It begins in motion, this story, the journey underway, lurching over the tundra in an ancient yellow twelve-passenger bombardier.  One twenty-two foot, green, square stern, cedar and canvas Hudson Bay canoe lashed up-side-down on the top with nylon rope and another dragging along behind  on a komatik. A chilly, overcast August day two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle; the land of the lightless winters, the land of the nightless summers.
1972 it was. The year the sea ice didn’t melt. The year high summer was a Wednesday afternoon.

Me and Peeteeloo, Etunga and Jimmy Totalik and all our gear for a week heaped in the bombardier, rumbling out of Taloyuak, engine snorting, belching blue smoke, headed to Netsiksiuvik for seal.

Taloyoak, the northern most town on mainland Canada, sprawled over several rocky hills on the west side of the Boothia Isthmus.

The original inhabitants of Taloyoak country were the Netsilingmiut, the seal people. Well, that’s not really true. It was the Tunrit who first learned how to survive in this tough country. They were already here when the Netsilik arrived and taught them where the caribou crossed and how to fish the rivers.

The Tunrit were sea people who lived mostly on seal. They hunted with kayaks on the open water; walruses and whales too.  The Netsilik mostly hunted seal through the ice at their breathing holes. The Tunrit were a strong but timid people. They would apparently rather run than fight.

Then one time the Tunrit killed one of the Netsilik dogs. It was an accident they say. They ran away, scared of what the Netsilik might do. They all left, abandoned their villages, every one of them. Just ran away. So the Netsilik took over the country and hunted caribou the way the Tunrit had shown them.

The community began in 1948 when poor ice conditions forced the Hudson Bay Company to close its post at Fort Ross on Bellot Strait. Some Kinngamiut, Cape Dorset people, followed the Bay from Fort Ross south to the new post. The Netsilingmiut and Kinngamiut have been marrying one another ever since so they mostly call themselves the Taloyoamiut nowadays. Once the Hudson Bay Company arrived the RCMP and the Catholic and Anglican Missions soon followed; then the government, schools, and so went the neighborhood.

But, back to the story: we’re trucking on out of Taloyoak in the bombardier, past the last of the houses where an old man was savoring the morning.

MORNING PIPE

A keen eyed old man
face deep lined
weathered with the years
grey hair scraggly
from the night’s sleep
Seated on the wood steps
of his small house
legs out straight
smoking his morning pipe
wrapped warm in sunshine
Eyes on the far ridge tops
mind on young times
when the caribou came
trotting over the tundra
heads high and tails up
hooves clicking and clattering
blanketing the land
wandering north
over the rocky hills
wandering north
Young times
when meat was always juicy
fish plentiful and firm
with his morning pipe

excerpt from Netisiksiuvik: stories from the ice coast