As I write this I'm at latitude 68° 21′ north, 62 miles from the Arctic Ocean and 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle. We're in Inuvik, in the North West Territories, and the sun hasn't set here since 23rd May. It's not due to set again until 19th July.
I'm surprised everyone here isn't as mad as a hatter by now, they haven't seen darkness for over 6 weeks.
Inuvik (pronounced inoovik) is a strange town. It was fabricated from scratch in the 1950s because the Canadian Government decided they needed a permanent communication centre in the Western Arctic. They looked at the existing Inuit town of Aklavik but decided it was too prone to flooding, so they built Inuvik instead, on the eastern bank of the Mackenzie River. It wasn't just a communication centre, it was an experiment in building a permanent town in the very north of the country, able to withstand the extremes of weather that this part of the world can throw at a community (temperatures can vary 80 degrees over the course of a year, from 30°C in the summer down to -50°C in the winter). Thus all the buildings are set on raised piles to avoid their foundations melting the permafrost, and utilities such as water and sewerage are piped between buildings in above-ground metal conduits called utilidors.
3500 people live here, a mixed bag of all races and religions (there are four Christian churches on the main road, and an Islamic mosque on one of the back roads - the muslims have it particularly tough come Ramadan, as they're not supposed to eat until the sun sets, and of course... the sun doesn't set here: therefore they're allowed to pretend it's Winnipeg Time for the duration of their month-long fast). There is the beginning of a tourist industry, with lots of emphasis on the local Inuit produce (carvings, clothes, etc.), but - as can be surmised from the number of large and well-featured hotels - there is a lot of business done here too. Northern Canada is rich in minerals and oil, so not only are there professional office-type people here, but also the labourers for the oil and mineral companies; indeed, the TV series Ice Road Truckers features a number of episodes with drivers heading up the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk (usually abbreviated to just Tuk).
One of my goals of this holiday was to get above the Arctic Circle. It's just one of those markers, like crossing the Equator (which we did last year), or going over the International Date Line. Flying over to Canada you actually cross the Arctic Circle, but I wanted to stand on the ground above it. Initially I was going to drive up the Dempster Highway, but the simple fact is that to get to the Arctic Circle that way would take a day's driving on a road that requires a lot of concentration. You also need somewhere to stay at the end of that day, and the Eagle Plains Motel, the only accomodation at all on that part of the Dempster Highway, never responded to my email. Plus then you'd have a day's drive back over the same difficult road to get back to civilisation. It seemed like a lot of work, and a chunk out of our holiday. To drive the Dempster Highway all the way from Dawson City to its end, which is here in Inuvik, would take two days each way, plus a day in Inuvik, a total of five days which I thought just too much.
And so I decided we'd fly from Dawson to Inuvik, stay here overnight, and fly back tomorrow. Cheating, perhaps, but expedient.
The alarm woke us just after 5 am, and we clung to each other for a while in disbelief, before forcing ourselves out of bed. The hotel restaurant wasn't open at that time, so we had cereal bars and coffee in our room, before heading out to Dawson City Airport the recommended two hours before our flight was due.
We were the first two people at the airport. Not just the first two passengers, the first two people. The Air North desk wasn't due to open for another 45 minutes after we'd got there. We felt a bit stupid really. Three quarters of an hour later an oldish guy with an enormous beer gut turned up behind the Air North desk, wished us good morning, and then started attacking his computer mouse with fervour. No one needs to click their mouse that much unless they're playing Minesweeper.
About an hour before the flight, people began to show up. They all seemed to know each other, which didn't surprise me; there can't be many tourists like Sandra and me taking that flight. A lot of the people turning up had laptop bags, or rugged, waterproofed hold-alls which implied overnight stays in rough conditions. Eventually the aeroplane showed up, a knackered looking Hawker Siddeley 748, and we were invited to board through gate 28 (I have no idea where gates 1-27 were, gate 28 was just a door in the side of the hut we were all in). It wasn't exactly Flying Wild Alaska, but it felt pretty close. As the flight had come in from somewhere else, a lot of the seats were already occupied so Sandra and I had to sit behind one another instead of next to each other. I was sitting next to a denim-clad guy wearing a baseball cap who fell asleep as we hurtled down the runway, remained asleep through one of the most turbulent flights I've ever known, and woke ten minutes before landing, whereupon he talked my ears off about the fast approaching landscape.
