Adventure in Nunavut

I spent the four weeks working in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. The Arctic is a wonderful, unique place in Canada. Everyone is curious what it was like, so let me answer a few of your questions.

Why did you go there?
I went for work. A business in Cambridge Bay was behind in their books and needed an accountant to come in and help them catch up. It was a short term work contract, which is common in the North. I worked two weeks before Christmas and the first two weeks in January.

Where is Cambridge Bay?

Find the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba . . . and go north. Cambridge Bay is well inside the Arctic Circle. It's as far north as San Francisco is south. You can only get there by airplane.

How cold is it there?

The warmest I saw was -25. Most days it was -30C - -35C, and the coldest was -46. On the few calm days it wasn't too bad. The blowing wind makes it much worse. I'd rather have -35 on a calm day than -25 with a breeze.

One of the greatest experiences was seeing how people respond to the cold. People expect the cold and it doesn't bother them. Really. People wear heavy parkas and snowpants. 14 year old girls never consider that snowpants and toques are unfashionable, and I played fooseball against kids wearing gloves. Dealing with the cold is normal. Life goes on. The only weather-related comment I heard was "Feels warmer today, doesn't it." People don't fight against the cold, they adapt to it.

It is cold though, don't get me wrong. You feel it if you take off your glove to take a picture. Glove off . . . snap, snap, snap . . . glove on. Then your hand is frozen. Not cold, but frozen.

I went snowmobiling one night – in the cold. I was dressed with enough layers to actually be warm. My face was covered up with a neckwarmer pulled up over my nose and my touque as low as it could go, so only my eyes were showing. I ended up with frostbite on that space between my eyes. And do you know what happens when the cold wind makes your eyes water? One day my runny nose froze into an icicle.

Do people ride in dog sleds?

No. I didn't see anyone pull up to their igloo in a dog sled. There are three ways to get around town: The first is big pickups (a few vans, no cars; you couldn't drive a Civic through the snowdrifts). The second way around is snowmobile. There are as many snowmobiles as trucks. They drive down the street like any other vehicle – obeying speed limits and stopping at stop signs. The third way around town is to walk. Town is only about one km wide, so you can walk everywhere. That's how I got around. (I suspect people drive Quads in the summer, but I only saw a few in December.)

A few people still have dogsleds. They're more for recreational use in the spring once it warms up. People with teams keep them out of town since they bark and disturb people.

What are the people like?

Amazing. I love the people there.

There are 1,600 people in town, and 80% of them are Inuit. It's the friendliest town I've ever seen. People are outgoing. The Inuit people are the nicest. I talked to 10 year old kids, teens, and elders. Everyone is friendly. I felt like a celebrity walking around town because everyone would smile at me and say Hello. There's nothing like walking down the -30C street and have an ancient-looking Inuit woman peer out of her fur-lined parka and start chatting.

Most people speak English Inuktituk is common among the elders. I went to one home to buy homemade fur mittens. When the door opened three aged elder women invited me in to see their wares. None of them spoke any English.

The people have more peace. They don't rush around and they don't panic about anything. They're not trying to keep up with an overly-busy life. They're not fighting against life. They relax and let things happen. Because they live in an environment where you can't beat it, they learned to move with the flow of life. At least the Inuit people. The white people don't.

The people are happy too. They're faces are more relaxed and more smiling. The community has lots of social problems too, with alcohol and drugs and family dysfunction. But they have smiling faces.

What do people do?

Cambridge Bay is the government centre for western Nunavut. That's the biggest industry. There's mine development around as well so some workers fly in and out of Cambridge Bay.

I'm convinced that most people drive water or sewer trucks. The ground is frozen granite, so all the services are above ground. Water, of course, would freeze. So water trucks drive around delivering water to all the houses, which have internal tanks. Same for sewage.

Inuit hunt and fish too. They hunt muskox and caribou, and fish arctic char. They do it for their own families, plus there's a meat plant in town that processes smoked char and muskox meat.

Cambridge Bay grew in the 1950 when a navigation radio tower was built. It was for airplanes to use as a locating device. A few years after it was built improved technology rendered it obsolete. Then the Americans built a large radar system to detect Communist planes coming over the North Pole from Russia. It was a large operation for decades giving the town time to become established. Inuit people first built houses from the wood left over from crating materials up for the towers. The town has boomed ever since.

Did you see any animals?

There are a few ravens flying around town, and I saw three arctic foxes – two of them in town. I tried to chase them and catch them, but they ran away. I saw several arctic hares as well. Imagine a rabbit the size of a coyote.

There are very few polar bears around, especially in the winter. Grizzleys arrived 15 years ago and are more popular.

Caribou have mostly migrated south for the winter. Muskox are still around but I didn't see any. It's not like they lay down outside the meat processing plant for the night.

