This and That

Hard to believe this is our last day. We've been out on our boat for the last three days and have been to some amazing places, so I'll probably do a few posts today to try and sum it all up! For now, here are a few miscellaneous photos from last week. 

Would any visit to a small town be complete without a visit to the dump? Bob was looking for wood for his qamaatiq (sled). Everyone goes there to get wood for their cabins and any construction project. Most interesting, though, was the dead vehicle part of the dump. Quite colourful and some great old vehicles, like this row of rusting Bombardiers. 

Or remnants of the Dew Line stations that once were across the Arctic. 

And lots of International trucks. 

We walked to the end of Turton Bay that day. This stone walled house was recreated for the movie, Atanarguat (The Fast Runner), which was filmed in Igloolik. It was a chilly day! 

Lots of bones as per usual, but we found a complete beluga skull, which Bob hauled home. Why, we're not quite sure yet! 

We visited the high school one day.

The staff was very gracious and let us wander around at will. Gyms are pretty much all alike! 

The Canada Food Guide in Inuktitut. The picture on the lower left is about "Country Foods." And notice that the guide isn't on a pyramid, but
on an ulu (woman's knife). 

Mural depicting Igloolik.

A northern version of "dog with a bone!"

Cabin Days

Well where did that week go? Hard to believe a week has gone by since we were actually out at the cabin. Here are a few pics from last weekend. We took a taxi out to the cabin site, unloaded our crap and settled in for a weekend of nothing-too-strenuous. The cabin is owned by two couples, both teachers, who graciously offered it to us. We had planned to camp and even though the weather was generally "nice," it's all relative here. It was much easier to cook, relax, read and have crib tournaments in a cabin. 

This was our first warm day. We could even sit on the deck without toques or mitts!

Our weekend view.

The preferred location for the weekend. 

Starting to get creative with all of those bones. 

Meditative fishing.

Inuit tent not far down the beach. (That's Bob's kind of tent!) Notice the modern tent rings of stone? 

We hiked back to Igloolik on the last day. It was pretty miserable - thick fog, which got us soaked, and the wind right on our faces. But...these sled dogs were a little reward halfway along. Mom was tied up, thankfully, but the six pups were on the loose and ready to play! 

Very hard not to conduct a dog-napping right then and there, but we resisted. 

Hamm Bay Hike

I'm a few days behind with the blogging, but it's a foggy day here (planes haven't flown in for 3 days; the store shelves are getting bare) and we aren't venturing too far so it's a good time to catch up a bit. The girls and Bob are working on our boat motor so we can hopefully spend a bit of time on the water (close to shore; very close to shore). We popped into the high school today as well and had a look around and a quick visit with some staff. (The principal is from Nanaimo!) More on that another day. 

Last Friday we took a taxi ride out of town and then hiked our way back in. It was a lovely day; cold, but very sunny and there was little wind. The next day we ended up going to the same area to stay in a cabin, but more on that in another post. Here are some photos from that day. 

(And there have been a few requests for live animals, instead of bones. Believe us, we'd be posting them if we were seeing them, but the Inuit are, of course, hunters. They hunt and eat seal, walrus, whale and caribou, and other animals, and have for millennia, so there are naturally going to be a lot of bones and skin around. The bones and body parts are interesting in themselves, but we'd also love to live whales or walruses to show you (there are no caribou on Igloolik Island and so far this year, no polar bear, although that will apparently change soon as the ice starts to move back in). We were hoping to have a guide take us to see walrus down the coast, but hunting and other things (a funeral and a search for a lost 15-year-old boy, which ended happily) naturally take precedent. We have been seeing birds, such as loons, snow geese, snow buntings, golden plovers and more, and, of course, there are lots of "Canadian Eskimo Dogs," the unique breed of sled dogs.

Remains of one of the three sod huts in the area. They would have had a roof of whale bones covered in skin and sod. (See illustration below.)

Remains of a sod hut. You can see the horizontal rocks for sitting and sleeping. 

Cross-section of a sod hut. (From House of Snow, skin and bone.)

Many people have small cabins they use on weekends. This is one of a colleague of Bob's. 

An arctic char net. One end is anchored to shore, the other is put out in the water so the net is perpendicular to the beach. We've been the recipient of several char from local fishermen. 

Bowhead whale skull at Hamm Bay camp. 

Frame from a wooden kayak with sinew lashing. This would have been covered in skin. Wooden boat frame in behind (with whale ribs on top). 

Walrus cache. A large pit is dug, the walrus is butchered and wrapped in a large "sheet" of hide to make a large sort of "sausage." This is then fermented in the pit until December. It makes the delicacy, igunaq, fermented walrus meat, which the region is known for. (Walrus hunting is good here, plus the gravel on the beaches make caching fairly easy.) These walrus caches are also one of the things the polar bears love to dig up and one of the reasons Bob is here! 

