, were home to about 15 families of nomadic caribou-hunting Inuit, the Uvaliaqtiit. this island was their summer gathering place. Here, he would bring them the word of the lord. But Buliard needed help to establish his mission. Despite his decade of arctic experience, he was relatively unskilled on the land, so he relied heavily on an Inuk named anthony Manerluk – an orphan who’d been Buliard’s guide and companion since he was 15 years old. Buliard had terrible eyesight and clumsy hands – at Repulse Bay, he’d fallen through the ice, frozen his fingers and never fully recovered. though he learned to run dogs, set fish nets and travel on the tundra, he never became an expert. Manerluk kept Buliard’s mitts and boots clean of snow, hunted and fished for him, and built igloos when they traveled together throughout the region. and over the coming months and years, they travelled a lot. they sought out the Uvaliaqtiit, who were often on the move. they met families like that of ninayok and her husband Sabgut, and hunters like the man arnadjuak. and of course, people also came to see Buliard at the cabin. at least some of the Inuit held Buliard in high regard. and in his own way, Buliard certainly cared about them. But he never learned to appreciate the Inuit’s sophisticated concept

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« looking back » of nuna – a worldview encompassing the land and all its relationships. Expressing a view common among missionaries of the time, he once wrote that the nomadic Inuit were “living like animals.” No matter what Buliard may have thought of them, as time went on, they came to him more and more frequently. He had supplies. Just as Manerluk and others taught the priest some of their skills, changing his relation-

ship with the land, Buliard’s missionary work did the same for them. His presence – especially his reliable supply of tea, ammunition and relief rations – persuaded the Uvaliaqtiit to spend more time near the island. In just a few years, families who’d survived entirely on wild foods – mainly caribou – began integrating Buliard’s provisions into their subsistence economy. Soon, some of the local Inuit, like John Adjuk and his wife, stuck close to

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the mission, and had come, in a way, to depend on it. Then, on October 24, 1956, seven years after Buliard’s arrival, everything at the Garry Lake mission suddenly changed. Buliard, by then 42 years old, hitched up his dog team, planning to head a few miles onto the frozen lake to check his fish nets. As his clumsy hands set up the harnesses, Adjuk came over and expressed concern. Buliard’s helper, Manerluk, had been sent south to be treated for tuberculosis, so the priest was going out alone. Adjuk warned him a storm was coming. Buliard left anyway. The bad weather set in, and later, five of his dogs returned to the mission. There was no sled with them, and no priest. Adjuk went searching, but the blizzard had obliterated any tracks. Buliard’s nets were untouched. He was never seen again. That night remains a mystery – did Buliard’s bad eyesight lead him astray? Was he killed by the cold? Did he plunge through thin ice? The RCMP launched a brief murder investigation, but no one was ever charged. The Uvaliaqtiit, for the most part, accepted his disappearance. Manerluk, though, was deeply sad. He said, “When I heard of Father Buliard being lost, I felt I lost a parent.” OFFICIALS IN BAKER LAKE, nearly 300 kilometres southeast, didn’t get word of Buliard’s disappearance until January of 1957. In June, Father Ernest Trinel was flown in to replace him. Caribou were sparse at the time, and some Uvaliaqtiit families were struggling, so Trinel picked up where Buliard had left off. He gave out relief supplies. But this act would become highly controversial. Distributing food and gear was a common practice at Arctic missions; it was part of looking after the flock. But it also, of course, drew Inuit to the men who were trying to convert them. And it didn’t sit well with some government officials. By the time Trinel arrived at Garry Lake, Ottawa was enacting a policy promoting Inuit “independence.” The priests and the bureaucrats disagreed: Were the supplies a tool to bring souls to God, or essential food-aid for people in need? In August of 1957, after two months at the mission, Trinel sent a message to Baker Lake. It read: “A community of 60 Eskimos menaced to starve at Garry Lake.” The caribou had not come, and Trinel saw the situation as life-or-death. The nearby storehouse was stockpiled with food, and Manerluk and others were put in charge of distributing it. Government agents came with a relief shipment in August, but not everyone agreed the

