Tag Archives: Nunavut

96. A novel sleeping partner

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In November 2007, I headed south on a Ken Borrack Air Twin Otter. I’d been waiting all day, with the flight twice delayed owing to bad weather. Both times, I’d been sent home and, each time, got a call a couple of hours later telling me to get myself back to the airport. On the third try, the weather cleared long enough to allow the plane to take off.

Loading the Twin Otter at Arviat airport

The moment had come to fly the sixty miles south of Arviat to the hunting camp, and I boarded the stripped out plane that now only had three passenger seats. The only other human passengers were Nadine, the French-Canadian cook, and Reverend Jimmy Muckpah, minister at Arviat’s Anglican Church. The other passengers were two wooden boxes containing Jimmy’s sled dogs, packed securely for their own safety for the short low altitude flight. What little remaining space was packed to the rafters with a skidoo and some of the boxes of food and other items we’d need.

Lovely, kind Jimmy Muckpah, who knew more about polar bears than anyone I’ve known
Jimmy’s sled dogs, who seemed quite content with their travel arrangements

We flew south along the coast to our camp. The others had flown in on an earlier flight and we all helped to unload the plane before it took off again. It would return for us in two weeks. I was to live for those two weeks with five big game trophy hunters from the US, their five Inuit guides, all from Arviat (including Jimmy), and Nadine. The guides, Nadine and I all knew each other, but the trophy hunters were new to me and, indeed, to all of us. I was here for research. I was studying the relationship between humans and polar bears; specifically, seeking to understand the changing role of polar bears in Inuit culture and economy, as international laws about polar bear hunting was rapidly evolving.

Ryan, the camp outfitter, had generously invited me to the camp. What I learned in those two weeks hugely enriched my anthropological understanding of the role of polar bears in Inuit life and I published my findings in various academic journals and books in the subsequent years. My findings were even presented as evidence at US Congress hearings in 2008 that sought to amend US Fish and Wildlife laws concerning the importation of ‘trophy’ polar bears from other countries.

The camp comprised four cabins. The trophy hunters slept in two of the cabins, the guides all bunked together in another, and the fourth cabin – which was also the camp kitchen and eating quarters – was shared by Nadine and me. Each cabin had a ‘toilet,’ consisting of a ‘honey bucket’ – basically a bucket with a seat and a bin liner that we changed every few days. At those temperatures, anything you did into the honey bucket froze almost immediately. Nadine and I had a small room off the far end of the kitchen that contained a bunkbed. She slept on the top bunk and I on the bottom.

Our little huddle of humanity on the west coast of Hudson Bay

Ryan had built his outfitting camp here because it was situated along the polar bear migration route. Indeed, during the two weeks I was there, more than seventy individual polar bears passed through on their winter migration out onto the sea ice. Many of them came close, attracted by the smells of the camp, and snuffled around. We were under strict orders that no-one was to leave the cabins, or go between cabins, without a rifle and to never go alone. The trophy hunters rarely listened to that advice and took stupid risks by walking from the kitchen cabin to their own in the dark. The local guides, well aware of the realities of living in such close proximity with the world’s largest carnivores, were extremely annoyed by the idiocy of the trophy hunters.

I had various roles during those two weeks. I helped Nadine in the kitchen. I went out on hunting trips with the guides and the hunters in their charge. And I helped with skinning and preparing two of the three bears that were killed. (According to international and local law at the time, each hunter could take one trophy bear (they paid tens of thousands of dollars for the ‘privilege,’ some of which found its way back into the Inuit subsistence economy)). During those two weeks, three of the five hunters got their trophy. The other two went home empty handed.

I remember helping one of the guides, Donald, one day as he skinned a bear that had been shot by the trophy hunter in his care. The hunter was back in the warmth of the cabin, enjoying a hot coffee and some freshly baked cinnamon rolls. I held the bear’s huge heavy legs while Donald did what he had to do. It was cold and he wanted to get the work done quickly. So that he could keep his head down and concentrate on the work, he asked me to keep my eyes on the two polar bears that were circling close by and to let him know if either of them started to move closer. They didn’t, but I was shit scared and so was he.

Polar bears came close to and into the camp every day.

