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Deane and Norm's Motorcycle Trip to Northwest Territories & Nunavut | |
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August 22-25 - Visit to Nunavut |
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Deane and Norm made it to the Arctic Circle! The arch below is located on the Arctic Circle at the Inuit village of Repulse Bay, Nunavut, Canada. Symbols on or in front of the arch are the life sustaining Caribou, Whale, and Walrus. With the flag of Canada on the left is the flag of the new Territory of Nunavut on the right.
With a proper certificate from the City Manager of Repulse Bay, to confirm that this is on the Arctic Circle, we are now members of not only the " North of 60o Chapter" of the "Order of Arctic Adventurers", but also members of the "Polar Bear Chapter" of that illustrious group. How about that? This part of our journey was our long anticipated visit to the newest "Territory" in Canada, Nunuvut. It proved to be the most fun and interesting visit of the whole trip so far. We left our Gold Wings at our Thompson motel, with the hotel manager promising they would watch them. She was enthused enough about our adventure that she even took us to the airport and picked us up on our return. The village we had chosen to visit is named Repulse Bay in English, and "Naujat" (pronounced Nowyat) in Inuktitut, the native Inuit language. We chose Naujat because it was both on Hudson Bay and on the Arctic Circle. That turned out to be a marvelous choice, and we had a wonderful time there. Since there are no roads into Nunavut, we flew the 800 miles to Repulse Bay, starting from Thompson, on the "BIG" airline, "Calm Air". Actually it is a good sized airline, and the plane we flew on was a Saab 340 twin turbojet, with seating for 20 passengers. The first leg of the flight was from Thompson to Churchill, Manitoba. Along this leg we crossed what northern Canadians call "The Bush" - impassible, no roads, scattered forests, and tens of thousands of small lakes and "potholes". Going north, by the time we landed at Churchill, there were only a very few scattered trees, having given way to bushes only. By the time we had flown north from Churchill to Arviat, our first Nunavut landing, there were no trees and few bushes. At the next northern landing in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, even all bushes were gone, replaced by tundra - grass and lichens. Nunavut is said to lie completely north of the tree line in Canada. Finally, landing in Repulse Bay, the landscape was almost total rock, with little grass, but lots of Lichen between the rocks. Walking between the tiny air terminal and our Naujat Hotel, we nearly froze. The temperature was about 40o F, but with a north wind of about 25 mph. With Chill Factor, this felt like about 28o F! Luckily we had enough foresight to bring our cold weather motorcycling coats, rain suits, gloves and warm clothes. From there on we wore all of those every time we went out. The rain suits helped quite a bit, by keeping out the constant wind, and keeping the wind chill down. Naujat is a lively village of about 600 Inuit people. The village only occupies a space of about a half mile long by about a quarter mile wide.
The people of the village are very friendly and very generous. Most of the men are hunters and fishermen. They hunt Caribou, Walrus, Seals, Beluga whales, and Narwals. Yes, Narwals are those almost mythical whales with the long ivory "tusks" extending from their heads like a spear, up to about eight feet long. This growth is actually from their canine tooth (occasionally they have two "tusks"). Honest - they really exist - we held the ivory "tusk" in our own hands.
