Up Here 263

WIN A

TRIP TO

CANADA’S ARCTIC SEE P9 FOR DE TAILS

APRIL • MAY 2010

10

JOBS YOU WISH

WERE YOURS

WORKING IN THE

NORTH MEET THE REAL ICE-ROAD TRUCKERS LABOURING IN LIMBO IN PIPELINE CITY

WWW.UPHERE.CA PM40049058 R09357

CANADA $4.95

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INSIDE:

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wo6fyoEp4f5 Pitquhiliqiyikkut Department of Culture Language Elders and Youth Ministère de la Culture, de la Langue, des Aînés et de la Jeunesse

ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ ᐅᖃᓪᓚᒃᐸᒃᖢᓂ

ᐱᐅᔪᒻᒪᕆᐊᓗᒃ!

ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ ᐅᖃᓪᓚᐅᓯᖅ ᐃᓄᖕᓂᒃ ᐱᐅᓯᕆᔭᐅᖕᒪᑦ. ᐱᓕᕆᔩᑦ ᒐᕙᒪᒃᑯᑦ ᐊᐅᓚᙱᑕᖏᓐᓄᑦ ᐃᓚᒋᔭᐅᓪᓗᑎᑦ ᒐᕙᒪᒃᑯᑦ, ᓄᓇᓖᑦ ᐃᓛᒃᑰᖅᑐᓪᓗ ᐱᕐᔪᐊᒻᒪᕆᐊᓗᖕᒥᒃ ᐱᓕᕆᐊᒃᓴᖃᕐᒪᑕ ᓄᓇᕗᒻᒥ ᖃᐅᑕᒫᑦ ᐃᓅᓯᑦᑎᓐᓂ ᐃᓚᒋᔭᐅᖃᑕᐅᓂᖓᓄᑦ ᐅᔾᔨᕆᔭᐅᓕᖅᑎᑦᑎᓂᖅ.

Aturaangat Inuit Uqauhiat Nakuuyuq Havauhingmut!

Inuit uqauhiat tikliqtaqtuugami Inuit pitquhiini. Havaktut ahini, Kavamatkunnilu, nunallaanginnilu, inuitlu uuktutiaqlutiq piyughauyut uqauhiq atuqpallialiriangani ubluq tamaat Nunavummi.

Using the Inuit Language It’s Good Business!

The Inuit Language is at the heart of Inuit Culture. The private sector along with government, communities and individuals has a critical role to play in promoting it as part of daily life in Nunavut.

Utiliser la langue inuit C’est une bonne affaire!

La langue inuit est au cœur de la culture inuit. Le secteur privé avec le gouvernement, les communautés et les individus a un rôle important à jouer dans la promotion de la langue dans tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne au Nunavut.

ᑐᑭᓯᒋᐊᒃᑲᓐᓂᕈᒪᒍᔅᓯ ᐃᓄᐃᑦ ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖓᑕ ᓴᐳᒻᒥᔭᐅᓂᖓᓄᑦ ᐱᖁᔭᕐᒥᒃ, ᖃᐅᔨᒋᐊᕈᓐᓇᖅᐳᓯ: : Apirhuutighaqaruvit Inuit Uqauhingit Tammaqtailininnga Maliganganik, ukuat uqarvigiinarialgit uvani: For more information on the Inuit Language Protection Act, contact: Pour de plus amples renseignements à propos de la Loi sur la protection de la langue inuit, veuillez communiquer :

(867) 975-5500 @ languages@gov.nu.ca http://www.gov.nu.ca/cley

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sse

❯❯ April•May

volume 26 number 3

LIFE IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

ᓄᑦ ᑕ

34

10 Northern Jobs You Wish Were Yours

42

The Ice Roadies

52

Wanna get paid to set off avalanches, tranquillize polar bears and deliver babies in the back of beyond? Then check out our list of the North’s best jobs – and get your résumé ready. By Katharine Sandiford For three months a year, highway crewmen and truckers work furiously on the Northwest Territories’ strangest road – the frozen route to the diamond mines made famous on Ice Road Truckers. What’s it like to earn your living on this legendary trail of ice? To find out, Up Here photographer Michael Ericsson took a drive.

Waiting for Tomorrow in Pipeline City

PATRICK KANE

14 30

ARCTIC LAND GRAB WALRUSES IN PERIL THE SNOWIEST PLACE INSIDE: PARAGLIDING NUNAVUT’S NEW FILMS BEER FEST RV GUIDE •

•

• •

•

OUR PEOPLE: A YUKONER STRAIGHT FROM THE PAGES OF ROBERT SERVICE P30

WIN

A TRIP TO

CANADA’S ARCTIC SEE P9 FOR DETAILS

APRIL • MAY 2010

34

10

JOBS YOU WISH

WERE YOURS

WORKING IN THE

NORTH

42 52

MEET THE REAL ICE-ROAD TRUCKERS LABOURING IN LIMBO IN PIPELINE CITY

WWW.UPHERE.CA PM40049058 R09357

Thanks to the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, the NWT’s tiny, frustrated town of Inuvik is poised to either win big or crash hard. The hopes and dreams of an entire community stand at the crossroads. By Lauren McKeon

In natural-gas rich Inuvik, men kill time waiting for a pipeline – and the flood of jobs it would bring.

CANADA $4.95

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features

P52

Cover photo by Patrick Kane A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10 up here

3

EXPLORE CANADA’S FAR NORTH

LON LAUBER/ALASKA STOCK

online

❯❯❯exclusive ❯ outeredge Find multimedia this month at

12 14 18 20 22

UpHere.ca ✱ Join: Our grow-

ing Facebook fan page, where we link to Northern news and have great, entertaining debates.

Arctic Moment: Skirting the Chilkoot Due North: The snowiest place Travel & Adventure: Paragliding Science & Nature: Noontime moon Arts & Culture: Beerfest

❯ columns 24 Arctic Dispatches Gambling on bingo; welcoming the sun in Igloolik; hockey-day at the houseboats.

✱ Read: The compelling Up Here blog, now with contributions from outside Northern bloggers.

76 Scrapbook Netting Arctic char – and profits – in Cambridge Bay’s commercial fishery.

By Shannon George

✱ See: Web-

exclusive photo slideshows, including Shannon George’s exploration of commercial char fishing in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

❯

72 Looking Back In the mining town of Pine Point, he made the mistake of being gay. His arrest would rewrite Canadian law. By Randy Freeman

P22 WALRUS WORRY Is a warming climate killing the Arctic’s toothy pinnipeds?

Alert QUTTINIRPAAQ NATIONAL PARK

78 Last Word For a pack of female canoeists on the mighty Yukon River, girl-power Axel was felt with every stroke.

Heiberg Island

By Rosemary Ganley

❯ourpeople

Ellesmere Island

30 Bill Thompson He’s like the Marlboro Man of the Yukon. Oh, and he’s nearly 90 years old. By Peter Jickling

Grise Fiord

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IVVAVIK NATIONAL PARK

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THELON GAME SANCTUARY

Wekweètì in

Fort Smith

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WOOD BUFFALO NATIONAL PARK

ALBERTA

IQALUIT Kimmirut

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UKKUSIKSALIK NATIONAL PARK

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6 0 T H PA R A L L E L

SASKATCHEWAN

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Akulivik

Arviat

Fort Chipewyan

Quaqtaq Ivujivik

Baker Lake Chesterfield Inlet Rankin Inlet Whale Cove

Whatì Behchokò Fort Simpson Edzo YELLOWKNIFE e Jean Marie River Detah Lutselk’e Nahanni Butte Fort Providence GREAT SLAVE LAKE Fort Trout Kakisa Hay River Liard Lake Fort Resolution Enterprise l Tree

Watson Lake

RCLE

Cape Dorset

NUNAVUT Wrigley

IC CI

Bathurst Inlet

Tulita

NAHANNI NATIONAL PARK RESERVE

ARCT

Repulse Bay

Umingmaktok

Norman Wells

Skagway Atlin Teslin

Kugaaruk Gjoa Haven

Kugluktuk

Fort Good Hope

Pangnirtung

Igloolik Hall Beach

Taloyoak

Cambridge Bay

Colville Lake

River

Keno Mayo Pelly Crossing Carmacks Haines Junction Faro Ross River Carcross WHITEHORSE

Beaver Creek

Haines

Paulatuk

Tsiigehtchic

YUKON

Ulukhaktok

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M ac k e n z i e

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NUNAVIK (QUEBEC)

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6 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

❯❯ editor’snote ➤ B Y A A R O N S P I T Z E R NE

How the North works Apparently, there’s nothing more gripping than watching Northerners bust their humps. In recent years, Yellowknife working stiffs have become TV stars on Ice Road Truckers and Ice Pilots NWT. Alaska provides similar fare with Deadliest Catch and Tougher in Alaska.

Northerners love these shows, but we also roll our eyes. Watching them, you’d think we spend all day cheating death. Ice Road Truckers’ baritone voiceover warns, “The rewards are great – but the risks even greater!” Really, most people here work in offices, and it’s been a while since an 18-wheeler sank in a lake. That said, the region’s on-the-job death rate is quadruple the national average. In recent years we’ve had labourers perish in everything from helicopter crashes to grizzly attacks. This can be a tough place to make a buck.

But of course, it can also be thrilling. Some of our jobs are the stuff of Jack London – mushers and miners, trappers and fishermen. We also have work that’s futuristic: In Whitehorse the gizmo-geeks at Icefield Instruments Inc. build probes for NASA. And then there’s work that blends the two, like the Iqaluit entrepreneur who made a pretty penny bringing the internet to Nunavut, and then (as the story goes) put webcams in caribou pastures so he’d know where to hunt.

With this issue – our jobs-and-work special – we introduce you to the North’s workers, and give you a taste of what they do to earn their keep. We’re pretty sure you’ll like reading it. So roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Aaron Spitzer, Editor

❯❯ contributors Monique Polak (“Cold comforts,” page 26) teaches English and humanities at Montreal’s Marianopolis College. She’s a freelance journalist and the author of 11 novels for young adults, the latest of which, The Middle of Everywhere, is set in Nunavik. Last December she travelled to Akulivik, Nunavik, for Quebec Roots, a Blue Metropolis Literary Foundation educational project.

Monika Melnychuk (illustrations for “10 Northern jobs you wish were yours,” page 34) is a Toronto- and Whitehorse-based freelance illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and Reader’s Digest. She’s also illustrated everything from mystery-novel covers to condom packaging. When she’s not doodling, she cycles, skis and walks her two Hungarian vizslas. Her portfolio can be found at drawsattention.com.

Michael Ericsson (“The ice roadies,” page 42) is the associate art director for Up Here’s sister publication, Up Here Business. He graduated from the Vancouver Film School’s newmedia program in 2002. When he moved to Yellowknife two years ago, he started taking photography seriously. To get the right shots for this issue’s story – his first photo project with Up Here – he made five different trips on the NWT’s Tibbitt-to-Contwoyto Ice Road.

Rosemary Ganley (“Sisterhood on the mother of rivers,” page 78), when not canoeing Northern rivers, helps organize women’s events in Peterborough, Ontario and does development work in Jamaica. She was assistant editor of the Catholic New Times in Toronto after teaching high school in Jamaica and Tanzania. Her writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the Peterborough Examiner.

Congratulations to our people! $2.97 million raised for charities in our communities.

ATCO is proud to support our people by matching financial contributions so that together we can make a difference in the communities where we live and work.

Your Community. Our Commitment.

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•

M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

7

Stronger together It takes a diverse and skilled team to mine billion-year-old beauties.

LIFE IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH A P R I L • M AY 2 0 1 0

We’re proud to work with our First Nations neighbours and NWT businesses.

•

VOLUME 26 NUMBER 3

Editor Aaron Spitzer aaron@uphere.ca

We’re helping create lasting jobs and a prosperous future.

Associate Editor Katharine Sandiford katharine@uphere.ca

We’re pulling together.

Art Director John Pekelsky jp@outcrop.com

Work with us.

Associate Editor Tim Querengesser tim@uphere.ca Associate Art Director Michael Ericsson michael_e@uphere.ca Photo Editor Patrick Kane patrick@uphere.ca Ad & Circulation Director Kathy Gray kathy@uphere.ca Tel: 867• 766 • 6711 Fax: 867• 873 • 9876 Advertising Design Beth Covvey beth@uphere.ca Advertising Coordinator Erin Wright erin@uphere.ca

find out more: www.debeerscanada.com

Advertising Sales Nancy MacNeill nancy@uphere.ca Advertising Sales Isaac Wood isaac@uphere.ca Advertising Sales Kari Williams kari@uphere.ca Advertising Sales Stephan Hervieux stephan@uphere.ca Publishers Marion LaVigne and Ronne Heming Up Here is published eight times a year by Up Here Publishing Ltd. in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada. Contents copyright 2010 by Up Here Publishing Ltd. Reproduction in any form is forbidden without written consent of the copyright owner.

Contact: Suite 800, 4920 52nd St., Yellowknife, NT X1A 3T1, Canada Phone: 867 • 766 • 6710 Fax: 867 • 873 • 9876 Toll free in Canada: 1 • 800 • 661 • 0861 or www.uphere.ca Editorial contributions: We welcome contributions, but can assume no responsibility for unsolicited material. Material should be emailed to aaron@uphere.ca Canadian Postmaster: Up Here is mailed under publications mail Agreement No. 40049058 Registration No. 09357, Postage paid in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Date of issue April 2010.

Return undeliverable CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: CIRCULATION DEPT. (covers only) to: PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5.

Email: circ@uphere.ca ISSN No. 0828-4253. Registered with the National Library of Canada.

Indexed in Canadian Periodical Index and Canadian Magazine Index. Back issues available on microfiche from Micromedia Ltd., 20 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 2N8, Phone: 1• 800 • 387• 2689

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8 up here

Up Here: Life in Canada’s Far North PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5, Canada Phone: 416 • 932 • 5070.

Moving? To ensure uninterrupted delivery, send your change of address six weeks prior to moving. Email: circ@uphere.ca Advertising rates are available on request or at www.uphere.ca Occasionally Up Here makes its mailing list available to carefully screened companies whose products or services may be of interest to our subscribers. If you prefer not to receive these mailings, we can remove your name from the list we make available. To let us know, just send your subscriber label with a note or this notice to: Up Here, PO Box 1256 Stn K Toronto ON M4P 3E5 Up Here acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the Publications Assistance Program and the Canada Magazine Fund, toward our mailing and editorial costs.

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10 Printed in Canada

Arctic Adv

O c t o b e r • AN po rviel •mMb ea ry 22 00 0109 up here

Arctic Adventure Sweepstakes_R2_OL.indd 1

9

11/20/2009 8:11:10 AM

❯❯ speakingup We welcome readers’ comments but reserve the right to edit letters. Email letters@uphere.ca or send to: The Editor, Up Here, Box 1350 ,Yellowknife, NT X1A 2N9. Please include your email address or phone number.

to become an MP and a minister in Stephen Harper’s government because she’s a female Inuk. Nowhere in Aglukkaq’s biography do I detect any experience, education or training in the medical field. Perhaps becoming minister of Northern Affairs would have been more appropriate?

