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. 

Bob Has Company!

We'll commandeer Bob's blog for a few weeks to give him a break and to give our view (and also to include a few pictures with Bob actually in them). After about 4 days of travel, we completed the journey from Tofino to Igloolik (via Victoria, Vancouver, Ottawa, Iqaluit and Hall Beach). I'm not sure how many kilometres that is, but the temperature difference seems to be about 25 or more degrees! We woke up this morning to sleet and wind. It's now very beautiful and sunny, but still windy, which makes a tromp across the tundra less appealing. With the weather and the fact that Ava and Bob are slightly under the weather, we're having an indoors day. A ginger-pear cake is in the oven, the crib board is at the ready, and we've all got some sort of book or project close at hand. I'll try to keep the posts short, but will aim to get one up every day so stay tuned!

A few views from the flight up:

Hall Beach Airport. Our first taste of the temperature. Brrrr.

Oh, honey, I'd go anywhere with you for summer holidays. Even to a frigid gravel pit almost 70 degrees N.

Patrice, welcome to Igloolik (Iglulik)! Say goodbye to your cotton jacket for two weeks. 

We couldn't resist a walk about our first night. Very excited, if a bit chilly.

One view of Igloolik, a village of about 1700 on the shores of Turton Bay in Foxe Basin.

So, no, we are not really whining constantly about the cold or where we are at all. It is so interesting to be here and just fabulous to be together, relaxing and exploring this community and landscape. Bob's house is very comfortable and we've settled in with our own piles here and there. Yes, it is cold, but we expected that. We're hoping it warms up slightly so we can get out in our boat and on the camping trip we've planned. There's still lots of time. I'm not sure if it's the travel, the (almost) constant daylight or the fact that we are on holidays, but our day-to-day schedule has shifted significantly. We don't really get moving until about noon. It's about 5:30 now and we just had lunch about an hour ago! We're meeting lots of Bob's colleagues and other locals, too. Two girls befriended Patrice and Ava at the grocery store this afternoon and just tagged along with us for a walk. Artists come by every evening with carvings, knitting or other items to sell. 

Next post? A visit to Igloolik's golf course. 

(And be sure to visit Patrice's blog with her perspective of the trip. Much better photos!)  

Spring has arrived - July 7th, 2012

+7.5 C   ESE kmph Mixed clouds and blue sky.

Well spring has arrived in Igloolik. The tundra is almost completely free of snow and there are more birds everyday. I have tarped my snow machine and kitted my bike out for exploring. Hazing kit and bear spray in the blue bag; food and repair kit in the panniers and survival / 1st aid gear in my pack.

The roads around the island aren't too bad and in places there are good atv trails as well.

                                         Local heading out to Little Fish lake to try his luck with his kayak.
The melt has opened up the formerly undersnow terrestrial world for exploration. Some of the most striking features have been coming across remains of old Inuit camps with remenants of sod houses and the bones from harvests past - mostly walrus.

On recent forays have been photographing plants to start learning arctic flora and birds when I get the chance. There are not huge numbers of birds yet but I'm up to 18 species of which 11 are new to me including long-tailed jaegar, arctic tern, red-throated loon, red phalarope, king and common eider, lapland longspur, baird's and white-rumped sandpipers.

The area hasn't completely given over to spring although you won't know it from these hardy kids. Theo said he used to swim in ponds as a kid and that often when their feet touched the bottom it was permafrost.

 Turton Bay in front of town and most of the ocean in this general area is still frozen over. There are large cracks, smaller areas of open water and pools of meltwater covering the ice, people are still heading out daily by skidoo to hunt seal or fish char through the ice. Theo said that speeding across open cracks is very doable and he has crossed quite wide cracks by going so fast that the machine skips across the open water.

The Rock the Walrus Arts Festival just wrapped up. There were 3 days of music and arts workshops (carving, music, acting, etc.) and performances. I missed the night that a perfomer from Greenland apparently really got the crowd going and the music went on into the morning hours. I saw some local singers, dancers, throat singers and a storyteller.

The storyteller told about being young in Repulse Bay and the arrival of a plane one Christmas that threw off 6 Christmas trees. They stayed on the ground where they were unloaded because no one had seen a tree before and they couldn't figure out what they were for. Later, in the summer the kids were hitting a rubber ball around with a piece of lumber that eventually broke. They thought of the Christmas trees and cleared the branches off of one. After some shaping work they had a bat and they came to greatly appreciate the Christmas trees. They converted each tree into a bat as the previous one wore out. He said the trees turned out to be one of the best gifts ever. The festival was a big success. The night I was there the school gym was full to overflowing.