Looking back to Hamm Bay. We hiked a large part of this shoreline. 

The Igloolik Airport. Keep off the runway! 

A Walk Around Town

We've had a request to show Bob's house, so see below! Not particularly inspiring, perhaps, but it is a pretty stark landscape. Most of the houses are brightly coloured, so at least that gives some vibrancy. It is likely a bit prettier when there is a skiff of snow. I keep joking about this being a gravel pit, but it really is a rocky, dry landscape. There are small rocks of all types on the ground (clearly I'm no geologist), but the main "soil" is glacial silt so you can just image the goo that is formed after a rainfall. There is also a light dust in the air when it's windy; most things in the Northern Store that had been there for awhile were covered in a skiff of dust. 

Bob lives at one of town so he actually has a view out his back door and doesn't have to look onto another row of houses. Many of his neighbours are other government employees, teachers or other "ex pats." 

The view from Bob's back door. The sky is pretty incredible at night. (Yes, we are getting some "night" now, although it's short.) 

Bob's "street."

Front of Bob's house. 

Back of Bob's house. (See the girls on the porch?)

Here is the government office that Bob works in. (Note the parking lot of ATVs. Almost everyone gets around by ATV in the summer, snow machine in the winter. Bob has the latter, but we can't afford the former unless we sell our car at home. In summer, Bob walks or uses his bike.) And you'll see from his office marker how to spell Bob in Inuktitut as well as in syllabic writing, which is everywhere. The language is very strong here and we hear it much more often than English. (I met a teacher the other day and she said that the children are taught solely in Inuktitut from K to 3. It isn't until grade 4 that instruction is in English.) 

Although most of the buildings are colourful, there are a few stand-outs. Apparently this is the home/office (?) of Isuma Productions, the company behind the multi-award winning Atanarguat (The Fast Runner). This film was filmed out of Igloolik and their website is worth a visit to learn more about Igloolik and its history. (And, of course, watch the film if you haven't already seen it.) 

And here is the beautiful radio station, also painted by the same artist. 

As contrast, here is the hamlet's inn. A series of trailers = inn in the north and this is the pretty standard accommodation and similar to what Bob stays in in most of the communities he has to visit. (Not sure of the cost of this one, but others have been about $250/night.) It was warm and comfortable inside - we popped in the restaurant for a hot chocolate after a long hike the other day. 

So, all for now. We've been out at a cabin for a few days and it is raining today, so Patrice and I will probably get more posts up soon. 

A Hike Up Cemetery Hill

Igloolik island is very flat, but there are a few hills here and there. One is Cemetery Hill, which Bob can see from his back porch. (Bob is lucky to be in the last row of houses at one end of town so he looks out onto the tundra instead of another row of houses.) The day wasn't looking too bad, so we took a quick toodle through town before heading up the hill. Here are some highlights of the day. (And if you'd like to know a little bit more about Igloolik in general, here is a good link.)

First stop was "The Mushroom," one of the centres for wildlife research for the Nunavut Government. Bob doesn't work in this building, but does work with the folks who do and often wanders over there for his lunch break. 

Then it was up behind town for the obligatory photos in front of inuksuit (singular, inukshuk). These ones are at the entrance to town, but there are others, much smaller of course, that you can see across the landscape. 

The gang doing their best impressions of an inuksuit. 

From there we started to cross the tundra. As you'll see in the photos, there is very little growth until you get close to the ground. Lots of lovely lichens and some small flowers such as arctic poppy and cottongrass.  The closest you get to a "tree" are the willows (I assume arctic willows?) that are about six inches at the most. We saw evidence of lemmings (burrows) and fox (scat) and bones, lots of bones. There are bones everywhere. Closer to shore, there are walrus, whale and seal bones, and in the tundra there are fox and caribou. 

Caribou jaw (I think?)

Cotton Grass

Bob's photo of Arctic poppies from earlier in the spring. 

Saxifrage sp.

Igloolik Island in its entirety is a national historic site because of its archaeological significance and its lengthy record of habitation. And evidence of this is fairly easy to stumble upon.

Tent ring

As we walked along we kept coming across large sections of carpet with a hole cut in the middle and a plastic cup (chip dip size) below the hole. Often there was a stick with a flag near the hole. At first I thought they must be some sort of pit traps for insects and then we clued in...this was part of the Igloolik Golf Course! (We were a bit slow on the uptake.)

Later, the discovery of the club house and the clubs confirmed it all. 

And, then, of course, there was the cemetery of Cemetery Hill. There seemed to be three sections, we assume for three different religions?, but we weren't entirely sure. From the edge of the cliff we could see over to Baffin Island, so tantalizingly close.