It was cold and windy when we stepped off the plane, but at least it wasn't snowing. We were above the Arctic Circle after all. We caught the complimentary ride to our hotel, the Capital Suites, unpacked our meagre belongings, and then set out into Inuvik.
It's hard to describe the town. It looks untidy in most places. Only about 20 percent of it looks picturesque. All of it is fascinating though. We walked along Mackenzie Road, the main street through the town, ticking off almost immediately the Catholic "Igloo Church", the most obvious landmark in town. I'm often wary and suspicious of new places, but soon found that people were smiling at us as they passed, saying hello, in a genuinely nice way. It helped set us at ease.
One of the main things I wanted to see though, was off the main street. We slipped down a side road and started walking back the way we had come. My Bradt Yukon guide book says, "... the pace is slower here and, because it's out of the way, the people are friendly. They have time to stop and talk with visitors who've ventured off the beaten track". That's the sort of thing that makes me think, "shyeah, right", but as we walked past one house a guy hailed us from his deck. We gave him a "hello" right back, so he shouted, "you guys aren't from round these parts?", and he came down and talked to us for a few minutes about where we were from, what he did in town, and even asked us back for coffee if we were passing later. We didn't have time to go back, but that invitation warmed me to the people of Inuvik.
Following the road round we came upon what I had been looking for. Almost a thousand miles away from here, as the crow flies, is the town of Peace River. I had been amazed, when visiting that town, by the size of the mighty Peace River itself, noting how it drained into another river at the end of its course. And that other river drains into the Mackenzie River, and that river flows past Inuvik and drains into the Arctic Ocean itself, just over 60 miles away. It was like the seeing the culmination of something I'd kicked off 5 years ago.
We then walked back into town, looking for something to eat. For some reason we settled on a place called Al Forno, the name of which is an Italian style meaning "baked in the oven". From the outside it looked like a dump, from the inside it looked like... a dump. There were no lights on inside, it looked closed. Then a little wizened guy appeared out of the shadows... "I keep de lights off to keep de bugs away" (he was right to do so, there are lots of mosquitoes here). We ordered two cheese burgers, and he went off to cook them. It was a weird, weird place, but the guy's burgers were great, on lovely toasted buns. We were eating them (the only two people eating in the joint), when a guy showed up and started talking to the proprietor. "Hi... I hear you got some work needs doing? Plastering, dry walling?" "Dat's right." "Only I just going out of jail..."
It was an eyebrow moment.
Who can judge? Anyone of us can fall on hard times. And the guy's burgers were good.
We finished up and left calmly, then went on to the Visitor Centre (we should have gone there first really, but the weather had been so good - coats off, t-shirts in the sunshine), and having finished there, we went back into town via the Greenhouse Project (trying to grow fresh veg year round for Arctic communities) to some of the local gift shops to stock up on some souvenirs.
We got Chinese take-out from The Roost and took it back to our hotel with a bottle of wine. It wasn't the best Chinese ever, but I'd eat that over KFC, who have a franchise here (no Golden Arches though, which must be a first).
I'm glad we came here. I'm doubly glad I hadn't driven two days up the Dempster Highway to get here, as I think it would have been a disappointment. But Inuvik is quirky, interesting enough for a day visit, and the people - who continually make these Canadian holidays just that bit more special - take it up another notch. And for icing on the cake, when we were walking back to the hotel with our take-away, a group of Inuvik drummers and dancers were entertaining the crowds on a small bandstand near our hotel. Brilliant.
Back to Dawson tomorrow, more Gold Rush exploring to do yet.
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