Summer is a different story. There are thousands and thousands of migratory birds. There are lots of fish too – ocean and fresh water. The Inuit name for the area means "place of good fishing."

Is it dark all the time?

Cambridge Bay experiences Polar Night – a time when they don't see the sun. The sun set on November 30, and didn't rise again until January 11. So you think it might be dark all the time.

Actually, no. The sun doesn't rise, but they experience twilight. It is light out from 10 am until 2 pm, as light as Edmonton during a snowstorm. The rest of the time it's dark.

People seem accustomed to the darkness. It's a bit of a night culture, it seems. At least the arcade is full of school kids until it closes at 11:00. People snowmobile in the dark as well.

Seeing the sun finally rise was something else! It comes up, hugs the horizon in the southern sky, then goes down again. It's a sunrise & setset at the same time.

Did you eat whale blubber?

Yes. I was in the North, how could I resist?

Muqtuq is actually the skin of the whale and the attached blubber/meat. You can eat it raw or cooked. It's actually not bad, but it's much better cooked than raw. The taste is similar both ways, but it's hard and chewy when it's raw.

People eat normal western food. There are two grocery stores in town, which sell all normal food, and everything else you might want. (One store had a skidoo displayed in the produce area.) Because everything has to be flown it food is quite expensive. I paid $12 for 4L of milk. (I'm writing on a 737 jet carrying only 24 people, because the rest is cargo space.)

How do people get to Cambridge Bay?
There are no roads to Cambridge Bay. It's on an island isolated from other communities. People have to fly to get there. Supplies come in on a plane, or by barge in the summer.

People drive around town, and to areas outside town. Vehicles arrive by barge. Supplies are shipped from Yellowknife or Hay River on Great Slave Lake.

What is the community like?

There are two schools, an elementary and a high school, with 200 students. There's an ice rink in the winter and swimming pool in the summer. There are three churches, a community hall, health centre and really nice visitor centre. Three hotels, fire hall, and a community college. Lots of water trucks. Electrical generators, and large diesel storage tanks – used to generate electricity. There are historical points of interest near town, like the old Catholic church, whose stones were mortared together with clay and seal fat.

The town is busy over Christmas. There are activities and games every day – usually two or three events per day – for two weeks starting Dec 18. I attended the first night of community games in the school ("Kullick") gym. There were about 300 people of all ages packed in playing games together. I've never seen 20 elders – and I mean elders – playing the game where two people are blindfolded and one has to feed pudding to the other. The community is very social.

There are several artists in town. Ladies sew various crafts and clothing with leather and fur. Men carve soapstone, muskox antlers or bones. Two carvers and one sewer approached me to peddle wares while I was there. I bought an inukshuk necklace and beaver skin mitts.

Is God there?
I went to a Pentecostal church. The pastor is an Inuit man who grew up in Cambridge Bay. Inuit people gravitate naturally to experiential, expressive forms of Christianity.

Inuit people are naturally spiritual. Us southerns are too rational and skeptical. They pray earnestly for family members who struggle with alcohol and drug problems, and actually pray like God hears them and will answer prayers. When a household asks them to come and pray for them, they go prepared to see manifestations of the spiritual – demonic activity or deliverance. It was a inspiring to my faith to be with them.

What was the most exciting thing that happenned while you were there?

The most exciting thing actually centered around me, but I missed it entirely.

I went for a hike one day – three hours long, across the bay and on to the barrens. I wanted to experience the vastness of the land. My boss asked where I was going and when I would be back so he could come find me if something went wrong. I was back at 3:00, our appointed time. He got tied up and didn't show. His phone was busy for the next two hours so I wasn't able to let him know I was ok. I had to leave to go to dinner with someone, so I just left a note.

At 5:00 my boss drove by, saw that my office was dark, and didn't check for the note. He checked my hotel, which was empty. Then he phoned a few people to see if anyone had seen me. No luck. So he thinks I'm two hours late coming home, the wind is blowing, and it's dark out. So he called out the search party.

Meanwhile I'm relaxed, having dinner, and enjoying wonderful conversation with new-found friends. I didn't leave their house until 7:30.

My boss has reported my absence to the RCMP. A half-dozen of his friends had been combing the land on snowmobiles for two hours, and the formal, full-fledged search party is forming at the town office. When someone goes missing in the Arctic winter people take it seriously. A year ago two people got lost and were found frozen the next day. The town went into a frenzy.

I left the house and started walking up the street. A red Hamlet truck stopped and a person stuck his head out the window. "We're looking for a visitor named 'Wayne'" he says. "There's a search party forming to go looking for him."

He was glad to find me. So glad, in fact, he drove me to my office, and I quietly went back to work.