Jim Lewis FORT MCMURRAY, ALBERTA

Travel on the cheap

❯❯ Last issue (March) we brought you our annual travel spectacular, with our cover story about flying in the North.

Have you got a great tale about Northern airline travel? Write to us at letters@ uphere.ca.

Aglukkaq the wrong pick

Jeffrey Brooks MONTREAL, QUEBEC

Snow and ice You may have heard that we’ve had the worst snow in decades in England, with every type of transport coming to a halt. You will then understand how much we respect and admire your ice-road truckers. We’re glad to see that trucker Alex Debogorski (“The man who is bigger than life,” April/

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w w w . a v e r y c o . n t . c a 10 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

Let us guide you through the fog.

PATRICK KANE

I’ve enjoyed your magazine for years.

However, I didn’t agree with your pick for Northerner of the Year, Leona Aglukkaq (“Looking for Leona,” December). Aglukkaq may deserve being Northerner of the Year for any number of her achievements, but your article stresses her political career.

The reality is, she won a popularity contest

We’ve read every Up Here since we visited Canada’s Far North in 2001 for our honeymoon. We have every intention of returning, so it was with great interest that we perused 19 Dream Trips (Jan/ Feb). Fantastic – and way out of our budget! I think you should have added one more trip: the trek to Summit Lake in Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut.

We ventured there for under $1,000. The sights were wonderful: Mount Thor, the highest cliff on Earth; the glaciers; the endless days; the wind; the slow mosquitoes. It was a great trip, and we plan to go to Sirmilik National Park this summer – and plan to do that for under $1,000 as well.

The secret is using those Aeroplan miles to get “free” flights. Up Here should mention that you can experience much of what is up there without spending a fortune.

▲

COURTESY TRANS CANADA PIPELINE

Feedback

May 2009) has made a full recovery – we were worried about him – and that he and Hugh are now trucking in Alaska.

Jesse Sims UXBRIDGE, ENGLAND

Praise for, but not from, Jim I just finished reading the wonderful article about Jim Robb (“For Jim Robb so loved the Yukon,” Jan/Feb). What a wonderful story about an amazing man. Does Jim have books out about the “Colourful Five Per Cent”? I would be extremely interested in any he might have produced. If so, where might I find them?

Mary Pequegnat COLLINGWOOD, ONTARIO

❯❯

PATRICK KANE

When I saw your October/November article called “The Loss of Priests,” I read it immediately. The men who are spoken of in your article have seen and experienced the Northern land and its people in a way that will not occur again. They are rich in memories, and their stories tell of a way of life that has been subjected to profound change. Thank you for writing of them. They are fine men.

Jean McLennan, Calgary, Alberta

I loved your article on Jim Robb in the January/February Up Here. When we first visited the North four years ago we went home with a couple of his paintings, appreciating his quirky Yukon style. Little did I know we would move here a year later.

Since then, my husband has seen Robb in a few of the old establishments (such as the Taku), which he also fears are disappearing rapidly. It would be great to retain the colour of the North. If I had a spare million, I’d build Robb a museum, and would volunteer to be his archivist. Is there any chance he also teaches or mentors any artists? I would love to be a guest student.

Beverly Latour

❯❯ In this issue we bring you a story

about the long-deferred dream of running a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley. Will the pipeline flow with jobs and money and be a boon to the Northwest Territories’ economy? Or will it, instead, be a bane? Vote online at uphere.ca.

MARSH LAKE, YUKON

The story about me in the January/February Up Here is wrong in the way it describes the people I call the “Colourful Five Per Cent.” I have always respected the interesting personalities I photograph and paint. It really upsets me when the writer describes them as “eccentrics and misfits.”

Those are not my words. I regard most of the people mentioned and shown in the story as just interesting and colourful personalities. To put a single label on them, as this writer does, is not justified. Also, there are some statements that need to be

corrected. For instance, I have received $10,000 for some extra-large paintings, but I more typically get $5,000 for a painting.

And my good friend Larry (Cowboy) Smith is very much alive and out there trapping.

This writer makes it sound like he’s a goner.

Jim Robb WHITEHORSE, YUKON

Thanks Mary. Yes, Colourful Five Per Cent books are available on Yukonbooks.com. And thanks Beverly: Your praise softens the criticism we’ve received from Jim. And Jim, you crotchety old cuss, we still love ya. – Editor up

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10 up here

11

❯❯ outeredge arctic moment

12 up here

April • May 2010

The Chilkoot Trail is an homage to the past – and sometimes, the hikers are too. A century after the Klondike stampede, Seattle-based photographer Paul Souders followed a group of backpackers up the precipitous Chilkoot Pass. “I settled in for

the final push behind Wendy Cairns of Dawson City, who was dressed in dancehall finery,” he says. “My days as a lead dog are behind me, but if the view isn’t going to change, let it at least be of some nice lady’s petticoats.”

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

13

❯❯ outeredge due north

❯❯ One to watch: Diyet Van Lieshout It’s not every day that an opera singer turned poprock sensation comes out of tiny Burwash Landing, Yukon. Diyet Van Lieshout has it all: a music degree in classical voice from the University of Victoria, years of professional songwriting experience in Vancouver, performances at the 2010 Olympics, and now a catchy debut CD called The Breaking Point. Up Here caught up with the vivacious Van Lieshout before she hit the road to tour her album.

UH: How did your performance at the Olympics go?

DVL: The hosts at the Olympics were blown away by the whole Yukon First Nations show. The song I performed is called “Luanna” and is about me coming home. It’s about understanding where you’re from and where you belong.

UH: How did you discover music?

DVL: It’s in my blood. My mom’s dad was Moose Johnson, a really well-known singer, performer and all-around fun guy. My dad was a musician and his mother was an opera singer. I moved to Vancouver in grade eight and started taking music lessons and the opportunities just grew.

UH: Why did you decide to record this album?

DVL: It’s been a long time coming. I’d been a songwriter in Vancouver and I’d had enough of it. I was ready to do music for myself and not money. Plus, moving back to Burwash after 15 years had a profound impact on my creativity. It was all written in Burwash Landing and it paints a canvas of life here in a very universal way. It’s something everybody can listen to.

UH: What hopes do you have for your album?

DVL: I would really love to take this music across the North into all the aboriginal communities. It’s not traditional music by any means, but I feel it has a strong message, especially for young aboriginal people. I just want to play and have other people hear it. Where that goes, I don’t know.

BETH C

L 4

April • May 2010

MIKE THOMAS

14 up here

❯❯

BY THE NUMBERS Work in the North

1

90 Number of cabbies in Iqaluit. 2

Number of alpaca ranchers in the Yukon.

Rank of the Yukon among provinces and territories for head injuries, per capita, on the job.

88.8 1.3mil

16,000

Per cent of Nunavut’s non-Inuit who are employed.

42.5

$

3

Workers required to build the Alaska Highway.

Per cent of Nunavut’s Inuit who are employed.

Annual value of trapping in the NWT.

2,084 mil Annual value of diamond mining in the NWT. Conservative cabinet minister Stockwell Day 1 Years worked for a transport company in Inuvik, NWT.

$

Years CBC anchorman Peter Mansbridge worked at a radio station in Churchill, Manitoba.

3

Years Donald Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump, ran restaurants along the Klondike Trail.

amount trucker Hugh “The Polar Bear” 58,400 Alleged Rowland earned in two months on Ice Road Truckers. $2,500 Northern allowance for territorial government workers in Yellowknife, per year. $12,200 Northern allowance for territorial government workers in Iqaluit, per year.

Increase in Northern allowance if a worker moves from Edzo, $15 NWT to the adjoining community of Rae, NWT. $62,771 Minimum starting salary of a custodian at Levi Angmak School in Arviat, Nunavut. $154,300 Maximum starting salary of a Nunavut government director in Igloolik. $1.15mil Salary next season of Nunavut pro-hockey star Jordin Tootoo. $660 mil Net worth of NWT diamond prospector Stu Blusson.

$

There’s gold in that there show

A glittering visit to Dawson City’s placer-mining show Going to Dawson City’s placer-mining expo can yield all sorts of treasure. This is no ordinary trade show. Started 20 years ago, the Dawson City Gold Show has evolved from a workmanlike placermining convention into a boisterous celebration of all things Klondike. This year, over the May 21 weekend, Dawsonites and out-of-towners will pack the city’s recreation centre to peruse at least 60 tables where business owners, craftspeople and miningequipment dealers will pitch their wares. Although the focus is on gold – many vendors cater specifically to placer miners who’ve just come in off the creeks – show-goers will also be able

RUBBER BALL PHOTOGRAPHY/VEER IMAGES

to buy bedding plants, sample their neighbour’s homemade lip balms, put a down payment on a new woodstove or test out Honda’s latest ATV. A lineup of local musicians will perform, too, beginning with a dinner and show at the century-old Palace Grand Theatre. All told, around 2,000 people will attend. “It’s Dawson’s springtime kick-off,” says show organizer and Dawson City Chamber of Commerce manager Evelyn Pollock. “It’s when businesses re-open, seasonal residents return and everybody comes together to see how their winter went and what’s up for the summer.”

BETH COVVEY

We get the drift

Snow accumulation across the territories In late spring in the North, snow reaches its maximum depth. Here are the annual snowfall amounts in selected locales, measured in centimetres per year.

Nain Labrador 492.2 cm MIKE THOMAS

Cape Dorset Nunavut 296.4 cm

Kuujjuaq Nunavik 257.1 cm

Ft. Simpson NWT Watson Lake 170.3 cm Yukon 196.5 cm

Teslin Yukon 148.2 cm

Rankin Inlet Nunavut 119.7 cm

Ulukhaktok NWT M a r c h 85.3 cm

Eureka Nunavut cm 15 2 0 1 058.5 up here

❯❯ outeredge due north NORWAY Potentially claimable

Likely unclaimable

DENMARK ICELAND

✱ NORTH POLE

✱ Hans Island GREENLAND (DENMARK)

U.S.A ✱ Beaufort ‘Wedge’

✱ Northwest Passage

Who owns the North?

Making sense of the ‘landrush’ in the Arctic Ocean Much ado has arisen over the scramble for the polar sea. Here’s the (oversimplified) skinny: Currently, nations have exclusive access to water and seabed resources up to 200 nautical miles from their coast. But, if they can prove their continental shelf extends farther, they can claim more – as far out as 350 nautical miles. Beyond that will likely still be no-man’s-land.

200-nautical-mile limit 350-nautical-mile limit Uncertain Boundaries Agreed Boundaries

CANADA

✱

Disputed Areas

Renaming the Arctic Forget what you thought you knew about Arctic geography Last November, Ontario MP Daryl Kramp introduced a motion to bolster Arctic sovereignty by changing the Northwest Passage to “the Canadian Northwest Passage.” Then the name-calling began. Kramp was derided as “insensitive” after Inuit noted that, by law, they must be consulted on alterations to the Arctic map. Mary Simon, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization, said while there’s no traditional name for the passage (Inuit simply call it saniruti imanga, “the edge of the water”), creating an official name in Inuktitut would strengthen sovereignty and respect Inuit occupancy. “What better way to do this than give it an Inuit name?” she asked.

The passage isn’t the only polar landmark being considered for an Inuktitut name. As part of Nunavut’s land claim, colonial place names throughout the territory are being replaced with Inuit ones. “The names already exist,” says Ralph Kownak of the Inuit Heritage Trust, the group behind the project. “We’re making them official on the map.”

Most of the changes will be local, to beaches, streams and hills whose traditional names helped Inuit navigate or hunt. The new map, for instance, will be covered with places like Qairulittuuq – “where harp seals are plentiful” or Nuluujaak – “looks like buttocks.” But more significant revisions are also possible: the town of Coral Harbour may become Salliq, for instance, and Baffin Island could become Qikiqtaaluk – “big island.”

Kownak says truly huge geographical features, like Hudson Bay, weren’t named by Inuit and likely will stay as they are. For more on the renaming of the Arctic, check out the Inuit Heritage Trust’s website, ihti.ca.

CAMBRIDGE BAY

WHERE WE LIVE: Cambridge Bay, Nunavut Location: 69°07’N, 105°03’W Elevation: 27 metres Population: 1,477

April • May 2010

DERRICK ANDERSON

16 up here

Founded In: 1921, with the establishment of a Hudson Bay Company post Original Name: Iqaluktuuttiaq (“plenty of fish”) July Average High: 12.30C January Average Low: minus-36.30C Claim to Fame: The hub of Nunavut’s Kitikmeot region Historic Highlight: DEW Line site established (1955)

Come for: Oomingmak Frolics, early May Quirky Fact: Was one of two Nunavut communities to vote against the territory’s creation Best Daytrip: To the top of Mount Pelly Notable Locals: Tanya Tagaq (throatsinger), Charlie Lyall (business leader), Helen Maksagak (Nunavut’s first commissioner)

BIG

THE

RUSSIA

IDEA

BY JIM BELL

EDITOR, NUNATSIAQ NEWS

Subsidize Northern airlines Northern airfares have risen so high in recent years, residents of some remote communities complain they feel like prisoners in their own hometowns.

You can’t blame the airlines. The high prices they charge reflect the innumerable bills they must pay to keep their businesses going. If Northern airlines dropped their prices to more affordable levels, their businesses would collapse.

The lesson? An unregulated free market in airline transportation doesn’t work in Arctic regions. So, it may be time for governments to look at airline transportation the way Northerners look at it: as an essential public utility. This means regulatory oversight of the prices Northern airlines charge, combined with ensuring Northern airlines get enough revenue to make a reasonable profit.

There are examples where this has worked in other industries, such as telecommunications. Northern Canada’s telephone company, Northwestel, receives an annual subsidy drawn from a pot of money created by small contributions from all of Canada’s phone companies.

That’s why Northerners’ phone bills are affordable. Without the subsidy, many Northerners would be forced to pay more than $100 a month just to get a dial tone.

In the same way, why shouldn’t the national airline industry be required to make a small contribution to a Northern air transportation fund?

For Northerners, air transportation is at least as important as telecommunications. It’s a lifeline, not a luxury consumer good.

Jim Bell is the longtime editor of Nunavut’s paper-of-record, Iqaluit-based Nunatsiaq News.

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 0 7 up here

17

�� outeredge travel&adventure

On a wing and a prayer Why paragliding is taking off in the Yukon

�

A paraglider descends from the heights of There’s a local teacher now, Dawson’s Midnight Dome. too: well-known doctor Russel Bamford, who offers courses in the spring and summer. A new kit, including a wing, lines, harness, a reserve parachute, a helmet and a rate-of-fall indicator, will cost you around $6,000, but you can find quality used gear for almost half that. And when you’re all suited up, you can join the Yukon Paragliding and Hang Gliding Association for group flying sessions and other events.

Two years ago, to celebrate the summer solstice, 14 association members hiked up, and then jumped off, White Mountain, an hour south of Whitehorse. High in the Yukon sky, they soared together like a squadron of eagles. “We’re bird brains,” Schall says. “We’re always looking up in the sky for thermals, wherever we are.”