rations were needed. Douglas Wilkinson, the Northern Affairs officer based in Baker Lake, called the food drop “the worst thing that could happen.” He claimed the Inuit at Garry Lake had “hoodwinked the father into giving out most of his supplies.” Meanwhile, Trinel was worried he himself wouldn’t survive the winter. He left, going to Baker Lake in early December. On December 15, a final shipment of food arrived at the storehouse. That winter was cold and grim. The lack of caribou meant the Uvaliaqtiit weren’t just hungry, but poorly clothed. The government had given them fish nets, but in their threadbare garments they couldn’t venture far to fish. Ninayok and Sabgut had put up lots of fish in the fall, but had given them away to people who were even worse off. A man named Angeelik shot nine caribou, but they were soon consumed. By early in the new year, Ninayok told an official, “Eskimos were forced to eat their dogs.” The situation became desperate in January and fatal by February. With barely any food left, starving and freezing, Arnadjuak and a companion travelled from their camp to the storehouse to see if they could gather

supplies. Inside, they started a small stove. It exploded, and both men ran out into the cold. As the building burned, Arnadjuak ran to a nearby structure, crawled between two mattresses and died. His companion made it back to camp, but he had none of the food his family was expecting. It wasn’t long before they all died of starvation. Between late February and early March a total of 17 Uvaliaqtiit died. One man was found frozen next to a fishing hole. The RCMP, who were responsible for making a winter patrol through the area, didn’t do so. Father Trinel and government officials didn’t make contact with Garry Lake until April 24. On May 10, Ninayok, who played an important role in piecing the story together, was evacuated for emergency medical treatment. A flurry of government and media attention followed, placing blame all around. Some accounts held the Inuit responsible; others blamed Mother Nature, as though the starvation was inevitable. No white man wanted to assume guilt: not the missions, for their role in altering the area’s subsistence economy. Not the government, for its evershifting relief policies. And not the police, for

having failed to make their winter rounds. Some pointed to the storehouse fire as a single, clear cause, but a pathologist’s report on the deaths cited prolonged hunger and exposure – “definite evidence of severe malnutrition as evidenced by weight loss and extreme loss of all fat.” After these events, the Department of Northern Affairs flew into action. Within five months they’d launched a dramatic project. They deployed staff to the Hudson Bay coast and, some 500 kilometres from the Uvaliaqtiit homeland, began constructing a new settlement for some of the survivors. Today, the village is called Whale Cove. Many of the Uvaliaqtiit who were brought there had never seen the sea. By 1959, just a decade after Father Buliard had set up the first-ever mission at Garry Lake, nobody was left. The Uvaliaqtiit people had either died or been moved away. Father Buliard’s cabin stubbornly remains. It stands to this day, its shell of thin boards blackened by sun and cold. Shreds of tarpaper cling to its walls; wind whips through it. It had been occupied for so short a time, but long enough to change everything.

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12-06-12 2:25 PM

« exposure »

Last days aboard the M.V. ‘Merv’ The sounds are loud and abrasive when the engines churn, the ramp digs into the shoreline and the trucks trundle onto the ferry. But those mechanical clanks give way to the steady whoosh of water as we leave the riverbank and plough into the current. The ride across the Mackenzie River takes just a few minutes, but passengers still get out of their vehicles and gather along the railings. They gaze over the broad, rushing water, feeling the crisp breeze and watching the seagulls wheel. The Merv, as it’s affectionately known, is a Northwest Territories icon. Built in 1971, it’s named for the late Yellowknife politician Mervyn Arthur Hardie, who fought to improve transport in the NWT. To Northerners, the ferry is a symbolic divider, a crossing 76 up here JUly • August 2012

Photos and text by Patrick Kane

from the well-travelled south to the wilder environs farther north. But it won’t be for long. Later this year, just beside the ferry crossing, the $192-million Deh Cho Bridge is set to span the Mackenzie. Every day, Barry McDonald, the captain of the Merv, watches the bridge get closer to completion. I ask him what he’ll do when that happens. “Retire,” he says, grinning slightly. And the ferry? “Not sure. Maybe a tourist attraction.” In mid-river, ice floes push past us – perhaps the last breakup ice the Merv will ever contend with. Then we draw near the shore and the rest of the travelers climb back in their vehicles, start their engines and carefully disembark. In their rearview mirrors the ferry drifts back across the river, as it has so many times before.

Main: As the Deh Cho Bridge looms, the Merv Hardie ferry makes a southbound crossing of the Mackenzie River, just upstream of Fort Providence, NorthwestTerritories. Left: Captain Barry McDonald maneuvers the Merv through early-summer ice floes. Below: A deckhand prepares to usher aboard another load of vehicles and passengers. Bottom Left: A big-rig bound for the North Slave region eases its way up the ramp. Bottom right: The captainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s steady hand brings the ferry to a smooth landing on the muddy riverbank.