The plywood cabins were reinforced with corrugated metal. They had windows that were too small for a polar bear to get through, and the doors were covered with six inch nails, sharp side out, to discourage any bear that might try to break in. Even so, it was pretty scary at times. One particular day, when the hunters and guides had all left camp to go hunting, and Nadine and I were alone in the cabin, a bear came snuffling around. He stood on his hind legs, making him probably 8 feet tall. He looked in the window into our kitchen (imagine, a polar bear looking in at you!), and repeatedly hit against the side of the cabin with his front paws. He was trying to get in. Nadine and I were terrified. We had a rifle, but I’d only ever used it for target practice. Would I know what to do in a real life-or-death situation? Eventually, he gave up with trying to open the sardine tin that was our cabin and started to play around with the big cylinder of propane gas that was our only source of heat and cooking fuel. One slap with his paw, and he knocked the cylinder loose. Before we knew it, he was rolling it around on the ground, playing with it, and now was 20 or 30 metres away. While we were delighted that he seemed to have lost interest in us, we now had a new problem – it was about -15C and a polar bear was using our only heat source as a toy. Luckily, the hunters and guides came back about an hour later and all was well.

Every night when I went to bed, I could hear snuffling outside the cabin. Sometimes, I’d shine my flash light out the small window and see a pair of eyes reflected back. Lying in my bunk, I’d hear snuffling on the other side of the flimsy wall. Imagine my surprise the first morning I went out and saw a very clear indentation in the snow the size and shaped of a curled up polar bear. It was exactly on the other side of the wall from my bunkbed. The indentation was there every morning; sometimes, like in the photo below, accompanied by claw marks.

I didn’t sleep well for those two weeks, let me tell you, knowing that I was sleeping beside a polar bear, with only a strip of plywood and corrugated metal separating us. But when I looked back on it, I understood what a privilege those two weeks were.

It hard to see the indent of the bear’s body in this one, but the claw-mark is right in the centre.

93. 2-stroke

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What’s your favourite smell? Freshly mown grass? Fresh coffee? That smell when you nuzzle your face into a baby? Why is it your favourite smell? Do you know?

I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning, the window open to cool the house down before the heat of the day kicked in. That’s when the smell came tumbling in and nostalgia stroked my face like a feather. One of the council workers was strimming the strip of grass that runs the length of my street. And there it was: The smell of exhaust from a 2-stroke engine. There’s comfort in that smell for me and it’s deeply entwined with so many good memories.

We’re living on Carina of Devon. Me and Julian and the girls. The smell of a 2-stroke engine is us leaving Carina to head off on an adventure in the rubber dinghy. Maybe it’s all of us, going ashore to explore a new place or to wander up a river that’s too shallow for Carina‘s draught. Or I’m on my own, the freedom of having the outboard tiller in my hand, setting out to go for a solitary walk or to go shopping or do the laundry. Or it’s Julian, taking the girls across the Rio Guadiana to school. Or it’s all the other yachties we met over the years, the smell and sound of a 2-stroke outboard motor signalling their arrivals and departures from their anchored yachts. It’s adventure and freedom.

Strip that layer away, and I’m living in Arviat. It’s summer, with open sea and lake-pocked land. I have my own quad bike and I zip around town in the near 20-hour daylight, picking my friend Crystal up at 3am, so we can go check the fishing net we’re sharing for the summer, or meeting Frank at 5am to go beluga hunting. His quad has Arden’s boat trailer attached on the back, so I hop on and reverse the quad into the sea under Frank’s guidance; he offloads the boat, as I park the quad and trailer. Or I’m out along the road to the dump, or the road past the reservoir, at twilight or after dark, speeding along way too fast, sometimes alone, sometimes not. In my mind, I’m a badass. In reality, probably not.

Strip that layer away, and I’m living in Arviat. It’s spring, and I’m at the floe edge with Arden. We’ve come by skidoo; him driving, me sitting in the qamutik (sled), facing back towards Arviat, back towards the direction we’ve come from, to shield myself from the powdery snow blown up by the skidoo runners. I’m surrounded by the immense beautiful whiteness of the west coast of Hudson Bay. We’ll stop when we get to the floe edge. Arden will talk to me and teach me, I’ll try to remember everything; we’ll drink tea and eat the bannock Theresa has made for us.

Strip away that layer and I’m at home in Ballygibbon. I could be 10 or 20 or 25. The 2-stroke exhaust is Daddy mowing the lawn. It’s the ease and efficiency of the first petrol-powered lawn mower after years of a small, manual one. It’s me spending summer evenings following Daddy round the garden – at 10 or 20 or 25 – just for his company and the important things we have to talk about – Gaelic football and films and music, a bit of politics and other sports.

When I catch a whiff of 2-stroke exhaust, it doesn’t conjure any one of these times in my life in particular. Rather, it mashes them all up, and loosens something in me, a knot unravels, and a feeling of belonging rushes through my veins. Now, I am here, with a view out my window that’s as green as I could ever have hoped for. And a new layer is added to my love of that smell.