Many people now spend most of there time out at their family summer camps staying in small cabins or canvas tents.From those spots along the shore they hunt, fish and collect eggs.

I recently returned from a week long trip where we visited Foxe Basin communities to pass on the results of 2 years of aerial surveys for polar bears in Foxe Basin. The surveys showed the numbers to be essentially the same as 20 years ago so good news and confirmation of what the communities have been saying.

Our route took us to Chesterfield Inlet, Coral Harbour, Repulse Bay, Cape Dorset, Iqaluit and back to Igloolik. The Hunter and Trapper Organizations we met with are comprised of people who are very knowledgeable about being out on the land. Fascinating people to meet, talk with and listen to. Lots of traditional knowledge (IQ) was shared. It's one thing to read about and another to hear directly from an elder whose face bears the weathering of a lifetime on the land.

Each community was very different as were the settings. It was possible to get out and about between meetings.

Chesterfield Inlet (pop 313) is Nunavut's oldest permanent community and had a historic school and turberculosis sanitorium run by a Catholic Order (see pics from my earlier visit to Chesterfield Inlet). I saw my first common eider ducks on the open water water between floating blocks of ice in the bay.

Coral Harbour (pop 834) on Southampton Island is named for the fossilzed coral found on land and in the waters around the island. This is a birding hotspot with 2 bird sanctuaries where large numbers of tundra swans, 2 species of geese, common and king eiders, long-tailed ducks and many other species nest. The island was used by 1000s of years by Thule people, the people before the modern Inuit. One archaeological site is called the "lost city of the North".

Repulse Bay (pop 945) was the most northerly whaling station in the 1800s. Inuit would travel from as far away as Igloolik to work with the whalers and to trade furs (Ice Master by Jame Houston is a good read about the whaling of that time). Repulse residents are still involved in whaling as are many Nunavut communities. In Repulse they have selected a team to again hunt a bowhead whale this year. In other communities they hunt beluga and narwhal. We visited the site where the bones from past hunts remain. On the same point are the ancient remains of many structures built of lichen-covered rocks including a stone enclosure designed to trap fox.

The headquarters of Ukkusiksalik NP is located in town and crossed paths with former Pac Rim employee Rob Campbell. Rob is the acting manager and had many stories to tell of travelling the area with residents. The park area sounds amazing with an abundance of wildlife, fish, historical site and natural features like a reversing falls.


 Kinngait / Cape Dorset (pop 1,363) is on Baffin Island (Baffin Island is the 5th largest island in the world an is bigger than the United Kingdom) and is the birthplace of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative established in the 1950s. The setting of the community is very dramatic on a bay backed by low mountains.

The art workshop / studios are filled with amazing works that get shipped out all over the world. James Houston's book Confessions of an Igloo Dweller tells the story of the bringing of Inuit art to the rest of the world.

The bay was mostly open with many small icebergs when we arrived and the next day when the wind shifted it was completely blocked with floating ice. A dramatic example of how quickly conditions can change.

Back home in Igloolik a few days ago I witnessed the dynamic nature of conditions once again. We had driven out to Igloolik Point to remove a damaged electric fence around a site used to cache walrus meat in holes dug into the beach gravel.

Walrus cache site where Theo and friends were attacked by 3 polar bears last Christmas. The walrus meat is buried in the beach gravel to ferment for up to 6 months.

The day was one of the warmest and sunniest so far. There are a number of archaeological sites along the way.



Grave of Green Mate Elder who died in 1823. The boats the Fury and the Hecla overwintered on Igloolik Island.



As we got closer to Igloolik Point there were small patches of open water off along the shore. People we talked to said things had opened up just in the past few hours.

One group was a film crew getting set up. Two of their skidoos had gone off floating on ice when the ice broke up off their camp overnight. 

Further on we met an ecotourism group.

The previous night they had left their encampment and travelled by skidoo and qamutiiq over the sea ice to a large lead of open water called the floe edge. From there they put their zodiac in the water and travelled to an open water area where they enjoyed the company of 40-50 bowhead whales.

There are 2 qamutiiqs floating on ice floes in the distance.

They made it back to their tents at 0200. The next morning they awoke to find that the expanse of sea ice in front of camp broken up. Some skidoos, qamutiiqs and canoes were now adrift on floating blocks of ice which we could see for oursleves. Recovery efforts were underway and it was expected everything would be recovered. In the picture above there are 2 qamutiiqs on those offshore ice floes. 

Two days later we returned to check on another fence and the whole shore area was open water for 100s of meters out. There were many arctic terns in the air and flocks of long-tailed and eider ducks on the water. Back in town everyone watches the frozen bay in front of town for signs of break up.