JUly â&#x20AC;˘ August 2012 up here 77

« last word »

Man, I ain’t your dog After years of mushing, he thought he’d found the perfect pet. But a bloody standoff taught him the truth: His lead dog had made him a follower. BY TERRY WOOLF

78 up here JUly • August 2012

Knowing that we had to have him in hand by the time the plane came to get us, I devised a plan to lure him into the cabin and leash him. I put his food dish at the entrance and each day moved it further in. Finally, I placed his dish deep inside the cabin. He was suspicious, feinting in and out, studying me, but eventually he entered. And then the dumb human blew it, big-time. Gloating, I stepped into the doorway and proclaimed “Ahha!” Trigger freaked. He yelped, leaping for the door. As I reached out to grab him, he got a good, bloody lock on my forearm. I fell to the ground and he burst outside, racing back and forth in front of the cabin, yowling and screaming. I staggered around, dripping blood, hurling profanities and berating myself: What kind of musher alienates the best lead dog he’s ever had? We were two days away from the dreaded plane ride, and no closer to getting Trigger to calm down. I decided the situation called for forces greater than my own. I called my friend Jo, a dog whisperer. Jo was a saint. She rounded up a cage, some tranquilizers, and her dog, Badger, and boarded our inbound plane. When it docked and she stepped off, something incredible happened. Trigger immediately trotted up to her. The chaos was over – no tranqs, no trauma. I knelt on the dock and petted his back. He looked up at me calmly, as though we’d never fought. We packed up the plane and took off. Now, if it wasn’t for four canine punctures in my arm and a massive plane-charter bill, I might put the whole thing down as a bad dream. Instead, I’ve realized that Trigger tolerates my presence because it means he can be with his dog team. No dog can be all things. Only Walt Disney movies have Walt Disney dogs. Timmy should stay away from the well, and I can fetch my own damned slippers. It turns out Trigger is the real leader after all.

monika melnychuk

’ve always dreamed of having a Walt Disney kind of lead dog. You know, one who could lead my team through a blinding snowstorm, rescue Timmy from the well, then fetch my slippers when we got home. When I met Trigger, I knew he was the one. He was a handsome, silver two-year-old Siberian husky, given to me by friends. In my 25 years of mushing, he was one of the most eager leaders I’d ever seen. He responded instantly to commands and got along with our other dogs. His only challenge was being a little bit shy. To build trust between master and dog, I decided to bring Trigger on a trip with my partner to our cabin – eight hours of paddling with five portages. Our old canoeing dog, Magic, had died, and we needed a new canine companion to warn us about incoming bears. When we approached the canoe, Trigger was hesitant, but I dragged him in. He sat, quietly resigned. After the first portage he was more reluctant but I bullied him in again. At the next portage he wouldn’t come near me. We begged, pleaded, bribed and fumed – to no avail. After four hours, we had no choice: We turned back. Trigger followed along the shore. When we reached our truck and dropped the tailgate, he leapt in. So, a few days later, I enacted Plan B: We would fly. I was certain spending time at the cabin would forge a bond between Trigger and me, repairing any bad feelings. So again I forced him, this time into a floatplane. He moped, quiet and sullen, all through the flight. When we taxied up to the dock I let him out. He bolted, and that was the last time we touched him for days. Trigger didn’t run away, though. While we did chores or lazed about, he would always be close by. He played, sniffed around, did his own thing. But if we addressed him directly or made eye contact, he would back away, cowering. In this relationship, he wasn’t going to give me control.

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JUNE 2012 up here 79

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ᐳᐃᒍᖅᑕᐃᓕᒋᑦ...