91. Too far away

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I remember the phone ringing down the hall. Mammy got up from the kitchen table to answer it. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, coming back to sit down. ‘Someone from Canada.’ I walked down the hall to the table by the hall window and put the receiver to my ear.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Huvi?’ came the reply. Frank. Dear Frank. My friend, my teacher, my hunting buddy. One of my primary research participants in Arviat, it was Frank who had taught me to skin and butcher caribou, and to get it right by doing it over and over; Frank who had taught me how to drive a boat amongst pods of beluga whales in the shallow waters close to shore, so he could harpoon them from the bow; Frank who put me on polar bear patrol while he collected the arctic char that had swum into his fishing net; Frank who I spent hours and days with, far inland on our quad bikes, out at sea at first light. He and Martha welcomed me into their home, made me tea, fed me biscuits and bannock, took me out on the land and to their cabin with their daughters. Frank made me laugh and made me think. How at ease I felt in his company.

And now, he was on the phone. He on the tundra, on the western shore of Hudson Bay; I in the Bog of Allen, in the middle of Ireland. And the distance between us seemed vast. Vaster than the Atlantic Ocean, and maritime Canada and the width of Hudson Bay that separated us. All that we talked about with such ease when we were together dissolved now across the expanse.

He asked about the weather and I told him. But what was Irish weather to him? What was the Irish autumn, with leaves changing colour and falling off the trees, the rain and the mud, when he lived in a place with no trees, where autumn meant the ground covered in snow and the sea gradually turning to ice, travel by boat giving way to skidoos. My autumn meant nothing to him and, from this distance, his autumn was starting to dim for me.

I asked what he’d been doing and he told me where he’d been seal hunting the previous day, who he’d gone with and the other hunters he’d met when he was out. I smiled as he spoke. In my mind’s eye, I could see where he’d been and who he’d been with. I had been there with him, and with his brother-in-law Arden, just a few weeks earlier.

He asked what I’d been up to. It was September and in Ireland there was only Gaelic football in the air. How could I tell him about the match I had been to on Sunday? About the crowds, the excitement, how important football was to my life here? Or that the turf was home and there were still a couple of loads to be thrown in the shed. My voice sounded strange in my ears as I tried to talk to him about my life here.

I’d lived in his world and loved it. He was interested in my world, but had no experience of it. The ease we felt in each other’s company was made jagged by the cultural distance that now lay between us.

We continued to speak on the phone occasionally and I got to spend another summer with him a few years later. It’s a few years now since he passed away. I wish I had been better able to bridge that distance when he called.

47. Ukaliq

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In late 2000, I’d already been working as a volunteer teacher at Levi Angmak Elementary School in Arviat, Nunavut, for some months. Kip Gibbons, one of the teachers who had befriended me, offered to show me how to sew my own mittens. She sent me to the Northern Store to buy ukaliq (arctic hare) fur. I duly went a couple of evenings later and bought two ukaliq skins. On Saturday, I went around to Kip’s house and we sat on her floor, where she helped me to cut the pattern and showed me how to stitch the parts together.

I’ve never been much of a crafts person, so I was delighted to be making my own mittens. It was probably -20C or -25C as I walked the snow-covered streets back to my house a few hours later, proudly wearing my new mittens. I would wear them for years, and still have them today, although there isn’t much call for them in southern Spain.

On the Monday after I sewed the mitts, I wore them to school. In the school foyer, I met Peter 2 Aulajoot, an older teacher, who was always friendly and jokey with me. He chuckled when he saw my mitts. I hadn’t cut them badly or sewed them poorly. But Peter 2 noticed something that I hadn’t. While the fur on my left mitt was mostly white with a little smattering of black, the fur on my right mitt was mostly black with a little smattering of white. They looked completely mismatched. How could I not have seen this?

From that day on, Peter 2 always called me Ukaliq – arctic hare. A few other people picked it up too, but it wasn’t a name I was commonly called. But I liked that name for myself. I’d always loved hares, always got a thrill when I’d see them in Ireland. Now that I was in Nunavut, I saw them more often – including one that lived out past the reservoir and seemed as tame as a pet bunny.

I’ve carried that name – Ukaliq – with me ever since, making the frisson of excitement I feel whenever I see a hare all the sharper. So, yesterday when Michael said, ‘There’s the hare,’ I immediately turned to the window. And there she was. At the base of a granite outcrop beside the house, ears up, alert. She paused, nibbled at a hind paw with her teeth, hopped along and then sat, ears back, looking out over the sea.

I was in a state of awe and nostalgia and joy all mingled together, remembering Peter 2 and Kip and that ukaliq by the reservoir and the person I was twenty-five years ago.