Winnebagos, start your engines Prepping your motorhome for driving North of Sixty Every summer, tens of thousands of RVers make a pilgrimage to the North in motorhomes, fifthwheels and camper-trailers. If you plan to be among them, you’re in for the trip of a lifetime – but you’ll want to ready your rig. Here are our top 10 tips for tricking out your RV for Northern conditions. ✱ Round-the-clock sunlight keeping you up? Lightproof your windows with heavy blinds. ✱ Mosquitoes getting in? Install screens on the windows. ✱ Trailer wobbling? Its wheels need an alignment. ✱ Driving up the Dempster? Bring two full-size spare tires. ✱ Tank running low on water? Pee outside. ✱ No plug-ins in that alpine meadow? Turn off the Wii and go for a hike. ✱ Tires going flat every time you pull over? Stay off the shoulders – they’re full of sharp shale. richard hartmier

18 up here

April • May 2010

✱ Suspension shot? Your rig is overloaded. Less is more. ✱ A lineup of drivers trailing behind you? Keep your speed up and avail yourself of regular pull-offs. ✱ Windshield cracked? Get used to it.

richard hartmier

Wolf Schall has been paragliding in the Yukon since he moved there in 1993. At that time, only one other guy regularly launched himself off the territory’s mountaintops. Now, around 15 active paragliders take to the Yukon skies, suspended from huge nylon wings. “There are new people every year,” says Schall. “It’s a real scene.”

Although great mountains abound in the North, the number of favourable paragliding sites is limited by a lack of access roads and treeless landing zones. As well, timing is key: paragliding is only good when thermals – updrafts of warm air – are rising from the valleys. But in those magical moments, places like Grey Mountain and Haekel Hill in Whitehorse and the Midnight Dome in Dawson City become paragliding Shangri-La, places where paragliders flock to get their taste of living like a bird.

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

19

❯❯ outeredge science&nature ❯ Congregations of walruses – like this one in southwest Alaska – can lead to deadly stampedes.

To winter darkness, we say ‘Powermoon!’

Ever wished the sun would come back in winter? Here’s your fix

KIRSTEN MURPHY

In January, Tropicana went to dark Inuvik to shoot a TV commercial. The concept was that the juice is so good it’ll bring the sun back to the Arctic. This effect was made possible with a Powermoon, a giant illuminated balloon.

This got us thinking: Could the North’s communities use Powermoons to replace the missing sun in the winter? We called Mike Marcyniuk, Canadian distributor for Powermoons, to find out.

The biggest moon he sells is the Helimax, which at 5.5-metres across has more than a dozen 1,000-watt lights inside. “If you lift it up 150 feet in the air you’ll light up pretty close to 800 square metres to daylight,” he says. “You would see that from miles away.” Imagine daylight at 9 a.m. on December 21 in Grise Fiord. Can we have a hallelujah?

But Marcyniuk says there are hurdles.

One is cost. The Helimax is $84,000; add in electricity, pricey helium and wages for an operator, and an artificial sun ain’t cheap. Another is climate: The Helimax won’t float when it’s colder than minus-35. And winds stronger than 20 kilometres per hour mean it has to come down. Sorry, Rankin Inlet.

So who uses the Powermoon? Mostly film crews and relief workers, Marcyniuk says, though he’s sent smaller ones to the North to help workers clean a military base. Still, if we can’t have the sun in January, we’ll take a Powermoon.

LON LAUBER/ALASKA STOCK

Climate change’s new poster animals Scientists say walruses, char are imperiled by warming Poor polar bear: The global poster-animal of climate change now has challengers to its unfortunate throne.

In one corner is the walrus. According to new research, the retreat of Arctic sea ice is forcing walruses to instead congregate on small outcrops of land.

They’re bunching together by the thousands, resulting in deadly stampedes. In October, the US Geological Survey found 131 dead walruses in northwestern Alaska and concluded they’d been trampled to death.

Now, the US government is pondering whether the walrus should be classified as endangered, just like the polar bear.

20 up here

April • May 2010

In the other corner is Maine’s Arctic char. What may look like a typo is a real fish, and it’s related to the char swimming in more northerly climes. No other salmonid lives in so many places as char, but in Maine, only a few are left. They arrived during the last ice age, surviving in land-locked lakes after the glaciers retreated. But now they’re being eaten into extinction by new fish species entering their warming habitat. “As the most southerly Arctic char on the planet,” writes Fly Rod and Reel Magazine, “they’re poster children for the threat of climate change.”

Going deep for clean, green heat In Yellowknife, an old mine is offering new energy options The farther you go underground, the hotter it gets – even in the North. Workers at the Con gold mine in Yellowknife, which closed in 2003, used to wear shorts year-round, as temperatures could top 50 Celsius in the deepest shafts.

Today, those shafts are empty – save for a lot of hot water. That’s just fine for the municipal government: It’s exploring using this water to heat 25 downtown office buildings. The project, still in development, is estimated to cost about $32 million.

5 4 3 1

2

How Con Mine could heat Yellowknife: 1 Groundwater seeps into vertical and horizontal mineshafts. At 1,900 metres down, it heats to more than 50 degrees.

2 A pump pushes the hot water to the surface.

3 The hot water exchanges its heat with a second water loop. It’s then recirculated into the mine shafts.

4 At an “energy centre,” water in the second loop is heated further with wood-pellet boilers.

5 High-grade hot water heats buildings. It continuously recycles through the loop.

Lazy Day Reads...

perfect for spring and the upcoming summer

Christmas in the Big Igloo – $9.95

Great Bear, A Journey Remembered – $18.95

Kenn Harper, ed. – Hardcover.

From explorers marooned on their ships to traders confined to their posts, here is a collection of festive season tales from the days before satellite communications. A holiday treat for the whole family.

Igloo Dwellers Were My Church – $29.95 John R. Sperry – Softcover, illustrated.

Anglican bishop ‘Jack’ Sperry spent years learning from Inuit across the Arctic. His admiration for his parishioners is reflected in his writing. Sperry records an Inuit way of life that has virtually disappeared, from his early days well into the development of modern Nunavut. Igloo Dwellers is an amazing record of his cross-cultural career.

McDougall’s Bash – $12.95

Frederick B. Watt – Softcover, illustrated.

A true story of a search for riches and struggle for survival on the shores of Great Bear Lake. As a young writer in the “Dirty 30s”, Watt tried his hand at claim staking, and met fate head on in the Northern wilderness. A Canadian classic.

Guts and Glory – $25.95 Sally Manning – Softcover.

This book brings to life the amazing saga of Canada’s crosscountry skiing pioneers—the talented young Aboriginal racers from Inuvik, Northwest Territories who skied to international glory in the late 1960s and 1970s. When these kids blazed their way to the Olympics, they set the stage for today’s Canadian stars.

Kazan – $21.50 David F. Pelly/Christopher C. Hanks – Softcover.

“The Arctic and its people remain a distant mystery for most of us,” says His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, in his forward to The Kazan. “To seek solutions... is important, both for the land and its inhabitants... in an awareness of that heritage lies the key to its preservation.”

Erik Watt – Softcover, illustrated.

A revealing, often irreverent collection of verses which brings to life the people, places and events which touched the author’s life in the North. Illustrated by the author, this book connects the reader with the realities of life in the remote reaches of our country.

Call toll free in Canada:1-800-661-0861 or email:

orders@uphere.ca

Shipping and handling charges To be determinded by weight.

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

21

❯❯ outeredge arts&culture ❯ Tungijuq, the latest film from famed Igloolik

What to watch

Isuma Productions, stars throatsinger Tanya Tagaq wearing truly disturbing contact lenses.

❯

In Nunavut, new flicks capture life, art, politics Nunavut film captured the world’s attention in 2001 with the debut of Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. However, the territory is far from a one-hit wonder. Several new movies have recently come out of Nunavut, offering a peek at Arctic life and insights into hot-topic issues.

Qapirangajuk: To Spear Strangely: After a year of enticing viewers with raw online footage, this full-length Inuktitut film is due out this fall.

Project leader Zacharias Kunuk and researcher Ian Mauro conducted more than 60 interviews in four Nunavut communities, promising to bring Nunavummiut knowledge to the climate-change debate. For film clips, check out isuma.tv.

Tungijuq: This seven-minute flick is Nunavut’s answer to the antisealing movement. Challenging the likes of PETA and Brigitte Bardot, Tungijuq (“what we eat”) delves into the eternal link between hunting and Inuit culture – and depicts renowned throatsinger Tanya Tagaq turning into a seal. Screened at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and this year’s Sundance festival, you can catch it on isuma.tv.

Behind the Scenes at Kinngait Studios: This one-hour documentary gives viewers an inside peek at the world-famous Kinngait Studios in Cape Dorset. Filmmakers follow Inuit artists both inside the workshop and into the community, capturing the relationship between Arctic art, community and life. The made-for-TV movie will broadcast on Bravo, APTN, TVOntario and Knowledge Network. Check out sitemedia.ca for more information.

The write place

❯ Pierre Berton’s childhood

Putting pen to paper at Dawson City’s Berton House

home in Dawson City.

The North is home to several writer-in-residence programs, but none match the allure of Dawson City’s Berton House Writers’ Retreat. The program is run out of author Pierre Berton’s childhood home and showcases the Klondike’s scenery and history. One visiting writer described the experience as “stepping into another dimension,” while another remarked “I’ve never seen such spectacular sights from my kitchen window.” Inside, it’s just as serene, thanks to a recent reality-show makeover by HGTV’s The Designer Guys.

The house hosts four writers per year, flying each up to Dawson City and covering their rent, utilities and food. They need worry about little more than giving a couple public readings – oh, and creating a masterpiece. Here’s a look at this year’s lucky writers: Mylène Gilbert-Dumas (January-March): This French Canadian writer pens the Lil Klondike series, which is set in 1897 and follows two young women with one ambition: to reach Dawson City.

Jeramy Dodds (April-June): A poet, his works have been translated into Finnish, French, Latvian, Swedish, German and Icelandic. His first collection is entitled Crabwise to the Hounds.

Billeh Nickerson (July-September): The Vancouver-based poet is author of two collections, McPoems and The Asthmatic Glassblower. He’s currently working on a series of poems about the Titanic.

Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail (October-December): A North American history buff, Metcalfe-Chenail is writing a history of aviation in the North as well as a novel about a female bush pilot.

Cheers for beers

Getting tipsy at the Yukon’s favourite homebrew fest This May, 20 bucks will gain you entry into the tastiest, jolliest keg party under the midnight sun. It’s called the Great Alaska Craft Beer and Home Brew Festival, and on the weekend of May 28, hoards of Yukoners will make the trip down to Haines, Alaska to sample suds with their American neighbours.

On Friday, there’ll be a homebrew competition with over 100 entries – and the good money is on Whitehorse’s Rod Savoie, who’s won “best in 22 up here

April • May 2010

show” numerous times. Friday night will feature a formal banquet of gourmet courses paired with fine beers. Then, on Saturday afternoon, the bacchanalia begins. In a Wild West-themed beer garden beneath snow-capped mountains, around 800 people will sample hundreds of microbrewery masterpieces from all over the Lower 48, Alaska and the Yukon. Once the crowd has a buzz on, music and dancing invariably commence.

TOP: COURTESY ISUMA; MIDDLE: RICHARD HARTMIER; LEFT: BJORN HELLER/ISTOCK

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

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❯❯ arcticdispatches ■ A greeting party of statues made from tree burls greets motorists along the Alaska Highway in the western Yukon.

❯❯

THOMAS MUELLER

The bliss of bingo • Akulivik’s community freezer • Playing shinny on Great Slave • Arctic char fishing • A party for the sun’s return

❯❯ Bingo’s calling Playing your cards right in Yellowknife

The caller slips into her seat and leans toward the microphone. “B13,” she says. “Bee-one-three.” In synch, hundreds of white plastic daubers deposit ink blotches on paper sheets thinner than newsprint.

Yellowknife’s Elk’s Hall has tables set up even on the stage, and tonight, latecomers are being turned away. Most of the 250 players have carpooled from Behchokó˛, a Dene community 110 kilometres up the highway. In the summer, for the

24 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

biggest game – the $100,000 bingo – planes are chartered from aboriginal communities even farther away.

Northerners love bingo. Children grow up watching their parents, aunties and elders play, and games are shown on local television. Bingo is an excuse to socialize during the long, cold winters.

It also offers the hope of becoming several hundred, or thousand, dollars richer – either with a single straight line of ink, or with an entire blackout of the card.

Outside the Elks, knots of pickup trucks and smokers tie up the street. Inside, players young

and old mix together. Many of the elderly women are crowned with headscarves – like Ukrainian grandmothers – and wear windbreakers and matching pleated skirts. Their beaded moosehide slippers are squeezed into rubber overshoes, called “toe rubbers.” The men wear wide-brimmed ball caps, chew gum and keep to themselves.

For many, the amount in the jackpot is a fortune. “Until they brought me the money I didn’t believe it,” says Marlene Grooms, who pocketed a $10,000 pot several years ago. “Then I’m like, ‘Holy crap, I won!’” The next day, a bank teller

Hay River • May 17 – 19 • 2010

10

S MUELLER

Third Bi-Annual – Limited Registration Join us as Air, Marine, Road and Rail meet in Hay River – the transportation hub of the Northwest Territories.

Our focus this year is Logistics, Airships the reality P3 partnerships and Arctic Sovereignty.

Be there when the engines start!

Guest Speaker SHAUN MAjUMdeR Register at www.startyourengines.ca Phone 1.867.875.7656

September 8-10,2010 2008 May 17-19, M a r c h 2 0 10 up here

25

�� arcticdispatches eyed her suspiciously as she tried to deposit the money. “She wanted to know where I got so much,” Grooms says. “I told her, ‘Bingo!’”

Players have rituals. Regulars arrive an hour early, select their lucky seats and bingo cards, and bring their own Scotch tape to tape the cards to the table. They also have inside jokes, like when “I-16” is called (hint: It sounds a lot like “I want sex”). When an arm shoots up and a player cries “bingo,”

officials examine the card to double-check the numbers. If it’s good, the hall fills with a “whoosh” as ink-blotched sheets are ripped from tables and replaced with new sheets and fresh optimism.

Bingo is a socially acceptable form of gambling in the North. The odds confirm it’s a waste of money. People who play four to five times a week – and there are lots of them – easily spend $1,000 a month with

modest returns. “It’s an addiction,” says Mary Anne Williams, who says she only dips her dauber when her sister comes to town from Norman Wells.

But love or hate it, bingo redistributes money. Yellowknife’s finance department says last year an estimated $1 million went into the coffers of the sport and service clubs that hold licences to run bingos.

Moreover, in a territory divided by great distances, bingo allows friends and family to catch up in a safe, sober environment.

“When I want to meet people or sit with elders,” Marlene says, “it’s my connection with people.” – Kirsten Murphy

�� Cold comforts Sharing food from Akulivik’s village freezer

When Mary Qinuajuak’s mother doesn’t know what to make for supper, she sends Mary to the quakuvik. In Akulivik, a Nunavik town of 600 on a narrow peninsula jutting into Hudson Bay, the quakuvik, or community freezer, is here behind Mary’s school.

A small blue building made of corrugated steel, it has a metal door that shuts tightly but is never locked.

The last time Mary came here, all she found were three cardboard boxes filled with frozen geese, their feathers still shiny.

