Clink, clink, clink. Maureen Pokiak pours chunks of dried black whale meat into a bowl. As we savour the mouth-watering aroma of simmering caribou soup, she removes a layer of blubber from chunks of raw white muktuk (whale skin), with her curved ulu knife, and cuts the muktuk into cubes. She serves them to us, along with crispy dried, smoked fish and freshly baked bannock.
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| Maureen Pokiak uses an ulu to remove beluga whale skin from muktuk. Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. |
The chewy whale meat tastes like beef jerky. The muktuk has the texture of boiled egg white and a nutty flavour. The dried fish reminds us of smoky bacon and the caribou soup is so good we ask for seconds. We use the biscuit-like bannock to soak up every drop.
Maureen Pokiak's home is in Tuktoyaktuk, a community with a population of 870, mostly Inuvialuit people. Nicknamed Tuk, it nestles on the Arctic coast of Canada's Northwest Territories.
“We get 80 per cent of our food from the land and sea,” says James, Maureen's husband. Later, when we visit the local Northern store, we understand why: lettuce is $6 a head, melons $12 each and milk $14 for two litres.
Tuktoyaktuk attractions
Their daughter, Rebecca, brings us on a tour of Tuk. At St. John's Anglican Church, built in 1869, we see a bible, printed in Inuvialuktun, and a wolverine skin collection bag. We photograph a monument marking the start of the Trans-Canada Trail and dip our toes into the Arctic Ocean. To our surprise, it's warmer than Lake Ontario, which is much farther south.
The highlight is a tour of the community freezer with James. We descend a 27-step ladder to a tunnel in the permanently frozen ground (permafrost). Inside his family's compartment, James shows us frozen fish for his sled dogs. As his flashlight illuminates the ceiling and walls, ice crystals sparkle like diamonds.
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| Driftwood-strewn beach in front of Split Pingo. Pingo Canadian Landmark near Tuktoyaktuk. Northwest Territories. |
Our half-hour flight south over the 13,000-square-kilometre Mackenzie Delta to Inuvik reveals more evidence of permafrost — pingos. Inuvialuit use the soil-covered ice cones as landmarks. Tuk peninsula has the world's highest concentration of these permafrost pimples (about 1,400).
Inuvik is more accessible than Tuk, because it's the northern terminus of the 734-kilometre Dempster Highway. The Mackenzie Delta community feels more like an Arctic boomtown than the end of the road. New hotels are opening. Airlines offer flights to Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik and even more remote settlements.
Inuvik
Located 97 kilometres south of the Beaufort Sea, Inuvik (population 3,586) is a major transport and supply centre for oil and gas companies. Because homes sit on permafrost, residents use utiladors, elevated metal ducts, to carry water and sewage. If buried, the pipes would melt the permafrost, causing the ground to sag.
As we walk to the igloo-shaped church in Inuvik, crowds at the school divert us. Visitors and many residents are here, watching traditional Inuit skills competitions at the Circumpolar Northern Games. Parka-clad women wield ulus, skinning seals, muskrats and beavers. “Beaver is rich meat,” says one lady. “You don't get hungry for a long time after eating it.” Feathers fly as men compete in goose plucking.
There is good-natured banter about how women are faster than men in the skinning, tea-boiling and bannock-making competitions. The emphasis, however, is more on fun and sportsmanship than setting records.
"Younger generations don't need these skills to survive today," says one elderly lady. Instead, we find the young athletes in the gym, competing in one-foot high kicks, kneel jumps and other strength and endurance games. Afterwards, they snack on local fast foods: boiled muktuk chunks with HP sauce, dried fish and doughnuts.
Longest river in Canada
There are nine communities along the longest river in Canada. From Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie River flows 1,800 kilometres to the Arctic Ocean. The café au lait-coloured river, in places, is as wide as 20 highways between banks forested with aspen, spruce and fir.
A hilltop mission church marks Arctic Red River. Like most settlements, it also has a native name, Tsiigéhtchic. A car ferry bridges the Dempster Highway across the river in summer. In winter, there's an ice crossing. The 195 Gwich'in inhabitants survive by fishing, hunting and trapping. Along the river banks, we see tents and tepees where they dry and smoke fish.
Fort Good Hope
Fort Good Hope, a town on the east bank, has a population 585. Our jaws drop when we enter Our Lady of Good Hope Church. Yellow stars glow from an intense blue ceiling. Brilliant frescoes of angels, doves and flowers decorate the walls.