ᐊᑎᓕᐅᖅᑕᐅᓯᒪᔭᕆᐊᕐᑲᕋᕕᑦ

ᒥᕐᖖᒍᐃᖅᓯᕐᕕᓕᐊᓚᐅᖖᒋᓐᓂᕐᓂ! ᐊᑎᓕᐅᕐᑲᑦᑕᕐᓂᖅ ᐃᓱᖅᐸᓪᓕᐊᔪᓄᑦ ᐊᓂᕙᓪᓕᐊᔪᓄᓪᓗ ᓄᓇᕗᒻᒥ ᒥᕐᙳᐃᖅᓯᕐᕕᖕᓄᑦ ᑐᕌᖕᒐᔪᑦ ᓴᖅᑭᑎᑕᐅᔾᔪᑎᕐᑲᖅᓯᒪᕗᑦ ᒥᕐᙳᐃᖅᓯᕐᕕᓕᐊᖅᐸᒃᑐᑦ ᐃᑲᔪᕈᒪᓪᓗᒋᑦ ᕐᑯᐊᖅᓵᕐᓇᖖᒋᑦᑐᒃᑰᕐᑯᓪᓗᒋᑦ ᐊᓕᐊᓇᐃᑦᑐᒥᒡᓗ ᐊᑐᕐᑯᓪᓗᒋᑦ. ᐃᓯᖅᐸᓪᓕᐊᔪᑦ ᐊᓂᕙᓪᓕᐊᔪᓪᓗ ᑎᑎᕌᓂᒃᓯᓯᒪᔭᕆᐊᕐᑲᖅᐳᑦ ᐊᑎᓕᐅᖅᑕᐅᓗᑎᒡᓗ ᐊᐅᓚᑦᑎᔨᐅᕐᑲᑎᒌᓄᑦ ᑲᑐᔾᔭᐅᓗᑎᒃ ᐊᑎᓕᐅᖅᑎᑦᑎᕙᒃᑐᓪᓗ ᐱᓂᕆᔨᖕᒋᓐᓄᑦ; ᑖᒃᑯᐊ ᐱᔭᒃᓴᐅᒋᓪᓗᑎᒃ ᐅᓂᒃᑳᕐᕕᒃ ᐳᓛᕐᕕᖕᒥ ᐃᕐᑲᓗᖕᓂ ᐅᕝᕙᓘᓐᓃᑦ ᑲᑕᓐᓂᓕᒃ ᒥᕐᙳᐃᓯᕐᕕᓕᕆᔨᒃᑯᓐᓂ ᑭᒻᒥᕈᒻᒥ.

ᐃᓯᖅᐸᓪᓕᐊᔪᓄᑦ ᐊᓂᕙᓪᓕᐊᔪᓄᓪᓗ ᐊᑎᓕᐅᕐᓂᕐᒧᑦ ᐃᑲᕐᕋᕆᔭᐅᔪᑦ ᓇᓃᓐᓂᖏᓪᓗ: Registration and de-registration hours and locations: Lieux d'inscription et de désinscription et heures d'ouverture : ᔫᓂ ᐅᑐᐱᕆᒧᑦ ᓇᒡᒐᔾᔭᒥ ᐅᓪᓗᑐᐃᓐᓇᕐᒧᑦ 9:00-ᒥ ᐅᓪᓛᒃᑯᑦ 5:00-ᒧ ᐅᓐᓄᒃᑯᑦ ᓯᕙᑖᕐᕕᖕᒥ ᓴᓇᑦᑕᐃᓕᒥᓪᓗ 1:00-ᒥ ᐅᓪᓗᒃᑯᑦ 4:00-ᒧ ᐅᓐᓄᒃᓴᒃᑯᑦ ᐃᕐᑲᓗᐃᑦ ᐅᓂᒃᑳᕐᕕᒃ ᐳᓛᕐᕕᒃ ☎ 867-979-4636

Remember...

June - October

You MUST REGISTER before you go! The registration and de-registration process for Nunavut Territorial Parks is designed to help park visitors have a safe and enjoyable experience. Registration and deregistration must be completed and signed jointly by group leaders and registration staff; and is available at the Unikkaarvik Visitor Center in Iqaluit or the Katannilik Park Visitor Centre in Kimmirut.

Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Saturday and Sunday 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm Iqaluit Unikkaarvik Visitor Centre 867-979-4636

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Le processus d'inscription et de désinscription des parcs territoriaux du Nunavut vise à assurer aux visiteurs un séjour agréable et sécuritaire. L'inscription et la désinscription doivent être remplies et signées par le chef de groupe et le personnel chargé des inscriptions; les formulaires sont disponibles au Centre des visiteus Unikkaarvik d'iqaluit ou au Centre des visiteurs du parc Katannilik à Kimmirut.

Kimmirut Katannilik Territorial Park Visitor Centre 867-939-2416

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De juin à octobre

Du lundi au vendredi, 9 h 00 à 17 h 00 Samedi et dimanche de, 13 h 00 à 16 h 00

Rappelez-vous...

Vous DEVEZ vous INSCRIRE avant de partir!

ᑭᒻᒥᕈᑦ ᑲᑕᓐᓂᓕᒃ ᒥᕐᙳᐃᓯᕐᕕᒃ ᐳᓛᕐᕕᒃ ☎ 867–939–2416

Iqaluit Centre des visiteurs Unikkaarvik 867-979-4636

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Kimmirut Centre des visiteurs du parc territorial Katannilik 867-939-2416

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