But later this winter, once the caribou herds come close to town, the plywood shelves should be loaded with caribou and other country food – Arctic char, lake trout and ptarmigan. “My favourite is muktuk, whale blubber,” says Mary. “We eat it raw with soy sauce.”

Every village in Nunavik has a quakuvik.

Hunters who supply the freezers with game are paid by their municipality through the Hunters’ Support Program, introduced in 1975 and administered by the Kativik Regional Government. They’re paid by the pound; price varies depending on the type of meat and on how far the hunter travelled.

Two dollars per pound for caribou is a typical wage.

All Inuit can help themselves to what’s in the freezer, but priority goes to the elderly or families without a hunter. “I know if I want some country food, but someone needs it more than me, I’ll have to wait,” says Sandy Gordon, head of KRG’s Department of Renewable Resources.

Sharing food is the way things are done around here. Akulivik’s deputy mayor, Henry Quissa, grew up in the 1950s on a small island in the bay. “I always had to share,” he says. He knows what it’s like to 26 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

go hungry. When no caribou came around and birds and fish were scarce, he says, “my mother cut the sealskin from our boots, put it on the stove and we had to eat it.” These are better days. Quissa recently heard that a herd of caribou was spotted south of Akulivik. He hopes that means the animals are on their way.

That would be good news to Laly Kingalik, a receptionist at the town hall, who says she can’t wait to eat caribou, and to get some Arctic char, her kids’ favourite. The suggestion that people might squabble over the caribou in the quakuvik makes Kingalik laugh. “The locker means something good.

Nobody fights about it,” she says. “I’m proud of the way we share food.” – Monique Polak

Today’s tournament, in late February, uses Scott’s rink as well as one built near Fois a round robin with six randomly created liot’s famous snowcastle. teams competing over five snotcicle-inducThe prize in today’s tournament is a tall ing hours. Each has three men and three cup only a hockey-mother could love – a women; some are Sidney Crosby wannabes, motley contraption made of duct tape and while some hold sticks like brooms. “We like yogurt containers, with player names from to have people of all abilities playing,” Scott each year written on it with marker. says. There are other similar tournaments It’s four o’clock and the Houseboat Cup later in the winter, including one held 1by 2/26/09 final is underway. on Scott’s InnsNorth_HalfIsland.qxd:Layout 11:37 AMPeople Pagegather 1 Yellowknife’s “Snowking,” Tony Foliot, that deck eating hamburgers from his barbecue

�� Boat hockey Lacing ‘em up on Great Slave

Craig Scott’s eyes never leave the game of shinny scraping and clacking across his front yard. “Hey, Wade, give that guy a warning about the strength of his shot,” he yells when one player raises the puck to score.

Later, after the 15-minute game ends and all 12 players have shovelled the ice, Scott – lanky, bush-bearded and disarmingly kind – takes a bucket of water to flood ruts before the next game, starting in one minute.

This is Yellowknife’s seventh annual Houseboat Cup, and likely the purest expression of Canada’s game as interpreted by the North. Up here, dozens of weekly shinny matches act as community builders for remote towns, where young people drift in and out. All have the same code: Players are welcome to bring babies and dogs, skills from NHL-level to “I’ve never skated before” are equally appreciated, people without equipment are offered ancient sticks, old skates and thrift-store jerseys, and all overcome the cold by embracing it together.

Which is Scott’s tournament in a nutshell.

And since he lives on a barge converted to a house on Great Slave Lake, the combination is near-poetic Canadiana. “I had all this ice out in my front yard,” Scott says, grinning. “I figured I may as well put it to use.” For the past seven years, he and a few boater neighbours (one nearby boat has a sign, “Keep off the grass”) venture onto the ice in November when it’s a mere seven centimetres thick.

Tempting fate like this allows them to push in posts for the plywood boards that eventually line the rink (along with about 50 hockey sticks that sprout from the snowbanks). “We know the ice,” Scott says, shrugging off the danger. “We live out here.”

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�� arcticdispatches

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(unfortunately the relish is frozen) and the catcalling gets intense. Eventually time runs out with the game tied. “What a nail-biter,” says Spencer Tracy, a devoted player. “That’s some quality hockey right there.”

One minute into sudden-death overtime, the team in white jerseys scores. “Pike Mike Dawgwood,” as he’s known here, skates with the Houseboat Cup lofted above his head, while players on the losing team lean on their sticks, dejected. Then, they all file towards Scott’s boat, where a keg of Labatt Blue is chilling in the snow. – Tim Querengesser

�� Go fish Jigging for char on the Arctic coast

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April • May 2010

The Back The Bear Bear is is Back

It’s early June in Paulatuk, NWT, a small Inuvialuit community sandwiched between the western entrance of the Northwest Passage and Tuktut Nogait National Park. Herb Nakimayak savours a cup of tea and waits as Steve Illasiak rounds up two all-terrain vehicles, jerry cans, tents, ratchet straps and, most importantly, fish hooks.

Soon, the pair are bouncing across the Barrenlands on ATVs piled high with equipment, headed for Salmon Lake. Strangely, Salmon Lake doesn’t have salmon. Rather, community consensus reports it’s loaded with Arctic char. A sort of mix of trout and salmon, char is a colourful fish closely resembling Dolly Varden trout, and often sports bright red spots and red bellies. They grow large here: usually eight to 10 pounds, but big ones get to 15, maybe even 20, depending on the lake and the story.

In Paulatuk, harvesting char is both a pastime and a necessity. They’re a local staple – an alternative to high-priced groceries shipped in from Inuvik, which in turn gets its groceries shipped up from Edmonton. Paulatuk’s 300 residents fish in almost every lake and creek within 60 kilometres, setting nets in the Hornaday River, casting at places like Billy’s Creek, Fish Lake and Argo Bay. “Fishing and going out on the land is kind of a weekend ritual here,” Nakimayak explains. “Even during the week, it’s not hard to find someone going out after work. Nothing like freshly caught, pan-fried char.”

An hour from town, the two bring their ATVs to a stop at Salmon Lake. The lake is still frozen, so Illasiak searches for natural cracks in the ice. He shrugs and explains, “Only a white man would drill a hole when they are already there.” Nakimayak kneels by the hole and readies the jigs – short sticks

of driftwood wrapped with fishing line. A lure drifts down through the water. Nakimayak flicks his wrist and the bait jiggles. He repeats. And repeats.

The sun drifts in its lazy circle. Char drift lazily somewhere too – just not here, and not tonight. The men try other cracks in the ice, with no more success. “Usually it’s good this time of year,” Nakimayak says. “Must be too early for this lake. Spring’s a little late. What can you say? There’s always next weekend.”

Eventually, the wind picks up (Paulatuk is known not only for char but also as “the south wind capital of the Arctic”). Nakimayak circles the ATVs as Illasiak sets up camp. Soon, the Coleman stove is whining away and the smell of propane wafts on the breeze. There will be no pan-fried char tonight. “Enough fishing,” Illasiak says. “It’s time for tea.” – Kelsey Eliasson

�� New dawn Celebrating the sun’s return in Igloolik

Elder Tipporah Qaunaq sits in an igloo making tea on a January morning in Igloolik. Outside, it’s a balmy minus-20, while in the igloo the naptha-fuelled camp stove and two seal oil-fuelled qulliq lamps have sent the temperature above freezing. The walls are slicked with an icy crust, and visitors quickly remove their hats and mitts.

This igloo is the unofficial heart of the Festival of the Return of the Sun, when this village, some 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, sees direct sunlight again. For more than a month, people here had gotten only murky twilight. To celebrate, they’ve organized feasts, games, dogsledding, a talent show and a performance by ArtCirq, the local circus troupe.

All day, kids and adults have been arriving at the igloo by foot or snowmobile and ducking inside to drink tea and chat.

Qaunaq is the caretaker. She’s fashioning an inner door out of fabric to replace the makeshift one made of a garbage bag.

With the help of a translator – nine-year-old James Evaluarjuk – she explains that back when she still actually lived in an igloo, Inuit viewed the return of the sun with relief. The coldest, hungriest part of winter was over.

Avoiding starvation was a good reason to throw a party.

Leah Otak, who runs Igloolik’s oral history project, a collection of interviews with elders dating back to the mid-1980s, echoes Quanaq’s views, but she says Inuit celebrated the sun’s return only if they were certain there’d be enough to eat until spring. “When

they had food and they had blubber to keep their light, that was a sign of success. When the light is coming back they were very happy that they can go hunting in the daylight.”

The festival has only recently become an organized event. Gideon Taqaogak, who runs it, says local officials and elders wanted to revive the sunrise tradition, and, in the process, pass on skills like dogsledding and snow-house building. “It’s important for

��

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us to keep our traditions alive,” he says, as the igloo gets progressively more crowded.

“If [youth] see things like igloos, they learn more.”

Soon, the sun flickers over the horizon, momentarily brightening the town and the surrounding tundra. Then it vanishes again.

By mid-afternoon, Igloolik is once more in pitch blackness, Quanaq’s igloo glowing in the dark. – Chris Windeyer up

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kNF4 A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

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❯❯ ourpeople

BY PETER JICKLING

A Yukoner who’s

Grit to the Core At an age when most men retire, he moved North, bought horses and dogs, and took a territory in his big embrace.

B

ill Thompson, who’s just a shade under 90, reminds me of a Robert Service poem: This is the law of the Yukon and ever she makes it plain: “Send not your feeble and foolish; send me your strong and your sane.” He greets me at the door of his house – at the end of a snow-covered driveway about a kilometre long – with a hydraulic-strength handshake and a wide smile. He’s six feet tall with linebacker shoulders. Three times a week, he and his wife, Millie, drive half an hour from their home in the Yukon wilderness to Whitehorse, to work out at a gym. On a hunch, I ask if he built the house himself.

“Yeah, back in the late ’70s,” he says. “It’s not really different than any other house.”

He ushers me in and shows me around.

His home is full of art and photos. On the sturdy spruce walls are so many framed photographs and paintings that barely a square foot is unclaimed. Half the art is focused on dogs. When we start looking through stacks of photos, more dogs appear. Many of the pictures date back 40 years, to when Thompson moved to the Yukon for a management job with Standard Oil. That’s when he started running dogs. As he explains each image, there’s no wistfulness in his voice: Thompson isn’t one for cheap sentimentality. “That’s me with my dog team,” he says of one picture, waving a finger at the dog in front. “That was the best lead dog I ever had.”

Dogsledding was once his passion. Before the Yukon Quest’s inaugural race in 1984, Thompson ran the punishing Iditarod in Alaska a couple of times; he was one of the first Yukoners to do so. “I had only been [in the Yukon] about a year before I got a pup – half wolf and the rest of it was sled dog.”

Shortly after that, Thompson purchased a purebred Malamute, and then a female dog.

Predictably, his team grew. “It was wonderful,” he says. “You got to get out there and do your own thing.”

Next photo. “That was taken during one of my packhorse trips. Those are a lot of fun.” Today Thompson owns three horses.

Every summer for the past 30 years he and some buddies saddle up and ride from his front porch into the wilderness. It’s not unusual for these trips to cover 250 kilometres. We sift through pictures and eventually come across a black and white one on glossy paper. There’s a mountain in the background, a river in the foreground and three men standing by the edge of the river canyon. One is Thompson. “Beautiful,” I say.

“You want it?” he asks. “You can have it.”

Of the men in the picture, Thompson looks like he’s the oldest by at least 30 years.

It also looks like he’s in charge: He’s wearing Western boots, jeans rolled into cuffs at the bottom, a light jean jacket and a cowboy hat. He appears both relaxed and aware, like

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

CATHIE ARCHBOULD

Bill Thompson in the living room of the house he built outside Whitehorse.

ARCTIC BOOKS Come and Learn with Me

By Sheyenne Jumbo and Mindy Willett, photographs by Tessa Macintosh “Nine-year-old Sheyenne lives in Sambaa K’e, Northwest Territories - that’s Trout Lake in English. Come learn with her as she takes you on a journey to her community in the fall, the season of moose. This is the fourth book in the popular series “The Land Is Our Storybook” and features the Dehcho region of the Dene.

Shaman’s Newphew

by Simon Tookoome with Sheldon Oberman “Through the use of many tape recordings and translations, the author has woven the threads of this remarkable man’s life into a book for all to treasure.

The lifestyle, customs and beliefs of the traditional Inuit, as related by Simon Tookoome, depict life in the North as it used to be.”

Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic

by Norman Hallendy The mysterious stone figures known as inuksuit can be found throughout the circumpolar world. Built from whatever stones are at hand, each one is unique. Inuksuit are among the oldest and most important objects placed by humans upon the vast Arctic landscape and have become a familiar symbol of the Inuit and their homeland.

Tukiliit: The Stone People Who Live in the Wind

by Norman Hallendy “For centuries, Inuit and their ancestors have been building beautiful rock structures across the Arctic and sub-Arctic. These mysterious stone figures are best known as inuksuit. But not all Inuit stone figures are inuksuit; a better general word is tukiliit In Inuktitut, this refers to all meaningful stone objects, anywhere in the world.

Beyond the Northern Lights

by Lynn Blaikie Batik artist Lynn Blaikie calls on Raven to take the reader on a magical tour of the North. Here readers will dance beyond the northern lights and plunge into the icy deep, where whales mingle with dolphins. And they will find the warmth of the fire pit, where hand in hand the spirits dance. Her simple poetic text is enhanced with stunning images created in batik, filled with rich colors and powerful designs that evoke the spiritual landscape and peoples of the remote north. A beautiful introduction to the North for children and a book for art lovers to treasure.

Sila’s Revenge

by Jamie Bastedo “Eighteen-year-old Ashley Anowiak is an eco-warrior who is prepared to go to any lengths to bring to the world’s attention the plight of Planet Earth. She’s already burned down the office of the local oil company. Now she’s ready to move out of her own Arctic community and into the international spotlight. Ashley is part of a group called the Dream Drummers, who have been invited to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Here the adventure only begins, as she and her group of friends are pirated off to Australia by an embittered former environmentalist bent on executing a mysterious cataclysmic gesture which will endanger everyone.”

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John Wayne. His eyes seem to be focused ever so slightly into the distance, and as always, he exudes competence.

Thompson was raised on a ranch near Kamloops, B.C. In his teens, he worked as an outfitter until the outbreak of the Second World War. Then, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a crewman on a bomber.

In France, his plane was shot down. He was captured by the Germans and spent five months in a POW camp leading up to the liberation of Paris in August of 1944, an event he witnessed first-hand. He doesn’t dwell on this. “All I can say is I was treated well.”

After the war he got a job with Standard Oil and spent a quarter of a century on the move. “One of our daughters went to 13 schools in 10 years,” he says. When Standard sent Thompson to the Yukon he was in his late 40s, and was supposed to be stationed there for only two years before heading for the South Pacific – a locale perhaps more appropriate to grow old in. But he threw himself into the Yukon community, working with the Rotary Club (eventually he became its president), co-organizing the Sourdough Rendezvous, and becoming a justice of the peace. “It was exciting,” he says of his community work.

But Thompson is perhaps best known for his revival of the fabled dogsled mail run from Carcross to Atlin in Northern B.C. The run was started during the Atlin gold rush of 1898, the little brother of the Klondike rush. Up to the early 1930s, mail sent to Atlin during the winter was delivered there by dogsled. Then, bush planes replaced them.

