Viewed from a Twin Otter about 2,000 metres
above-ground, the Arctic’s puzzle-piece geography becomes
real and identifiable: the retreating shores of Cornwallis
Island, Wellington Channel — windswept and textured
like fur — bumpy Devon Island. Canada’s third largest
island, Ellesmere is the most northern of the Arctic
Archipelago and its most mountainous, though 40 percent
of it is pinned under shrinking cloaks of ice, some of them
900-metre-thick remnants of the last ice age.
Young and elderly aboriginal residents, in particular those pursuing
aspects of traditional ways of life, are the most vulnerable.
Clouds obscure the aerial view. We hunch against the aircraft’s
chilled interior until a wall of rock suddenly, and
alarmingly, materializes out of the mist. The plane banks
90 degrees west, drops onto the runway and halts on half a
kilometre of gravel. With eight passengers and luggage on
board, there was scant room for food and supplies for the
community’s only store, a common misfortune with just two
scheduled flights weekly. The town went smoke-free for a
couple of days this summer when the store ran out of
$20 packs of cigarettes. “Do you know what we got today?”
asks the exasperated store manager, Doug Field. “Coffee
whitener. Two boxes of coffee whitener.”
Silent Snow Silent snow is a documentary project that works with Northern residents to investigate the structural pollution affecting their home in the Artic region.
Viewings of this 14-minute film garnered much attention during this year’s film festivals. A feature-length film is presently in development.For more visit: www.silentsnow.org. (Video: Jan van der Berg)
Unlike Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, with its cappuccino
and racquetball, Grise Fiord, the territory’s second smallest
community, is traditional and family-oriented. There are
about 40 dwellings and another 20 public and commercial
buildings. No housing shortage here; no food bank. Women
make parkas for their bachelor brothers, and everyone hunts
or knows someone who does. Many rely on seal, beluga, narwhal,
muskox, ptarmigan, Arctic char, hare, caribou and
polar bear for food and skins. But subsistence hunting, even
here in the High Arctic, could eventually be threatened as
animals react to a fluctuating ecosystem. Thanks to our
addiction to fossil fuels, even southern Ellesmere has an
earlier spring, a warmer summer, a later freeze-up and less
sea ice for travelling and hunting.
Less ice eventually means more international shipping
through the Arctic as well, more resource exploration, a
greater risk of environmental contamination — and reduced
habitat for the polar bears and seals that eat, mate and
reproduce on the ice. But while bureaucrats wring their
hands and multinational mining magnates calculate potential
profits, while scientists scramble to fill gaps in research
that was too expensive to conduct and wasn’t a priority
until yesterday and while earnest urbanites ponder what
it’s really like in the Arctic, Grise Fiord residents keep fishing
and hunting while they can, because that’s what they’ve
always done.
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Some Grise Fiord hunters, especially in a crowd, shrug and
tell you they don’t want your pity. They’ll adapt. Others say
differently in private. “Everybody wants to be warm, but the Arctic and Inuit need a cold climate,” says Jeffrey Qaunaq,
30, a father of three and a conservation officer with Nunavut’s
Department of Environment. “I don’t try to think about it,
but I still worry.” Grise Fiord mayor and schoolteacher
Meeka Kiguktak worries too. “If we cannot go out hunting,
what are we going to do?” she asks. “What will we eat? It’s
hard to empower a community when you are dependent.”
What happened to the Beluga trapped in the ice was sad. The video made me feel terrible for these whales who are being killed because they can not get away. I know this was some time back but it is still a sad sight. I lived in the north when this was going on.
Submitted by Lori on Monday, October 06, 2008
Having lived in Grise Fiord the portion of the article "Sunlight 24-hour daylight from May to August 24-hour darkness from October to early February" is not correct. The last sun is seen Nov 3rd and then peeks over the horizon on Feb 11th. Between these dates there is about 10 days of twilight before total darkness sets in.
Submitted by George on Sunday, October 05, 2008
Lisa Gregoire has once again provided your readers with experiences of yet another adventure. She puts you right there along with her. Well done as usual.
Submitted by Paula Wallace on Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Stunning, beautiful photographs!
Submitted by Kelly Vandenberg on Tuesday, September 16, 2008
