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September/October 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Gulf Islands Feature: Grey Nuns Feature: Narwhal hunters The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic Re:Sources

In the dingy stockroom behind Toonoonik-Sahoonik, the co-op store in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, squeezed between pallets of soft drinks and disposable diapers, Chris Mitchell hands me a narwhal skull. Protruding from a heavy chunk of bone are two parallel ivory tusks as long as pool cues. It looks to be the remains of some fantastic prehistoric creature that appeared miraculously from the toe of a receding glacier. Mitchell, the store’s general manager at the time, punctures that vision.

"Someone shot it a year or two ago," he shrugs, impatiently twirling keys around his index finger. "Dunno. Twenty-five thousand bucks, and it’s yours."

I am not quite sure what to make of Mitchell’s blasé attitude toward the rare narwhal double-tusker. The Arctic whale, after all, has intrigued mortals to monarchs for centuries, since its single ivory tooth was introduced as evidence of the existence of unicorns. In the 16th century, a narwhal tusk was worth the price of a castle. I have encountered the sea creatures on previous trips to the Arctic, the narwhals either frustratingly distant or just metres away but shrouded in thick fog, their moist, syncopated gasps surrounding me as if the ocean itself were breathing.

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