2004/07 Yukon trip - Trek to the Arctic - |
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Tuesday 10th August
We were up early for our trip and the sun was a red disc looking at us through the smoke. We got to Arctic Nature Tours on time and met the other couple that was sharing the tour. Paul and Sue were from Saskatchewan, though he’d come originally from New Brunswick and was an Arcadian who’d grown up speaking a strange French dialect.
We drove out to Inuvik airport to catch the Aklak Air flight to Tuktoyaktuk. Aklak is owned by the Inuvialuit and it was a refreshing change from the regular US airline. Identification: You’re Peter and Sandra, right? Security? Nope. Boarding: Ask the pilot “Is this one going to Tuk?” Safety: Stow 
your stuff and put on your seatbelts. (But I’m not going to check that you do.)
The airplane was a twin-prop Beechcraft. Because of the smoke we couldn’t see much detail down below but the Mackenzie delta is just a mass of lakes and channels, and that’s what we flew over for about a hundred miles. As we got closer to Tuk we 
started to see pingos. These start from lakes and progressively build up layers of ice as long as there’s still water in the lake. They turn into hills with cores of ice until all the lake’s water is used up, and then they decline. Tuk is famous for having the biggest and best pingos.
It was a bit cooler in Tuk than Inuvik but still tee-shirt weather. Ricky, a local Inuvialuit, met us at 
the airport with his van and gave us the standard tour of Tuk. He was better at giving his standard spiel than he was at answering questions. The houses in Tuk are also built on stilts to preserve the permafrost, but it’s probably handy when there’s a high tide or a strong wind as the whole place is surrounded by bays and channels and it’s only a few feet above sea level. They have no piped water or sewer so there are water and sewer trucks buzzing around filling water tanks and emptying the septic tanks that sit between the stilts. Hopefully the drivers don’t get confused.
Most of the population lives off the land: fishing, trapping, hunting, and gathering. There were a lot of local wage jobs when the DEW (Distant Early Warning) station (in the picture behind Ricky) was being built but now the station is completely automated. However, apparently most people who want a job can get one: guiding, tourism, repairs, 
and government.
He took us around the usual stuff: churches, boats, memorials, original earth houses. We couldn’t go down to see 
the community freezer, though. This would have involved climbing down a long ladder into an enormous chamber in the permafrost. Apparently a lawyer had told them the community was in danger of being sued if someone fell, and now he can’t take tourists down there. Ricky thought that maybe they should have simply dropped the lawyer down there.
They had a big event a few years back and a number of rock bands came to Tuk, the first live bands the town had ever seen. Apparently the Metallica band went to the school to warn the kids about drugs and alcohol. However, Ricky went to the celebration after the concert: “Boy, do those Metallica guys know how to party!”
Part of the tour is to visit the beach and dip your toe into the Arctic Ocean. I dipped the rest of me too and got my “polar bear swim” certificate. To be honest, I’ve swum in colder water at Brighton. At Tuk there is so much water coming down the Mackenzie River, that the Arctic Ocean component is much diluted. It was barely salty.
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Tuktoyaktuk (1.48) |
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The second half of the day was to have lunch at an Inuvialuit home. This we did, but Maureen, the lady serving and 
giving us the talk, was not Inuvialuit. She had come from Manitoba to Tuk as a schoolteacher and married a local trapper. She had lived off the land like a local, and had three grown up Inuvialuit children. She was probably the ideal person to give the talk as she knew the differences between our two cultures and was able to focus on what we’d find interesting. The picture shows her chopping up lunch with her ulu. She served us caribou stew, bannock, dried and smoked whitefish, dried whale meat (miptu), and smoked blubber (muktuk). Nobody was too keen on the whale meat, too strange a flavour, but all the rest went down 
well. Sandie ate most of the fish.
The family would get through an enormous amount of food in a year: two whales, seventy snow geese, twenty caribou, seals when available, and hundreds of fish. They had nets out for fish all the time to feed their sled dogs and themselves. She’d feed the dead fish to the dogs and save the live ones to smoke for her family. The whales are belugas, and they have to be hunted with a hand-thrown harpoon. If they are shot they just sink out of reach. She also said that they hunt polar bears from a dogsled. The dogs are smart enough to detect when the bear backtracks and starts hunting the man. Snowmobiles aren’t that smart! The most important component of all this food is fat as that’s what keeps them alive in the cold.
She told us how they tan the hides and make the clothes. We got to try on some of their clothing. The dance parka
that Sandie was wearing has much-prized wolverine fur around the hood which curls around your face when there’s a strong wind and doesn’t mat when it gets wet.
Maureen said that Paul Martin was going to be visiting Tuk on Friday and taking a tour. Just in case you don’t know, Mr. Martin is the Prime Minister of Canada. Hope he enjoys his muktuk!
Our last stop was at the handicraft centre, which turned out to be someone’s front room. We picked a few small souvenirs, made by the locals. The big souvenir stores in Inuvik charge an enormous amount for Inuit art and there’s no guarantee that it’s locally made. There’s also a big trade in fake degrees and diplomas (in snow management) from the mythical Tuktoyaktuk University. You too can own a Tuk-U tee-shirt.
On our way back to the airport Maureen mentioned that this was the anniversary of her encounter with a grizzly. The family was berry picking and she’d gone on ahead to a particularly good patch and surprised the bear. It charged her, knocked her down, and bit her. Twice she got up and twice more she was knocked down and bitten. Then it ran off. She said the bear was just warning her off as it could easily have crushed a limb or killed her. She thinks that she was very lucky, and she’ll always have the scars to remind her.
We caught the plane back to Inuvik and rushed around for a few errands and then set off south down the Dempster Highway, heading for home, over 3000 miles away by the shortest route. However, we had a five month old grandson to go see, and a number of places to visit along the way, so we’ll probably do a lot more miles than that.
To be continued in Part 3, The Road Home