Canada's northern landscape does take the breath away!
The most vivid image of the tundra: an exquisite piece of beautifully worked lace, numerous blue pools separated by strands of green.
We - four Yellowknife fibre-friends - flew up in a six-seater Cessna 107 (I think), with a pilot just a few years out of highschool (funny, how very young the capable young all seem these days):
He flew us along the delta of the mighty Mackenzie River (Slavey: Deh-Cho, big river) on the way up, an intricate system of lakes and channels. It's worth reading about Canada's biggest river, and I had done so, but seeing first hand is another experience entirely.
On the way there are cliffs, and old DEW-line stations:
Tuktoyaktuk itself is a decently sized (population around 900) Inuvialuit and Inuit community just off the eastern edge of the delta:
We were met by Joanne of "Joanne's Taxi Service". In addition to driving taxi and giving two-hour tours of "Tuk," she provides ambulance services (to the community's nursing station) and in winter regularly drives "the hospital bus" on the 185 km ice road from Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik (read more: Inuvik/Tuk Ice Road). That takes about four hours, she says; and, laughing: "sometimes two, and my husband can do it in one!" That's Joanne in front of her house right on the Beaufort Sea, and her taxi cum ambulance.
Of the many interesting aspects of the community, a few stand out. There's a summer community greenhouse operation in an old quonset hut (no picture, alas). There's an old DEW-line station, of which one white dome is now in Inuvik repurposed as the offices of the local cable company there.
Fascinating are the pingos, mounds of earth-covered permafrost (ice) . Tuktoyaktuk has the highest concentration of such formations, around 1,350 of them, of which a number are right in or by the community:
If you click to read more (Pingos), you will see not only a picture of one but also the polygon wedge ice left by melting pingos, a phenomenon visible to different degrees in many spots on the tundra between Inuvik and Tuk. In the community, one was partially excavated in the 1960s to serve as a community freezer. While I didn't have the nerve to go down myself (the picture shows why), I learned that it has 19 rooms divided into three "hallways," and is cooler in summer than in winter.
The ambitious Trans Canada Trail starts in Tuk (from sea to sea to sea):
Of course we did the truly touristy things - getting our picture taken with the sign, and wading in the Arctic Ocean.
There is also sadness - the sadness shared by so many remote, mostly aboriginal, communities. The gap between the world that was, only a few generations ago - hunter-gatherer - and the world that is, now - wage earning - is great. This is especially so in communities in which there is little work to be had, despite a great deal of fishing and hunting still, and where education beyond high school and any sort of career entail the heartache of leaving "home". The young bear the brunt of it, and in Tuk, too, there is teenage pregnancy and teenage suicide. A visitor who cares feels helpless and wishes there were a better answer.
On the way back we flew overland, getting a first-hand look at construction progress on the permanent road between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik. It's going to be an amazing finish to the famed Dempster Highway, threading its way along the filigree lace of the tundra.
All in all - four hours so intensely beautiful and interesting that they will stay with me forever.
Miss your blog.
ReplyDeleteAny new updates??
louise