In 1975, Thompson brought the dogs back.

During Sourdough Rendezvous he saw how the mushers worked hard to get their dogs in shape for races in the festival, and then how quickly the season ended afterwards.

“There had to be a better system, some way to enjoy our dogs after Rendezvous,” he says.

By chance, he ran into the manager of the Whitehorse post office. “I asked him, what would [the federal government] think about a mail run with dog teams? Would they tell me to stick it in my ear?” But the feds loved the idea. The 120-kilometre run was a resounding success. In 1975, 17 teams took part, and it kept growing each year. The run continued as an annual tradition until 2004, and was a highlight of the dogsled season.

Like Thompson’s stories, his house exudes the feeling of a life well lived. The living room is lit with soft yellow light, there’s a bookshelf full of encyclopedia volumes and he sits in a velvety green easy chair that was undoubtedly stylish in another era: Now the material is worn to the nub. It’s the type of living room that makes you feel a degree

To comment on this story, contact us at

or two warmer than you are. As we talk, Millie brings me a cup of coffee and a piece of homemade fruitcake. Thompson and Millie finish each other’s sentences. How did they meet? “It was 1945, after the war, I was working in a store and he came in and started talking to me,” Millie says. Did he impress you right away? “Not particularly. I thought he was a bit of a show-off.” They glance at each other and nod.

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�� ourpeople

letters@uphere.ca ��

After a few hours and a beer or two, I make my way towards the door with the photo Thompson gave me. He accompanies me with his old dog Blue by his side. “He’s losing his hearing and he’s got cataracts,” he says of the dog. Thompson himself hasn’t gone untouched by age, but he still looks tough as rawhide. I think back to the Service poem: Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core.

Yeah, that’s him. up

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10 Northern Jobs

Want to get paid to set off avalanches, tranquillize polar bears or deliver babies in the bush? Here’s the lowdown on the

top10 most awesome jobs in the North. Enough rat racing: Quit your desk job, move to the frontier and get paid to live an adventure. No place beats the three territories for their thrilling, rewarding, well-paying, life-altering career possibilities. In this top 10 roundup, we play career counsellor and give you all the advice, information and heart-quickening testimonials you’ll need to make one of these jobs your own.

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0

s

you wish were yours ❯❯ POSITION

Wildland Firefighter Wages: Up to $50,000 per season Hours: May through August, 8- to 35-hour shifts Highlights: Feeling like a hero Lowlights: Risking your life Nickname: Dragon slayer

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Scott Hamilton It’s a dirty, smelly, strenuous and sometimes lifethreatening job, but Scott Hamilton can’t imagine doing anything else. When he skipped out on his highschool exams in his final year to fight as a volunteer on a forest fire outside his hometown of Mayo, Yukon he knew he’d found his calling. “I was very much an

alpha male, testosterone, athletic kind of guy,” he says. “Whatever could scare you, I wanted to do.”

Twenty-six years later, he’s still with Yukon Wildland Fire Management.

After 16 years of frontline grunt work, he now trains crews from May to June and gives expert assistance during the July-to-August fire season, when the mostly male crews work up to 24-hours a day attacking fires. “If you start noticing that you’re working 12 hours a day, you’re not in the right job,” Hamilton says. “When your shift ends, it should be: ‘Holy crap, it’s the end of the day?’” (This coming from a guy who claims fighting forest fires is “better than sex.”)

When fighting a new fire, crews throw all their resources into stopping it

BY KATHARINE SANDIFORD ILLUSTRATIONS BY MONIKA MELNYCHUK

before it spreads. After a helicopter drops them on the ground (smokejumping, where firefighters parachute into the edge of a fire, stopped in the 1990s) along with pumps, kilometres of hose, chainsaws and survival gear, they cut fire breaks, water-soak live forest on the fire’s perimeter, or even charge the fire head-on armed only with a swollen hose spraying water pumped from the nearest creek or lake. After three days of “balls to the wall effort,” the fire is usually under control. Then, crews slow down to 12-hour shifts and take a cherished shower, washing hardened layers of soot, sweat and bug dope off their tired faces. After stuffing their mouths with hearty camp grub, they’ll share beers, stories and usually the most spectacular sunset they’ve seen – a swirl of bright oranges, reds and purples – thanks

to the smoke in the air. Five hours later, they’ll be up and at it again.

Hamilton’s least favourite part of the job is “mop-up”: hiking through a snuffed fire turning over rocks and digging pits looking for coals to douse with water. Even worse, though, is the thought of burning to death. It’s never happened in the Yukon, thanks to safety policies, Hamilton says. “I’ve almost been killed four times in my career, and when you’re that close it’s not a fun feeling. My ears got pretty bubbly.”

Hamilton’s advice for the wannabe forest firefighter: “Take the mandatory four-day college course in fire suppression.

Be fit: You have to pass a physical test. And be outdoorsy, outgoing and rugged.” JOBS CONTINUED...

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10 Northern Jobs

❯❯ POSITION

Avalanche Technician Wages: $10,000 – $50,000 per winter Hours: Part-time winter Highlights: Get paid to backcountry ski and set off avalanches with bombs Lowlights: The risks of backcountry skiing and setting off avalanches with bombs Nickname: Snowflake patrol

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Hector MacKenzie Ever since he watched his grade-school teacher get swept away from him down a snowy mountain on Scotland’s Isle of Sky, (she survived), Hector MacKenzie has vowed to master the art of predict36 up here

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ing – and preventing – avalanches. In the Yukon, he’s made a career out of it. Working several contracts simultaneously, he protects highways, advises mining and construction projects, teaches safety and rescue, monitors high-use recreation areas and even sets off avalanches for Hollywood movies using explosives.

“I don’t particularly like the explosives,” MacKenzie says. “I might be quite glad when I chuck my last bomb out of a helicopter.”

For 25 years, he’s patrolled the White Pass: a stretch of steep mountainous terrain along the South Klondike Highway before the Alaska border

that’s often closed for for the aspiring avalanche weeks at a time due to technician: “Just get your avalanche danger. It’s skills. Not only formal MacKenzie who makes the training, but your own call whether the road is skills. Become a compeclosed to traffic. Every sectent mountain traveller ond day during January, who can make wise deciPOSITION February and March, he’ll ❯❯sions.” drive to the pass, strap on his skis and skins (material attached to ski bases Bush Pilot for grip) and climb to the top of a mountain to dig Wages: $25,000 to $90,000 a pit. He reads the layers annually in these pits to gauge the Hours: Three weeks on, one stability of a particular week off, eight- to 14-hours slope. Armed with this ina day formation, he has nothing Highlights: Access to Canaelse to do but come down. da’s most remote and scenic And that he does, turn landscapes by savoured backcountry ❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Lowlights: Cranky customturn. Yep, while most ers people are typing at a Nickname: Airhead computer, sitting on their hemorrhoids, MacKenzie is out cutting fresh powDarcy Milkowski pow in the name of public Since he was a kid watchsafety. ing floatplanes take off If a slope looks like and land near his grandit’s going to become an parents’ farm on Lac avalanche, MacKenzie will du Bonnet, Manitoba, set it off. After the snow Darcy Milkowski knew tumbles down across the he wanted to be a bush road, crews clear it and pilot. So, six years after reopen the road to traffic. he got his pilot’s license, To make an avalanche, he moved to the North MacKenzie uses explosives to fly a Beaver and Twin – usually chucked out of Otter with Yellowknife’s a low-flying helicopter.

Air Tindi. “These are But when he sets off avathe true bush planes, the lanches for mine sites, he workhorses of the North,” uses a rocket launcher.

Milkowski says. “You can He’s on contract at mines go anywhere. Just pick a throughout the Yukon spot in the middle of the and NWT. “When I get a tundra and you can land call that they’re in trouble, there, on skis, on floats or I just go.” on tires. It’s amazing.”

MacKenzie’s advice

POSITION ❯❯training Because of their size, on top of flight landing gear, and federal school. Bush-plane pilots regulation, bush planes need to be able to fix must fly low, affording a problems at 60-below, 600 birds-eye view of remote kilometres from the closNorthern landscapes. “I’m est service hangar.” regularly looking at scenery tourists will pay thousands Polar Bear to see,” Milkowski says of Biologist the stunning rock and Wages: $104,500 to mountain formations that $115,500 annually (including appear below the plane, Northern allowance) plus the countless caribou, Hours: Full-time, year round, moose, wolf and other wildfour weeks vacation life he spots from above.

Highlights: Helping save the “I’ve flown from one side TESTIMONIAL ❯❯species of the North to the other Lowlights: The politics – let me tell you, it’s all Nickname: Nanunali (Inincredible.” The best perk: uktitut for “Someone who If he’s ahead of schedule, harasses polar bears”) he’ll drop down onto some nameless sparkling green lake to cast a line and bring Lily Peacock home fresh trout for supper.

Lily Peacock knows her Typical clients include job is intense. She’s geologists, exploration been stalked by hungry crews, biologists, Medevac polar bears outside her patients, trappers and – research camp. She’s his favourite – adventure shot tranquillizer darts canoeists. “They’re happy into the animals from to go on the trip but just low-flying helicopters and as happy to see the airthen had to approach plane come pick them them, head-on, watching up at the end.” His only for signs of consciousness. gripe: passengers who She’s had to defend her complain when flights scientific data to angry are delayed or postponed hunters. Plus due to weather. But if he hits a storm while flying, Milkowski enjoys the challenge, swooping over treetops just to see past the clouds. Often, he’ll have to make emergency landings to wait out gales and blizzards. And he’ll spend hours on a lake, on the tundra, on the sea ice, even sleeping overnight in his pilot’s seat (which he calls “a crap sleep, but still lots of fun”) until a storm passes.

Milkowski’s advice for the aspiring bush pilot: “Get some maintenance

she’s had to add her two cents, albeit reluctantly, to heated climate-change politics. “The polar bear is our flagship species and has directed attention to climate change in the Arctic,” Peacock says. “It has politicized the science.”

Based in Igloolik for four years, Peacock’s main task was to monitor bear populations in Nunavut – home to 65 percent of the world’s polar bears – and come up with sustainable harvest numbers.

With all the controversy around U.S. import- and hunting-bans, that means Peacock was in the hot seat. Plus, Inuit who feel scientific methods are overly intrusive – she’s tranquillized and tagged hundreds of bears, which she says is perfectly safe to the bears and the Inuit who eat them, but conflicts with cultural and spiritual beliefs – drove her to develop extensive aerial survey programs.

There are only two full-time polar bear biologist positions in Canada and one of them is currently vacant: Peacock just left her post in Nunavut because her husband couldn’t find work there.

“I really loved Igloolik. I loved the people. I even loved the cold and dark.”

She’s found a job as a polar bear biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska, doing similar but less political work.

Want to fill her old position? Here’s how: “You don’t need a Ph.D. in bear biology, just one in wildlife biology,” she says, adding, “You actually don’t even need a Ph.D. at all.”

JOBS CONTINUED...

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10 Northern Jobs ❯❯ POSITION

Outpost Nurse Wages: $109,000 annually (including several allowances and bonuses) Hours: On-call all the time, with up to several months of banked vacation Highlights: Becoming one of the most well-rounded health professionals on the planet Lowlights: Feeling overwhelmed with challenging situations Nickname: Supernurse

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Joanne Dignard

Constantly picking up new skills, either from colleagues, manuals, training or just her best judgement, Dignard is a do-anything health professional. Still, certain situations can be overwhelming for her. “If you’re made for the North, you’ll deal with it. If you’re not, you won’t last long,” she warns. “These experiences change your life, make you a better person, teach you to take on challenges with a different attitude.”

If you want to be an outpost nurse, here’s what you need: Two years experience as a nurse. Then, get to the North. Once here, take an outpost nursing course in Yellowknife, and learn the rest on the job.

No one is ever prepared for their first outpost nursing position. When Joanne Dignard came North 18 years ago from small-town New Brunswick to work in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, she was shocked.

“You do things no nurse ❯❯ POSITION would ever do in a hospital down south,” she says.

Fishing Guide “You’re suturing, casting, Wages: $100 a day, plus tips delivering babies, doing Hours: Eight hours a day, six X-rays, testing blood, you days a week, June to August name it.” But she loved it Highlights: Fishing for a living so much, she went on to Lowlights: Short season work at nursing stations Nickname: Fish finder in Igloolik, Arctic Bay and now Qikiqtarjuaq, where ❯❯ TESTIMONIAL she’s been for two years.

Tony Jeffers The most exciting days Tony Jeffers lied to get his are when she has to play first job as a fishing guide. paramedic. Once she had “I filled their ears full to fly to a remote fishing of lodges and lakes that camp in a helicopter to didn’t exist, and smiled give medical attention to a lot,” he says. “The next an elder having trouble thing I knew I was hired.” breathing. She sped down That deceit landed the the shore in a boat once, then 18-year-old Jeffers a too, when a hunter was summer job on Snowbird accidentally shot by one Lake, Northwest Territoof his friends. And when ries, before the territory something happens on of Nunavut existed. Thirty the streets of Qikiqtaryears later, he’s still doing juaq – a snowmobile or it, although now his expemotorcycle crash – there’s rience comes honestly. no ambulance around, so This summer will be his she’ll flag a truck and put 17th on Great Bear Lake the patient in the back.

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with Plummer’s Arctic Fishing Lodges. For the humble fishing guide, this is one of the highest posts you can earn. Not only does Great Bear hold world records for lake trout and grayling, the place was recently rated the top fishing destination worldwide by Field and Stream magazine. And he loves it. “It’s all about making people happy, seeing the smiles on their face from catching big fish,” Jeffers says. “Then I razzle and dazzle them with a fancy shore lunch.”

Besides knowing all the top spots and secret tips, Jeffers is a culinary artist, whipping up lake-trout chowder, curried pineapple trout or honey-garlic shish kebabs for his hungry guests.

His job is to help clients catch the big one, so when Jeffers sees a 40-pounder by the side of the boat, his knees still shake. “You just grab ‘em by the tail and just rassle them into the boat,” he says. “You’re so

filled with adrenalin, with enthusiasm, as well as a little bit of fear, that you might lose him and disappoint the guest.”

Once photos are snapped, trophy fish are released back in the lake – only the smaller ones are clubbed for lunch. Then, when the day is done, Jeffers and his clients return to the luxury lodge where the staff-to-guest ratio is a cozy one-to-one.

Why not become a manager at the lodge?

“That would mean that you’d be on shore every day and not out on the lake,” Jeffers says. “To watch all those boats disappear off the horizon every morning would bring a tear to my eye. I’m never going to get superwealthy, but I’m happy.”

Wanna be a fishing guide? Jeffers says you have to know your fishing, boats, maintenance, electronics, GPS, sonar, speed control, but above all else, “You have to be crazy about fishing.”

❯❯ POSITION

High Arctic Teacher Wages: $70,000 - $125,000 annually (including Northern allowance) Hours: Full-time for nine months Highlights: Best teachers’ pay in Canada Lowlights: Recess duty at minus-50 Nickname: Ms. Muskox

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Olivia Brown

later years. At first it was disorienting for Brown to be surrounded by posters, hand-outs and hallway chit-chat that she didn’t understand, but “You just adapt,” she says.