We arrived at a particularly active time for the village. It was almost unbelievable how many things were happening in this little village. The hunters were out hunting Caribou each day, with stretched Caribou hides drying to show their success. They also raced out in their boats the second day we were there, to hunt Beluga whales, after one was spotted in their little bay. Another hunter showed us the Walrus he had gotten. Just two weeks earlier, the hunters had brought in many Narwhals, and we saw parts of them with blubber and skin. The men are also fishing all of the time, including through the ice in the winter, with the favorite fish being the "Arctic Char". Another most interesting activity was the "diamond deposit prospectors". This was high tech prospecting, with resource mapping planes, helicopters, and core drilling rigs. There were eight to ten people involved in this, all staying at our small hotel, so we enjoyed getting to know several of them. A contractor was finishing up a duplex being built to house two Royal Canadian Mount Police officers (Mounties) . Another contractor was preparing the pipe for the fuel oil ship, coming to discharge its once a year load into the local storage tanks. And then there were these two tourists, Deane and Norm, talking to everybody, meeting many, many people, making new friends of both locals and outside workers, and enjoying every minute of it. We were such a novelty as tourists that by the time we left, everyone knew "Deane and Norm". Our little hotel, with 13 rooms, really operated as a boarding house. Breakfast was cooked to order, the lunch was at 12:00 Noon, and supper was at 6:00 PM - eat what the cook prepared! Meals were very good though, cooked by local Inuit ladies. For the flavor of the far North, one supper featured Caribou stew (very tasty) and another featured the Arctic Char (delicious). Now, if you are ever in Naujat on a Friday evening, you must play "Radio Bingo". We had a lot of fun doing that. What is "Radio Bingo", you say? Well, the whole community plays Bingo, the local people and any contractors or visitors, by way of using the radios in each home and one in the hotel. The village has a local radio transmitter with which they can dial up a frequency to transmit on in a limited area, in this case the village. To do this, they select a frequency that has a poor received signal and simply broadcast on top of it. The frequency they used while we were there was one used by the BBC, so it could be selected with regular radios. So, at 8:00 PM on Friday evening every household in the village, and the hotel, tunes into the selected radio station, and the Bingo "Caller" broadcasts the Bingo numbers until someone wins. When someone has a Bingo, they race to call on the telephone to the Caller, a lady this time, and go over their number squares with her. If she accepts their called numbers, they win! The village makes money on this by selling Bingo cards which you get by going to the recreation center and paying $5 or $10. The money made by the village goes toward a new Community Center, to replace the one that burned down last Christmas Eve. The winners get big bucks, and the village makes a cut from it. It was through the "boarding house" atmosphere in the little hotel that we got acquainted with the people we played Radio Bingo with. There were about ten of us, from us tourists, to public health nurses, to pilots flying for the diamond exploration, to geologists and drillers working with them, to contractors working on various things, to the hotel manager, a tiny lady who was a bundle of energy. We had a ball!! Apparently there is a "Co-op" in many, if not all, of the Nunavut Inuit villages or towns. The Naujat Co-op runs a food / general store, the fuel oil delivery, water delivery, the hotel, sewer pumping, and maybe a few other services. In Naujat there is no water system, so a water truck makes daily 5-mile trips to the "Water Lake", and delivers to individual homes with water tanks. There is no sewer system, and no drain fields in the rocky shore, so a pump truck goes around to homes and pumps out holding tanks. All homes and the hotel use fuel oil for heating, so the fuel truck makes deliveries as needed to tanks at individual homes. Electricity is supplied by a large fuel oil driven motor-generator. Nothing can come in from outside by road, because there are no roads. The people to do all of these things are the local Inuit people, hired by the Co-op, so this provides jobs. When we said the village was "lively", part of the reason is that every family has at least one 4-wheel ATV. (There are not more than a half dozen cars or pickups, because there are no roads that go far). On these ATV's they buzz around the village like a bunch of busy bees, at speeds on gravel roads that one can only hope they don't run into each other or run over someone. Regardless of the manufacturer, the ATV's are called "Hondas". (One man patted his "Honda", and said it was a cousin to our Gold Wings.) Likewise, they all have snowmobiles for winter, and regardless of manufacturer, they call all of these "Skidoo's". (Skidoo is actually the trademark name of the Bombardier company, but they had Yamaha's and Polaris's - called Skidoo's also.) We walked the village from end to end, and then one of the village men, Lukey, offered to loan us his 4-wheel ATV so we could go farther. We had a good time exploring the roads that go out of the village. However, the longest road out of the village is only about 4-5 miles - that's it - no roads exist between far flung villages. (Does he look Cold?)
On the "Honda" above, we went to look for Caribou. However, whereas they had been close to the village a couple of days before, one of the helicopter pilots reported that the herd had moved away. So, we didn't get to see them. One of the symbols of the Inuit people is the "Inukshuk". This is a "man" made of rocks, and he appears on the Nunavut flag. The one on the top of the hill above the village is about 7-8 feet high.
The Inukshuk can mean various things. It might mean, "here is the trail", or "this is where I took a Caribou last year", or maybe "I will return to this place". Below is the Inukshuk that Norm and Deane built in Naujat. It's not very big and not very handsome, but it says "We had a great time in Naujat."
Flying back to Thompson, Manitoba the next day was sort of anti-climactic. The flight took about 6 hours including landing at a new place to us, Coral Harbor, on the island of Southampton, as well as Rankin Inlet, Arviat and Churchill which we passed through on the way to Repulse Bay. One thing of note was that all of the runways from Churchill north were gravel instead of asphalt or concrete we think of as normal. We thought gravel must be easier to maintain than concrete or asphalt in the very cold and snowy areas in the far north. All in all, a great trip. |
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