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| Jonas Kakfwi plays organ in the church at Fort Good Hope. NWT, Canada. |
“Missionaries built it from wood, in 1865,” says organist Jonas Kakfwi. “The colours come from fish oil and berries. No one can match them today.” Music resonates as Jonas presses the organ keys. “I'll sing you a Slavey hymn.” We don't understand the Dene dialect, but the melody and beautiful surroundings leave us with indelible memories of Jonas and the exquisite wooden church with its little cemetery of white crosses.
Norman Wells
Large man-made islands dot the river near Norman Wells. Oil pumps, on top, bob up and down like giant metallic feeding birds. Geologists drilled the first oil wells here in 1919.
During WWII, the US Army built the CANOL Pipeline to carry Norman Wells' crude to Alaska. After three years, they abandoned it. At the Norman Wells Historical Centre, signs, maps, vintage equipment and videos bring the project to life.
Today, black gold flows south to Edmonton for processing. The CANOL Heritage Trail, a challenging 355-kilometre hiking trail, follows the pipeline route to the Yukon border.
One of the joys of traveling in the Northwest Territories is the opportunity to meet the local people. At Fort Norman, a community of 500 Dene, at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Great Bear rivers, a villager invites us to her mother's wedding. The bride is 82-year-old Rosie Norwegian. Her long-time companion, Frank Yallee, is the groom.
Nahanni National Park
Rosie's family invites us to attend the evening drum dance and feast. Unfortunately, we have to leave. We have pre-booked flight-seeing tours of Nahanni National Park, which depart from Fort Simpson, upriver. The three-hour aerial tours of the UNESCO World Heritage Site offer spectacular views of Virginia Falls, canyon valleys, forests and the South Nahanni River.
In Fort Simpson (population 1,216), Steve Rowan from the Historical Society leads us on a walking tour of the town. Our first stop is Albert Faille's tiny cabin. For 40 years, the trapper and prospector unsuccessfully searched the Nahanni for gold.
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| Hilda Tsetso shows photo of Pope John Paul II at Fort Simpson in 1987. Northwest Territories. |
“I found $1,000 cash behind this cupboard, after he died, at 86, in 1973,” says Rowan. The money is now in the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. Everything else remains in the cabin — old beaded moccasins, snowshoes, a suit, his metal frame bed, a gold pan filled with rocks on a table, and coffee, food and pots in the cupboard.
On the Papal Grounds, a short walk away, a drum circle and tepee mark the location of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Fort Simpson in 1987. Residents still talk about the event, with joy and pride.
Inside the Visitor Centre, Hilda Tsetso shows us a photo of the pope greeting some of the 4,000 people, who journeyed to this island at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard Rivers, to see him. “People hunted and fished to feed the crowds. We listened to storytellers and watched drum dances.” She shows us the pope's carved moose antler and hide chair, given a place of honour among the handicraft and wildlife exhibits in the Centre.
Fort Providence
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| Dene wall-hanging with tufted moose hair flowers. Snowshoe Inn Craft Shop. Fort Providence, NWT. |
The diversity of Dene and Métis handicrafts astounds us at Fort Providence, a settlement of 800 people. In the Snowshoe Inn Craft Shop, we admire birch bark baskets decorated with porcupine quill flowers, beaded moccasins and wall hangings with 3-D flowers, crafted from dyed and tufted moose hair.
“Don't be surprised if you see bison grazing along the roadside,” says manager, Linda Croft. “They're from the 2,000-animal Mackenzie herd. The bulls like to scratch their backs against our windows.”
That night, we wake up at 2 a.m. to see a magnificent display of northern lights in a star-filled sky. Green lights curl like wisps of smoke and flow like translucent waterfalls across the celestial stage. It's a spectacular ending to our visit to Fort Providence.
Yellowknife
The bus trip from Fort Providence to Yellowknife takes four hours. With a population of 20,000, the Northwest Territories capital is much larger and more cosmopolitan than the communities along the Mackenzie.
We climb up The Rock to view the Bush Pilots' Monument. From here, we overlook Old Town's shacks and New Town's modern buildings.
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| Wildcat Café. Old Town Yellowknife. Northwest Territories, Canada. |
Prospectors, who built log cabins and set up tents after gold was discovered in the 1930s, gathered at the Wildcat Café, the first restaurant in Yellowknife. It's across the street from Back Bay, where early airlines like Wardair and Canadian Pacific originated with bush planes.
There's no muktuk or dried whale meat on the menu, but we see caribou and Arctic char. As we munch meaty caribou burgers, the roar of floatplanes, landing and departing on Great Slave Lake, remind us that Yellowknife, like Inuvik, is a boomtown. The gold mines have closed, but new diamond mines now lure international workers to the Canadian Northwest Territories.
TRAVEL INFORMATION
Northwest Territories Tourism: www.spectacularnwt.com