“You have to.” Although she’s responsible for the grade six, seven and eight classroom, she teaches all the students in the Kindergarten to grade 12 school.

Because Grise Fiord is so remote and because the community is so closeknit, the drop-out rate is next to nil. The only major challenge, Brown says, is preserving the use of Inuktitut among youth.

Although her contract ends in the spring of 2012, she’s not counting the days. She says her time in Grise Fiord has been lifechanging. “I’ve learned to keep an open mind,” she says. “If you don’t, life in the North will be difficult.

And if you do, you’ll end up having a lot of fun.”

And that’s her advice to the aspiring Far North teacher: “You just have to be accepting of how things are here.”

There are only five teachers at Grise Fiord’s Ummimak School (Inuktitut for muskox) and only three of them teach in English.

It’s the most northerly school in Canada, nestled among one-storey wooden houses and set against the backdrop of mountains at the tip of a permanentlyfrozen ocean inlet. When teacher Olivia Brown moved there from Vancouver last September, she was pretty nervous: At noon, the temperature was already below zero and the sun was threatening to disappear behind the horizon. “My nervousness went away almost imPOSITION mediately,” she says. “The ❯❯ Prospector community is so welcoming.” It only took a week Wages: $0 – $10,000,000 before she met all 150 resiannually dents in Grise Fiord and Hours: Self-directed knew all 50 of her students Highlights: Hiking mountains by name. Brown couldn’t banging rocks and sleuthing keep up with the dinner for riches invitations she was receivLowlights: Irregular pay ing. It didn’t take long for Nickname: Rock jock her to develop a taste for seal and polar bear meat. ❯❯ TESTIMONIAL The language used in Shawn Ryan Grise Fiord is Inuktitut It took Shawn Ryan six and that’s what’s used years to make any money in school, too. The first while living in a small tin few grades are primarily shack with his wife and two taught in Inuktitut, but kids deep in the sprawling English is taught in the

tailing piles outside Dawson City, Yukon. But years of hiking the hills, digging pits and smashing open rocks with his hammer – plus analyzing reams of data on his computer – have finally paid off. And big. “I believe I’ve found the motherlode,” says Ryan, who’s just earned the Prospector of the Year award at the Vancouver Mineral Exploration Round-up for his discovery of the White Gold district, a find that has set off the biggest staking rush since 1898. On the flanks of the Yukon River, 100 kilometres south of Dawson City, early drilling on the White Gold site shows an estimated 1.5-million ounces of the yellow metal.

Ryan has sold dozens of claims in the area for hefty profits, and if a mine ever gets built, he says, “I’ll be cashed up for life.”

But he’s not just doing this for the money.

“You’re on this monster Easter egg hunt,” Ryan says. “Not only does it get

you out in the bush but it makes you use your mind.” Synthesizing data from his own soil and rock samples with public research from mining companies and government geologic surveys, he finds his hotspots. “The old days are pretty well gone now where you run around the bush with a rock and you get a sale [and] you sell it to a mining company,” he says. “Now you need to have a big story to go with that rock.” Speaking about his data, Ryan is a master storyteller.

Ryan’s advice for the aspiring Klondike prospector: “You have to be careful not to be overzealous. I try not to get too emotional.

You have to base everything on science. And if you do proper work, it’s the most satisfying job you can imagine.” JOBS CONTINUED...

10 Northern Jobs CONTINUED ...

2010 POETRY CONTEST

❯❯ POSITION

Fur Trapper Wages: $25 per mink, $90 per marten, $500 per wolverine, $700 per wolf, $3,000 per polar bear Hours: Self-directed, November to April Highlights: Making cash to live off the land Lowlights: The prohibitive cost of fuel Nickname: Pelts-R-Us

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL Robert Kochon

Write Like Robert Service CONTEST A celebration of the legendary ballads of the Bard of the Klondike. If you win

YOUR POEM WILL BE PUBLISHED in the September 2010 issue of Up Here and you will win a limited-edition print of Robert Service’s Dawson City cabin by Jim Robb, the Yukon’s famous artist.

THE RULES: ✒ Poems must be about the North ✒ Poems must imitate the style of Robert Service ✒ Poems must be 500 words or fewer ✒ No more than three poems per entrant ✒ Poems must be received by June 1, 2010 ✒ Entrants must include their contact information

GRAND PRIZE

Robert Service’s Cabin Artist: Jim Robb Limited edition print

LIFE IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

Submit to: aaron@uphere.ca or mail them to: Editor, Up Here Suite 800, 4920 52nd St. Yellowknife, NWT X1A 3T1 Canada

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Anyone in the North can trap: Either buy, inherit or apply for a trapline, get your licence, set up a few traps and off you go. But ask Robert Kochon, the NWT’s top-earning trapper from Colville Lake, and he’ll tell you it takes time and practice before you can make much money. The 45-year-old has been trapping since he was 16, and is as passionate about it now as he was then. “I enjoy the bush life,” he says. “Out there, there’s fresh air, no noise, it’s peaceful, there’s good food, keeps you busy, keeps you in shape.”

Kochon has about 200 traps that he rotates over 160 kilometres of snowmobile trail, moving between three cabins he’s built in the bush. Although he catches mostly marten, there’s also mink, fox, wolverine and wolf in his loot bag.

From November to March, he’s busy setting nets in the lake to catch fish for bait, loading, cleaning and repairing traps, plus harvesting and skinning pelts. Add to that chopping firewood, cooking, eating, staying warm and melting water from snow and you’ve got yourself a busy life.

He brings his family with him from November to the end of December, pulling his teenagers out of school so they can help. His biggest expense is fuel, and although the First Nation band office usually provides a few free 170-litre barrels at the beginning of the season, he needs four or five more to last the winter. “Fuel’s the only problem,” Kochon says. “You have to have the money up front to get it. If you’ve got no gas, you can’t go out.” Lucky for Kochon, he makes around $60,000 a year just from trapping.

Kochon’s advice for the budding trapper: “If you want to trap, just go out there and set up a tent with a wood stove and set some traps. Go out there and go for it.” JOBS CONTINUED ON PAGE 71

D

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Our new company, Ventures West Transport LP, offers bulk commodity hauling for fuel, gasoline, aviation fuels, lubricants, glycol, waste oils and ammonium nitrate.

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Tli Cho Logistics and Ventures West Transport LP - Working Together to Serve You Better.

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Tli Cho Logistics Manager, Bulk Sales, Service and Logistics Office: 867-920-7288, Ext 247 Cell: 867-446-0284 E-mail: dwheaton@tlichologistics.com

Ventures West Transport LP President and General Manager Office: 780-998-7243 ext 302 Cell: 780-231-9046 E-mail:glennbauer@ventureswest.net www.ventureswesttransport.ca

Tli Cho Logistics is 100% owned by the Tlicho Investment Corporation.

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Dedicated to our Customers, to our Tlicho Shareholders, and to the North

THE ICE R

For three months every winter, truckers and highway crewmen bust their butts on the NWT’s most famous road – the frozen route to the Barrenlands, showcased on Ice Road Truckers. In the TV series, the dangers were exaggerated (seriously, sinking trucks?).

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E ROADIES

But the hard work is real. Workers must race to build the road, make it safe and haul thousands of loads to the Arctic’s diamond mines. What’s it like to earn your living on this legendary trail of ice?

To find out, Up Here photographer Michael Ericsson took a drive.

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Previous page: Awaiting their turn on the Tibbitt-to-Contwoyto Winter Road, trucks queue up in Yellowknife. The 600-kilometre ice road rolls over dozens of frozen lakes and crosses from forest into tundra. It’s operated jointly by the NWT’s three diamond mines and built by Nuna Logistics Ltd. In late December, contstruction begins; by the time the road closes in late March, costs top $15 million.

1: Ice-profile assistant Jordan Ralston prepares to auger a hole in the ice road. Each day, profilers drive every inch of the ice, gauging its thickness with sonar and drilling holes to take measurements.

2: At the beginning of the ice-road season, truckers get a number that becomes their call-sign. 3: Walter Crow readies for departure from “the Meadows” – the checkpoint where the ice begins. He’s been driving here 22 years. “It’s a good break from the highways,” he says.

“And the money’s not bad.”

4: Yellowknifer Shawn Godard and his crew of flooders use drills and pumps to thicken the road with freezing water. 5: Trucker Carmen Swanson began driving the road in 1993. 6: Signs at the Dome Maintenance Camp. 7: A water-truck operator prepares to spray sections of ice that need strengthening.

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1: A 10-year ice-road employee, Kenny Haarstad takes a break from replacing a hydraulic fitting on a loader at the Dome Maintenance Camp. 2: Ice Road Truckers star Jay Westgard is one of the few prominent figures from the show still working on the road. Though only in his 20s, Westgard is a top driver, entrusted with the trickiest, heaviest loads. 3: Stacked with supplies for the mines, two rigs pause on one of the road’s overland sections, called portages.

They’re not allowed to stop on lakes: It wouldn’t take long for their deadweight to deform the ice. 4: Ever jovial, Dave Vaughn is the master chef at Dome, keeping the camp’s nearly 50 crewmembers fuelled with hearty meals.

5: In February and March – the key months the road is open to trucking – darkness is more common than daylight. 6: Truckers Brent Isaac and Richard Brias enjoy a hot meal at the dispatch office of the Tlicho Logistics trucking company in Yellowknife.

7: On larger lakes, express lanes are opened to trucks that have dropped their loads at the mines and are returning empty. They can drive up to 60 kilometres per hour – more than twice the limit for loaded trucks.

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1: Mechanic Roman Korbabicz, originally from the Ukraine, is said to be able to fix anything in the Dome Maintenance Camp’s garage. 2: Fourth-year ice profiler Shon Lowry explains how to interpret ice-thickness data.

3: Flooder Leon Tsetta runs a Typhoon pump to thicken the ice. 4: A profiler drills into the road to test its thickness. His measurements allow him to verify readings made by the sonar scanner pulled on the sled behind his truck. 5: Caroline Browning, a chef with the iceroad trucking company Tlicho Logistics, prepares vegetable plates for drivers going north.

6: Veteran ice-road trucker Peter Curran airs up a tire on a fellow driver’s rig. While many of the truckers work the rest of year driving elsewhere, Curran spends it in front of a classroom, teaching English to high-schoolers in Yellowknife. On the ice road, he jokes, “I spend a lot of time correcting grammar over the radio.” 7: Trucks line up before departing northbound.

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1: In the ice road’s busiest year, 2007, it carried nearly 11,000 loads amounting to more than 330,000 tonnes. For two months, every 20 minutes, trucks rumbled northbound in convoys of four. 2: Dave Madder, the ice-road’s dispatch supervisor, coordinates the deployment of truckers onto the ice. 3: Chester Walker takes a break from running his grader, which he uses to clear snow and texture the road to give it traction. Walker has worked on the road for four winters. “The fresh air, the wildlife, the peace and quiet – it gets into your blood,” he says.

4: An ice-thickness chart hangs in the dispatch office in Yellowknife.

The lightest loads are permitted on the road when it reaches 29 inches; the road is at full thickness for fuel trucks at 41 inches. 5: Now in his 10th year on the ice, Gary Sims is an officer with Deton’ Cho/Scarlet Security, the firm that enforces ice-road rules. Truckers who break them – particularly by driving too fast – risk suspensions or even banishment. “I don’t have to take any lip from them,” he says.

“But 90 per cent are good guys.”

6: Electrician Jack Janvier checks wiring in the Dome Maintenance Camp garage. 7: Trucks at the Tlicho Logistics yard in Yellowknife. up

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By Lauren McKeon • PHOTOs BY PATrick KANE

Waiting for

tomorrow in pipeline city As oil and gas exploration lurches to a stop and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline drags into a new decade, we head to Inuvik – a small, frustrated Northern town poised to win big or crash hard. What we discover are the hopes and dreams of a town at a crossroads.

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V PREVIOUS PAGE: Ready for work but out of a job, an Inuvik man surveys the town’s main drag from the steps of the Mad Trapper Pub. ABOVE: Despite tough times in the Mackenzie Delta, Inuvik councillor Vince Sharpe sees a future as bright as the town’s original boom 40 years ago.

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Vince Sharpe answers his door with an Export-A cigarette dangling between his fingers. As he leads me toward his living room, his dog follows like a tiny package of wiggles and waggles. I perch on the arm of his sofa as the Inuvik town councillor and contractor peers at me from beneath his grimy Inuvik Fire Rescue hat. “I came to Inuvik in 1969,” he says. The lure – same as now – was oil.

Sharpe was at the Edmonton airport: “I had $100 cash,” he says. A flight to Yellowknife was $35, but he decided to spend $91 on a ticket to Inuvik – rumours of oil were on everyone’s lips. He thought, “I’ve never explored for oil,” but a few hours later there he was in the Arctic, “without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.” Not for long, though.

Sharpe was in a position to make it big. “You should have been here,” he says, stamping his cigarette deep into a football-shaped ashtray. Back then, he says, anyone looking for work needed only hang out at the bar in Inuvik – where he eventually took a job bartending – and wait for energy companies to snap them up. “They were outbidding each other [for workers],” he says. “It was that busy.”

He stops to take a swig from his glass of Pepsi. The chink-chink of ice cubes punctuates a brief silence as he reaches for another cigarette. “Do you smoke?”

“No,” I say.

“Do you mind if I do?”

“Not at all.”

“Good,” he says, cackling. “It’s my house.”

Sharpe lights another and turns to the present: Inuvik is in the doldrums.

MGM Energy, the main gas exploration company in the Mackenzie Delta, has been invisible this winter, announcing in September that it couldn’t afford to spend more until there were developments on a gas pipeline. Businesses have boarded up. Residents are fleeing. Sharpe blames this on the wait for the much-ballyhooed Mackenzie Gas Project, a 1,196-kilometre pipe that could link Inuvik’s plentiful natural gas reserves with customers in the south.

It’s a project that’s been talked about, but not built, for the past 40 years. Like most other believers, Sharpe points a finger at the Joint Review Panel, one of the regulatory bodies tasked with investigating whether the pipeline should go ahead. Their report, which finally came out in December, was five years late. “People have been so blasé,” he says. “After the first, second, third year, we thought, ‘What the hell? What’s the point?’”

Sharpe, however, does think there’s a point. Now that the report is out, and it’s largely favourable, he feels the pipeline is in a position to take a leap forward. He and others here are forgetting ages of numb disappointment. They’re daring to dream. “I’m buying shares in MGM Energy,” he says.

If everyone in Inuvik isn’t as optimistic as Sharpe, it’s because they’ve had their hopes dashed for decades. For many, it started back in 1974, when the federal government commissioned Justice Thomas Berger to inquire into the social, environmental and economic effects of a gas pipeline running through aboriginal communities along the Mackenzie River valley. Berger’s 240-page report, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, was released in 1977, after several years of testimony. Much to Ottawa’s shock it didn’t endorse the project, but instead suggested a 10-year moratorium on pipeline construction while aboriginal land claims were settled.

During the moratorium, land claims were finalized – first the Inuvialuit settled in 1984, then the Gwich’in in 1992. So, by the late ’90s, oil and gas companies began thinking

At work on a new school, Marc Martell is among the few Inuvik workers keeping busy.

about a pipeline again. In 2000, a group led by Imperial Oil announced a feasibility study on developing the project. A year later, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, founded to represent indigenous interests in the Northwest Territories. A speedy timeline was pledged.

Then, in 2004, a consortium of regulatory agencies created the JRP to conduct an in-depth review. It was given 10 months to complete public hearings and file a report; instead, it took just over five years. And the wait still isn’t over. With the JRP’s 176 recommendations in hand, the National Energy Board is now scheduled to complete its own hearings in April. The board has yet to set a date for its decision, but many expect September will bring the final green – or red – light from Ottawa. If that green light does appear, the oil companies must decide if the pipeline is still worth it.

Looking at the JRP report, Sharpe has a point – it seems Inuvik’s got plenty to dream about. In 2007, partners of the proposed pipeline – Canada’s four major oil companies and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group – estimated they’d spend $11.7-billion during the four years it would take to build the pipe. Of that, $1.76-billion would be spent in the NWT, and nearly half of that in Inuvik’s Delta region. During the project’s operation, the territory’s gross domestic product could increase by as much as 50 percent. That translates into an average of 1,750 direct and indirect jobs created each year of the project’s construction, worth about $478-million in labour income. And according to the JRP, the dollars will roll in long after the pipeline is built. During the first 20 years, it estimates 12,960 jobs will be created in the territory. More than half of these will be indirectly related to the pipeline, in industries outside oil and gas. For a town of 3,000 people currently scraping by above the Arctic Circle it’s akin to being told the future is full of golden houses and diamond roads. CONTINUED ...

THE REVIEW PANEL ESTIMATES THAT IN the first 20 years, 12,960 jobs will be created

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Nellie Cournoyea, veteran CEO of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, founding chair of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, and former NWT premier, has been the face of Inuvialuit pipeline supporters and at the head of the fight for years. When I arrive at her office in Inuvik, she’s every bit her nickname, “No Nonsense Nellie,” the woman who told the JRP to remember “those on whose traditional lands the project will take place and who will live with its consequences for generations into the future, rather than those who will return to their Toronto condos, secure in their own economic future, to plan yet another serene wilderness in someone else’s backyard without offering any realistic economic alternatives to the annoying inhabitants that might object to their self-serving interests.”

Cournoyea, an Inuvialuit woman, squares her shoulders and launches into the prickly topic of the pipe soon after I take off my parka. She’s characteristically frank: Like many, Cournoyea hopes the JRP’s long delay hasn’t cost the region its opportunity, and that the National Energy Board moves fast. “For what’s in the report I don’t know why it took five years,” she says. “It’s disappointing.” She says the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation is poised to snap up contracts in the Delta should the pipeline go ahead. The Inuvialuit will also be prepared to take jobs. “A lot of our Inuvialuit know how to do these things,” she says.

But above all, for Cournoyea, the goal is to make sure if the resources start flowing, so too does wealth to the region. “When the wealth stays here, everybody benefits. Anytime anyone buys from a store, a service station . . . .” She trails off, then starts again: “We need to do things for ourselves.” Cournoyea talks of the need for Inuvialuit to stop depending, even slightly, on government, then stops abruptly, catching me off guard. “So,” she says, “are we done?”

“For what’s in the report I don’t know why it took five years. IT’S DISAPPOINTING”

Nellie Cournoyea

It’s not until I gather my stuff to leave that she softens. It comes when I ask about the sealskins heaped behind my chair – waves of dotted pewter and tan, bunched in soft rolls. They’re from Ulukhaktok, Cournoyea tells me, generously offering the tale. A territorial government representative had asked if the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation could sell the skins locally – part of a NWT-wide effort to keep the Northern market alive after the European Union ban caused it to tank. “He must have thought I’d take 10 or 12,” Cournoyea says. Instead, she told him she’d take all 350. Unbelieving, the rep only sent about 120, all of which sold fast – just as this batch promises to. Cournoyea concludes the story, giving me a look that says “Men!” – then beckons me behind her desk to watch a video about a raven.

IRC honcho Nellie Cornoyea is the pipeline’s biggest fan. “When the wealth stays here, everybody benefits,” she says.

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When I arrive at Inuvik mayor Denny Rodgers office, he’s looking at a website about yurts. A friend of his just bought one. “I don’t want to talk about the pipeline anymore,” Rodgers says, joking. “Let’s talk about yurts.” It’s a small downbeat from a man who is, otherwise, the picture of ebullience – a veritable town cheerleader. “I’m an optimist at heart,” Rodgers says. It’s a word he uses a lot, especially when talking about the gas-exploration slowdown in the Delta. “I don’t like to use the word downturn because I’m an optimist. The slowdown – no, the pause, the pause.”

Rodgers extends his good mood to the rest of Inuvik as well. “There’s optimism now [that the JRP report is out],” he says. “The buzz is back.” Even with his sunshine, however, he’s hedging his bets. “Yes, we’re excited, yes we’re ready, but you know, either way we’ll survive.” To that end, he talks of other ways Inuvik can become prosperous. CONTINUED ...

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The town is working to boost itself as a conference destination, and Rodgers is also lobbying hard for a year-round road to connect it to Tuktoyaktuk, a move he says will open the Delta and, as many hope, act as stopgap between the “pause” in exploration and the pipeline.

To learn more about ideas that aren’t the pipeline, Rodgers shuttles me to the new community economic development manager, winding in and around the maze of cubicles to his office upstairs. There, Larry Peckford tells me his position was once tourism and conferences manager, but changed recently to reflect the town’s broader focus. “Other things within the community and other conversations within the community are important,” he says, “so we look at the big picture.” Part of that involves promoting Inuvik industry as being versatile and having expertise not only in oil and gas, but beyond. “The potential for the Mackenzie pipeline is huge but it’s not here yet,” he says. “The community moves on.” But even Peckford, whose current job tasks might be accurately described as thinking about things other than the pipeline, can’t quite escape it. “Clearly if we get a Mackenzie gas pipeline it’s going to be a whole different ball game.”

THE VIEW FROM KURT WAINMAN’S office window could plunge anyone into despair. It’s of a yard full of unused equipment, millions-worth of it sitting under a thick coat of snow. The president and founder of Northwind Industries, easily Inuvik’s biggest gas industry contractor, is blunt: “We’re still moving forward, but it’s tough every day.” He’s spent the past 12 years – Northwind is now 13 years old – developing the company so it’s prepared when – or if – the pipeline goes through.

Wainman’s not ready to let the dream go now – especially after extensive refinancing – and plans to “fight tooth and nail to keep it.” Like Cournoyea, Wainman, also Inuvialuit, is hoping the National Energy Board has not been sitting idle during the many months of JRP delays and is ready to get down to business. He’s got good reason to be frustrated: If the pipeline doesn’t go through, or exploration doesn’t pick up, Northwind is sunk.

For the past winter, Wainman has been playing a circus-worthy balancing act, try-

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

ing to keep the company afloat without shedding so much staff and equipment that the company would be crippled if things pick up again. So far, he’s done six months of refinancing, much of it geared around the $4-million worth of equipment sitting in his yard. But it doesn’t stop there: Wainman has packed his schedule with budget meetings for the first time in a decade; he’s changed Northwind’s policy on idling times; he’s stringent about keeping the lights off; he monitors paper use; and, he tells me, his employees think he’s a “dink” because he’s cut overtime work.

The employees that are left, that is.

Last season, Northwind employed as many as 140 people; this year the company is down to 20. Wainman has let a lot of young guys go – ones he trained in-house to handle equipment used only in oil and gas work. Many of them left town. If things pick up, Wainman will have to track them down again. In the meantime, he’s praying for snow to add a couple days work to a painfully slow winter. “We’re still doing our ice roads, we’re still doing the highways, and snow removal,” Wainman says.

“But it’s not enough.”

FRED CARMICHAEL’S BEATEN BLUE pickup truck is nearly out of gas, sputtering ominously as it pitches onto the ice road. The potential of getting stranded, however, pales in comparison to the opportunity to see Inuvik with Carmichael, the current Aboriginal Pipeline Group chair and former Gwich’in Tribal Council president, as a tour guide. If Cournoyea’s at the head of the Inuvialuit fight, Carmichael’s got the rest of aboriginal interests covered.

The sweet smell of pipe tobacco blooms as he inclines his head toward me to talk.

Last year, he says, the ice road would have been booming. We’d have seen oil and gas equipment on the road banks, a snake line of metal and human activity winding north toward the camps. Today there’s nothing but a bleak stretch of ice.

It’s not just the road. As we bump around town, it’s clear more than Wainman’s yard is full of snow-brushed equipment; the town’s entire industrial section is in a slump, as is the rest of town. “You’ll notice a lot of ‘for sale’ signs,” Carmichael says. And I do, orange-on-black beacons

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of hard times displayed on houses, shops, cars, boats – everywhere. It’s something the town hasn’t seen in a while, Carmichael says. There are now rumours MGM Energy’s last remaining in-town executive sold his house, never to return. People in town are taking bets on which one of the glut of hotels will go out of business first.

Carmichael wishes the rest of Canada would push for the pipeline, too. Since the NWT can’t possibly fill all the jobs itself – it’s just too small – the entire country stands to gain. Carmichael says Canada’s GDP will jump more than $86-billion if the pipe goes ahead; the project will provide $10-billion in tax revenue to Canada, and potentially 100,000 jobs.

As the biggest project in the North, it also stands to galvanize the aboriginal workforce. “For me, it’s always been that this project is much needed as the first step of self-sufficiency for the aboriginal people of the NWT,” Carmichael says.

Like Cournoyea, he believes the pipeline will create the jobs and opportunities needed to gain that independence.

Shortly after its inception – and along with pipeline partners Aurora College, the federal government and the government of the NWT – the APG established the Petroleum Operations Training Committee. In 2002, the committee created a four-year program to train millwrights, heavy-duty mechanics, electricians and production operators to work in the pipeline’s three anchor fields. The program accepted 19 students in its first three years, but stalled with the JRP’s extended delays. Many of its graduates are now working in the south.

But Carmichael is hopeful. Like Rodgers, Cournoyea, Sharpe, Wainman and countless other believers in Inuvik, he also believes, with a much-battered and muchresuscitated resolve, because the alternative is unquestionable. “There’s no other industry here,” he says. “We need this pipeline.” He sees change coming in the future. “Now that [the report] is out, there is some, you know?” His tongue briefly sticks on the word “hope.” I watch Carmichael turn back onto his town’s main drag. For a man – and a town – that’s spent much of its life in a desperate mix of cheerleading, waiting and frustration, hope is a nice thing to have. up

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(EDTNY)Edmonton YP

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www.accommodationsbythesea.ca stay@accommodationsbythesea.ca

1 of 1 / Hôtels /Page 0804

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Olinto’s Taxi Ltd. Ft. Simpson

*13841414AB*

(EDTNY)Edmonton YP 13841414AB

/ Hôtels / 0804

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HA01 / M Donnelly / Edtn ARGYLL PLAZA HOTEL / 071215 (EDTNY)Edmonton YP

Northern Hospitality at its Finest Solarium Dining Room with Beautiful Lake View Well Appointed Modern Rooms (each room has it’s own bathroom) Conference/Meeting Room

Baker Lake, NU X0C 0A0 For information, bookings For reservations: or information reservationsorplease (867) or call 793-2127 (867) 793-2127 or (867) 793-2512 (after 6pm) (867) 793-2512 (after 6pm) Fax 793-2824 or (867) Fax(867) (867) 793-2824 or 793-2505 (867) 793-2505

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/ Hôtels / 0804 HOTEL & ARENA

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and specials • Oversized, air conditioned guestrooms, • View our website today for packages • Wireless internet 100 % Dene owned ~ Smoke-Free Taxis • Fitness facility and specials (Some with kitchenettes) • NHL sized hockey rink (867) 695-2179 • Wireless internet • Express daily breakfast • Coin operated laundry www.olintostaxi.com • Fitness facility • Cable / Voicemail / Free local calls www.argyllplazahotel.com H O T E/LHairdryers & A R E N A / Fridges • In room coffee • Oversized, air conditioned guestrooms, • View our website today for packages• NHL sized hockey rink (Some with kitchenettes) and specials • Coin operated laundry • PetAvenue, friendly • Jacuzzi• Wireless suitesinternet available 9933-63 Edmonton • Express daily breakfast • Fitness facility • Cable Voicemail Toll / Free callsdining • /Various onlocal site experiences Free: 1-866-203-2930 • NHL sized hockey rink • In room coffee / Hairdryers / Fridges • Coin operated laundry • Pet friendly • Jacuzzi suites available Room rates starting fromwww.argyllplazahotel.com $ 84 per night plus tax.

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9933-63 Avenue, Edmonton

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Toll Free: 1-866-203-2930

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Hamlet of Kimmirut P.O. Box 120 Kimmirut, NU, X0A 0N0 Tel. 867-939-2247 Fax 867-939-2045 Signature

www.seanorthtours.com

Nom / Name

Call 1-888-348 -7591 or (204) 675-2195

Date

www.kimmirut.ca

Je comprend qu'en signant le présent document, a) je confirme que la présente épreuve est conforme à mes attentes et à ce que j'ai commandé; b) j'atteste avoir pris connaissance des conditions figurant au verso de la présente épreuve, je les comprend et je les accepte.

I acknowledge that by signing the present document, a) I confirm that the present proof is in conformity with my expectations and to what I have ordered; b) I confirm having read, understood and accept the conditions on the reverse of the present proof

13841414AB 1 / 1

Signature

Nom / Name

Date

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

Je comprend qu'en signant le présent document, a) je confirme que la présente épreuve est conforme à mes attentes et à ce que j'ai commandé; b) j'atteste avoir pris connaissance des conditions figurant au verso de la présente épreuve, je les comprend et je les accepte.

I acknowledge that by signing the present document, a) I confirm that the present proof is in conformity with my expectations and to what I have ordered; b) I confirm having read, understood and accept the conditions on the reverse of the present proof

13841414AB

1/1

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April • May 2010

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BUSINESS MACKENZIE RANGE SUPPLY Suppliers of Industrial, Safety, Seismic, NAPA Auto parts, Ammunition, plus much more! Drop in to: 15 Industrial Rd, Inuvik N.T. or give us a call

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Heli Dynamics Ltd.

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Yellowknife, NT (867) 873-6398 1-877-615-5578 Iqaluit, NU (867) 979-7700 1-866-979-7780

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CE

INSURANCE SERVICES LTD. A 100% Indian-owned brokerage in business since 1987.

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April • May 2010

podcast podcast

www.uphere.ca

10 Northern Jobs CONTINUED ... ❯❯ POSITION

Territorial Park Ranger Wages: $24 to $35 an hour Hours: Full-time from May to November, sometimes longer Highlights: Protecting the North’s most beautiful places Lowlight: Hauling barrels of poop out of backcountry outhouses Nickname: Nature cop

Welcome to

Nunavut’s Capital City

Come share the spirit of Canada’s newest capital

❯❯ TESTIMONIAL

Lolita Welchman

Visit Iqaluit and turn your assumptions upside down

www.city.iqaluit.nu.ca

©Richard Day/Daybreak Imagery

This may be the only job interview where they score you on the wilderness trips you’ve taken, your basic carpentry skills and how reliably you can scare off a grizzly bear. As a warden at Tombstone territorial park, a place of surreal natural beauty about one hour north of Dawson City along the Dempster Highway, you’re in charge of the place. Lolita Welchman got the job in 2004 and swears it’s the best.

“A rainy day, a cold day, a cloudy day, it doesn’t really matter to me,” she says. “I’m working in the great outdoors being a steward for the land.”

For most of the summer, Welchman is out hiking around the park with her 50-pound pack cutting new hiking trails, painting signs, recording wildlife sightings, chatting with visitors, assisting biologists with waterfowl and botany studies as well as keeping track of trail erosion. “As a park ranger, continually going up and down the same trails, you get really tuned in,” Welchman says. “I know where all the fox dens are, where the bears’ favourite berry bushes are, the different kinds of wind by the way the leaves rustle.” As comfortable as she feels in bear country, Welchman and other rangers often carry shotguns. So far she’s only ever had to use bear-bangers and rubber shot, keeping the real shells tucked close at hand in her pants pocket.

The most unfun part of her job, she says, is moving poop barrels from the backcountry outhouses. “You have to crawl under there and hook it up to a helicopter sling,” she says, grimacing. “Then, hold it to make sure it takes off straight, to avoid spillage.”

Welchman’s advice for wannabe rangers: “Learn to survive outdoors by yourself in all kinds of weather.” A diploma in parks enforcement training, renewable resources or a fish and wildlife management degree also helps. up

Churchill, MB is the Polar Bear Capital of the World!

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To book Your Authentic Arctic Experience call an Adventure Planner today or visit our website.

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�� lookingback

B y r a n d y f r e e ma n

Gay rights and

NorthernWrongs He was living a quiet life in an NWT mining town – until he was jailed for being a homosexual. The fight to free him would change Canadian history.

E

verett George Klippert’s downfall was his scrupulous honesty. In the summer of 1965, when police asked if he was a practicing homosexual, the resident of Pine Point, NWT said yes. He was charged, tried and convicted of gross indecency under Section 149 of the Criminal Code. Sentenced to “preventive detention,” he faced the rest of his life in jail. It was a shocking decision, and the political debate that ensued would revolutionize gay rights in Canada.

It wasn’t Klippert’s first arrest for being gay. While living in Calgary in the early ’60s, he’d been jailed for

Peter Bregg/CP IMAGES

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A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

gross indecency. After his release, Klippert struck out north, winding up in Pine Point, a now-defunct leadzinc mining town near the south shore of Great Slave Lake. The manager of the mine knew of Klippert’s past, but hired him anyway, giving him a job as a mechanic’s helper. The manager and his wife also befriended Klippert, and often had him as a guest in their home. They described him as “a quiet-spoken, likeable fellow, [who] did not drink. … By no stretch of the imagination would anyone have thought of him as a dangerous sexual offender. … Those words, ‘gross indecency,’ seem utterly ridiculous when applied to Everett Klippert.”

The Pine Point police felt otherwise. They, too, knew of Klippert’s past, and to harass him they would often quiz him about crimes he knew nothing about. In August of 1965, several small fires had been started near the tiny community, and Klippert was brought in for questioning. Hours of interrogation revealed he had nothing to do with the fires. But he was also grilled on his sexual practices, and admitted to homosexual acts with four Pine Point men – acts then illegal under Canadian law.

The next morning Klippert was taken to Hay River, where he was arraigned before the magistrate. A trial resulted in four convictions of gross indecency, and before the dust had settled – and long before Klippert had become a martyr of Canada’s gay-rights movement – they’d locked him up and thrown away the key. This decision was based, in part, on a psychiatrist’s report stating Klippert had “failed to control his sexual impulses” after his first conviction. His first term in prison had failed to turn him straight. Continued...

OUTCRY: The imprisonment of the NWT’s Everett Klippert caused a national uproar. He was the last Canadian jailed for being gay, and prompted Pierre Trudeau’s famous statement “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Get Up Here

PHOTO: ROBERT POSTMA

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Nunavik

Creations

�� lookingback

Unique fashion garmets and accessories Traditional Inuit hand-made products www.nunavikcreations.com Building 601 Airport Road, P.O. Box 729 Kuujjuaq, QC J0M 1C0 Canada

Tel. (819) 964-1848 74 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

The decision against Klippert was, of course, appealed, and the case worked its way up to higher and higher courts. Each time, his punishment was upheld. The last resort was the Supreme Court of Canada, before which Klippert’s lawyer pleaded his case in 1967. On November 7 of that year, the high court issued its verdict: By a judgement of 3 to 2, they backed the previous rulings. Klippert, the unrepentant homosexual, was to stay in jail, possibly for life.

Since the case had started in a remote Northern community, Canadians were at first unaware of Klippert’s plight. Only as it wound its way through the legal system had word gotten out. Even by societal standards of the time, the sentence was widely seen as excessive. It had been years since the nation’s laws concerning homosexuality had been so harshly “ invoked. Many Canadians were outraged. Of course, a few thought a lifesentence was too light.

It wasn’t just everyday citizens who weighed in on Klippert’s case. Bud Orange, the Liberal Member of Parliament for the Northwest Territories, took his constituent’s Bud Orange, NWT MP, 1967 side. When asked to comment on the Supreme Court decision, Orange said, “I think that when two men engage in an act – which to me is a most repulsive act, but it is something they themselves consent to – I think it’s their private business.” Later, Orange again publicly supported Klippert by asking then-Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau to consider amending the Criminal Code section “dealing with this affliction so that Canadians will not be subject to preventive detention” for homosexuality.

Orange wasn’t exactly supporting the rights of gays. He believed they were “victims of an unfortunate social disease” and needed treatment, not incarceration. Yet for speaking out against the punishment of homosexuals, Orange found himself in the middle of a firestorm. Letters piled up on

I think that when two men engage in an act – which to me is a most repulsive act, but it is something they themselves consent to – I think it’s their private business.”

his desk. The majority supported decriminalizing homosexuality. Some, however, were viciously opposed.

One British Columbia resident wrote, “So! You have nothing better to do than take the side of a filthy individual without morals or common decency … what a mockery! I am sure that the people who elected you must be very proud of their MP. SHAME! SHAME!” An unsigned letter from Alberta pumped it up a notch: “Are you for free love between all beings human or animal? … I cannot picture a homo (what a picture) loose among children. Hey Bud, that air must be getting to you. Why not try to be a man again?”

The Liberal government, however, liked Orange’s idea. It drafted changes to the Criminal Code and, on December 21, 1967, introduced Bill C-150, an act to bring sweeping changes to laws concerning abortion and contraception, gambling, gun control, drunk driving, and most controversially of all, homosexuality. Under the act, consensual sex between two men would become legal. It was bold legislation, and it produced one of the most legendary quotations in Canadian history. After the bill was introduced, Trudeau, in a media scrum on the steps of the House of Commons, famously stated, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Yet bringing the bill to a vote proved difficult. Quebec Créditistes filibustered Parliament, claiming the dark forces of communism, socialism and atheism were behind the move to decriminalize homosexuality. Equally opposed were the far-right Edmund Burke Society and the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada.

During the weeks that led up to the 1968 federal election, Trudeau was portrayed as the “beast of Sodom,” and Bud Orange was labelled one of his minions.

Both men, however, were re-elected.

The Liberal Party’s jump in popularity, by almost six per cent, was seen as affirmation of their proposed changes to the Criminal Code. On May 14, 1969, Bill C-150 became law, and homosexuality was decriminalized.

Yet the government seemed to have forgotten the man whose case had ignited the debate – the NWT’s Everett Klippert.

Klippert remained in a Prince Albert, Saskatchewan maximum-security penitentiary until July of 1971, when he was released.

He didn’t return to the Northwest Territories. Not wanting to stand any longer in the crosshairs, he chose to live the rest of his life in quiet obscurity in the south. He passed away in 1996, at the age of 70. up

We now offer group workshops Take a guided tour of our glass art facility and stencil your own unique glass!

We can teach groups of up to 15 people Ideal for: • Youth of 10 years

and older

• Family special event • Conference

entertainment

• Tourist tours

• Exchange programs

Workshops lasts from 1 to 2 1/2 hours.

Each participant gets to keep the glass they stenciled.

Cost: $30 per person CrEaTED bY:

Yellowknife Glass Recyclers Co-op Ltd. 3510 McDonald Dr. (Old Town) Yellowknife NT Ph: (867) 669-7654 Pilot’s Monument E: matthew@ygr.coop www.ygr.coop

A great opportunity for youth to participate in a recycling program and to learn about craftsmanship!

Old Town

podcast podcast Escape to the North. For free.

Just check out our podcast.

It’s fun. It’s informative. It’s colourful. And it’s way cooler than anything else on the web. Literally.

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a c . e r e h p u . w w w A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10 up here

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�� scrapbook ➤ BY shannon george Netting profits from Arctic char Every summer, a beautiful, ancient ritual plays out near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut: The North’s most famous fish, the fat and spirited Arctic char, turn brilliant red and begin making their way from the cold waters of the Northwest Passage to their spawning grounds in the freshwater rivers and lakes of Victoria Island.

Following the fish, small groups of Inuit head out on the land, erect modest camps and commence their annual harvest. Much like their ancestors, they’ll be out for weeks, sharing A-frame tents with children, cousins and friends, working in small boats and using weirs and nets and muscle-power to gather tens of thousands of char.

But this is no traditional harvest – it’s a commercial fishing operation run by Cambridge Bay’s Kitikmeot Foods, which markets char as an eco-friendly, wild-caught delicacy in southern cities like Vancouver, Boston and San Francisco.

Once the fishermen pluck the fish from the water, they clean them on the shore, pack them in ice and send them to Cambridge Bay aboard floatplanes – 1,100 pounds at a time. They’re paid as much as $1.30 per pound for the fish they catch. Over the two or three week season they can earn as much as $700 per day – a very modern profit for people living an old-fashioned lifestyle.

MAIN: Fishermen Jack Ekpakohak, Bert Angulalik and Desmond Angulalik show off five of the thousands of char they harvest each season from the Ekalluk River, northwest of Cambridge Bay. ABOVE: Carving out fillets for a camp meal. RIGHT: Knee deep in the Jayco River north of Cambridge Bay, Bob Nakashook, Gary Mala, Willy Nakashook, Al Nakashook and Ronnie Eghalok head for shore dragging fish netted in a weir.

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April • May 2010

TOP RIGHT: Jack Ekpakohak, an elder fishermen on the Ekalluk River. ABOVE: Pulling a set-net at Ekalluk. Once char are plucked from the mesh, they’re taken to shore, cleaned and gutted. LEFT: Floatplanes fly the char to Cambridge Bay. There, at a processing plant, they’re cleaned further and flash-frozen in preparation for transport south.

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 1 0 up here

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�� lastword ➤

By rosemary ganley

For other Last Words, explore us online: www.uphere.ca��

Sisterhood on the

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Mother of Rivers For a pack of female canoeists paddling down the mighty Yukon, the rewards of girl-power were felt with every stroke.

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hen our canoes scraped the pebbled shore at Dawson City last July, we clambered out on wobbly legs, hugging and crying. Maybe it was a woman thing. Fourteen of us, all females, had just travelled 330 kilometres down the Pelly and Yukon Rivers. Save for our guide, we were all novice or intermediate-level canoeists. Our ages ranged from 22 to a venerable 74. At 72, I was one of the oldest.

Eleven days earlier we’d put in at Pelly Crossing, four hours by road north of Whitehorse. Our leader, 59-yearold Lin Ward of Canoe North Adventures, had briefed us on what was to come. For two days we would paddle the Pelly to where it joins the Yukon. There, warned Lin, we would enter “what Robert Service called ‘the great alone.’ We will be 100 miles from any human being. Perhaps we should look at our medical kit now.” Our three retired nurses dug into it. As for me, I had my Advil.

We weren’t out to set any records. The Yukon is too humbling for that. The river dominates the upper-left corner of the continent, beginning in British Columbia and flowing north through the Yukon and then west across Alaska to the Bering Sea. It is 3,700 kilometres in length, but we would paddle just a tenth of it. Each summer, during the Yukon River Quest paddling race, the fastest canoeists make it from Whitehorse to Dawson in just two days. We were content with our own pace, shorter in distance and longer by more than a week.

The river was wide, silty and flowed fast. It has some “floppy” water, but no whitewater and no portages. The vistas were magnificent: basalt cliffs, clay embankments, forests of black spruce and trembling aspen. Pink fireweed was everywhere. We saw smoke from forest fires, but felt no threat from flames.

What we did feel was the river’s storied past. Once upon a time the Yukon was a transportation corridor for First Nations people. Later, it was a sternwheeler route to the gold-laden Klondike. But since the 1950s, when 78 up here

A p r i l • M a y 2 0 10

the Klondike Highway was built, the river has been returning to wilderness. Today, it’s sometimes called the world’s longest museum, its banks covered with historical artifacts. We came to two homesteads, one a centuryold working farm that grows potatoes (Yukon Gold, of course), the other a stopping-off post for sled-dog teams.

The post, called Stepping Stone, has a log chapel where we shared some lesser-known Robert Service poetry.

Life was easy when we were on the water. We would paddle leisurely, and then, once per hour, “barge up,” bringing our canoes together to shift in our seats and snack on trail mix. Life on land was tougher. Among us, some had recent camping experience, but others had to be quickly initiated into the tasks of wilderness living: setting up tents, starting fires, digging latrines.

During downtime in camp, my fellow canoeists collected rocks and driftwood. Someone took 400 photos.

We saw fresh bear tracks – those of a mother and cub – and caught a glimpse of the hind-end of a black bear loping into the bush. We wore our sandals into the river and bathed au naturel. We dined on Lin’s single-pot wonders, consisting of meat, lentils and fruit. Her spouse, Al Pace, a well-known potter, had sent along ceramic cups for our nightly wine.

Someone called what we did “soft adventure.” For us, it was the right degree of challenge: still wilderness, and a stretch physically, but well-guided. Our most moving sight was an encounter with a moose and her calf. She swam toward us in the river, urging her offspring to follow by barking instructions. She them climbed onto our sandbar, about 10 metres from us, glared at the flapping blue tarp surrounding our loo, and returned to the water with great majesty. Maybe it was her effort, her maternal concern, her bravery, her confidence in her world. We all connected. up Rosemary Ganley is a Peterborough, Ontario-based writer, as well as an activist in support of women’s issues.

Don’t let them be a number.

Business is about numbers and here’s a number that really matters – 455. That’s the average number of young workers hurt in the workplace every year in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

When you hire new workers, make sure you train them to do their jobs safely!

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000-000 TO BE ANNOUNCED

A Hot Meal is Part Of The Deal.

Canadian North now serves hot meals on select flights in the Kitikmeot and Qikiqtani.

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W CANADA $4.95

For reservations call 1.800.661.1505; for cargo call 1.866.663.2223 or visit us at canadiannorth.com