NUNAVUT — WHAT TO SEE AND DO IN EAST ARCTIC CANADA

Story and photos by Barb & Ron Kroll

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With its menthol-blue icebergs, endless tundra, glacier-fed rivers and unfenced wildlife, Nunavut (pronounced Noo-na-voot) lures tourists with the Arctic's unspoiled natural beauty.

About 45 per cent of this territory is on Canada's mainland. The remainder is an archipelago of hundreds of islands. The distance between Nunavut's eastern and western boundaries is nearly 1,500 miles, about the same as the distance between London and Istanbul.

Can you imagine a territory that's 5½ times the size of Germany with only one 14-mile road? Because driving tours aren't feasible, the alternatives include cruising, chartered flights, trekking, all-terrain vehicles, canoeing and sea kayaking tours in summer, and cross-country skiing, dog sled or snowmobile tours in winter and spring. Nunavut Tourism lists dozens of tour operators who offer group and individual trips using or combining these options.

Inuit sculpture

A highlight of any trip to Nunavut is meeting the Inuit people. Warmly welcoming visitors, they proudly introduce them to their culture. It's fascinating to see how the Inuit combine their traditional lifestyle with modern amenities. A carver creates a polar bear sculpture from stone, while listening to a Walkman. A mother carries her infant in an amautik, a hooded parka with a back pouch, while buying groceries with a debit card.

Baby rides in an amautik. Nunavut.

Two-thirds of Nunavut's families speak the Inuit language, Inuktitut, at home. Most people speak English as well. Visitors will see signs in both languages.

There are 27 communities in Nunavut. Grise Fiord or Aujuittuq — 'the place that never thaws out' is the most northerly. Located on the south coast of Ellesmere Island, Grise Fiord has a population of 148.

Baffin Island

Lake Harbour, or Kimmirut in Inuktitut, has a population of 400. The village nestles into Baffin Island's southern shore. Because tourists are rare, villagers and their laughing, boisterous children, come out to greet them. Town sights are limited — the Anglican Church, built in 1909, an old cemetery, blossoming with wildflowers and the Community Centre.

For groups, tour operators will arrange a show of traditional Arctic games in the modern gymnasium. Most competitions are feats of strength and endurance, such as high-kicking a piece of foam, strung from a pole, which is raised progressively higher.

Kimmirut, like many Nunavut communities, is an artists' colony. When the weather is mild, carvers and artists often work outside their homes. Visitors can purchase exquisite stone sculptures, jewellery, dolls and other handicrafts directly from their creators, or from the large selection in the town's two stores.

Inuit sculptor with stone carvings. Lake Harbour, Nunavut.

Cultural trips, with Inuit guides, focus on Inuit art and the home communities of noted artists. Others include cultural evenings with traditional music, dances, throat-singing, elders' stories and foods like arctic char and caribou stew.

National parks

Nunavut boasts four national parks (Auyuittuq, Sirmilik, Quttinirpaaq and Ukkusiksalik), several territorial parks and 20 existing and proposed migratory bird sanctuaries, game sanctuaries and national wildlife areas.

Caribou outnumber Nunavut's 31,100 residents more than 25 to 1. The best way to see them, as well as musk oxen, grizzly bears, wolves, foxes, moose, hares and other land mammals, is on special naturalist tours, led by biologists who understand the animals' behaviour. Visitors can select from tours based in lodges, cabins, local homes, tents or even igloos, in winter and spring.

Bird watching

Marine mammals such as narwhals, orcas, bowhead and beluga whales, seals, polar bears and walruses are best seen on guided boat tours. Walrus Island, for example, is a rocky outcrop at the western mouth of Hudson Bay. Its gently sloping edges are worn smooth from the hundreds of walruses who’ve hauled their massive bodies up on shore to bask in the sun. On a good day, you'll see more than 200 snuggled together, to keep warm.

The sheer magnitude of bird life in Nunavut is astounding. Good times for birding are mid-May through August. Outfitters offer special bird watching trips. Participants can see sandhill cranes performing courtship displays, peregrine falcons defending their territories with aerial dogfights and massive seabird colonies feeding in migratory bird sanctuaries like those at Prince Leopold and Bylot Island.

Cruises also offer bird watching at destinations like Digges Island, at the eastern entrance to Hudson Bay. More than 800,000 thick-billed murres nest on the island's 935-foot-high cliffs.

Photography tours

From a distance, most of the Arctic tundra looks devoid of life. Up close, however, it abounds with Lilliputian gardens. There are more than 200 species of flowering plants in the Baffin region alone. Naturalists point out unique species, like the silky white blossoms of Arctic cotton, brilliant pinky-purple clumps of fireweed and the parabolic-shaped flowers of yellow Arctic poppies.

Nunavut’s diverse scenery features glaciers, waterfalls, sheer rock faces, mountains and dramatic fjords. Icebergs range from ship-size floating monoliths to tiny bergy bits, in colours varying from snow-white to sky-blue.

Woman observes Hudson Strait. Nunavut.

Special photography tours visit the most scenic locations. Summer visitors enjoy 24-hour daylight, while winter travellers may encounter the multicoloured, constantly changing show of northern lights.

Dog sledding tours

Nunavut exudes an overwhelming sense of history. In the 1830s, the first onshore whaling stations were established on the coast of Baffin Island. Markets in Europe and America used oil, rendered from whale blubber, for lighting and lubrication, and the plastic-like baleen strips from whales' mouths for ladies' corsets and furniture.

Tour operators lead dog-team trips to the abandoned Kivitoo whaling station, a historical site, 40 miles from Broughton Island.

Northwest Passage cruises

Cruises through the Northwest Passage (which links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans) and special chartered flight excursions, follow the footsteps of Sir John Franklin and Sir Robert McClure. Franklin's ill-fated 1845-47 expedition spent the first of three winters trapped in ice on Beechy Island. Here, visitors can view the Franklin Memorial and the graves of three crew members.

Amundsen's historic 1903-06 voyage was the first successful transit of the passage from east to west. In the harbour near Cambridge Bay, on Victoria Island, visitors can see the weathered wreck of his three-masted schooner, Maud.

Iqaluit

Formerly named Frobisher Bay, Iqaluit can easily be covered on foot. The Government of Nunavut Building has an excellent display of northern art. Visitors shouldn’t miss the life-size dioramas of Arctic life, displays of hide scrapers, harpoons and other tools, the husky dog exhibit or the beautiful marble drum dancer sculpture in the Baffin Regional Visitors Centre.

Although you'll find more night life here than in other Nunavut communities, it's mainly limited to movies at the Astro Hill Theatre, drinks in a hotel lounge, dinner in a few restaurants, dancing at the Royal Canadian Legion and Friday-night bingo games. For visitors, the most popular entertainment is shopping for arts and crafts in galleries and shops.

Adventure vacations

Visitors can sea kayak amidst the icebergs off Baffin Island, paddling up close to ducks and seals. They can tackle white water and smooth-flowing currents by canoe, while watching grizzlies and wolverines on the riverbanks and golden eagles and hawks soaring above.

Hiking in Nunavut.

Fishing for trophy-size lake trout, spirited arctic grayling and tasty arctic char is exciting year-round. In summer, boats and floatplanes transport fishermen to virtually untouched rivers near outpost camps. Dog teams and snowmobiles enable anglers to ice fish from April to June.

Outfitters offer a variety of adventures from mountain climbing (especially in Auyuittuq National Park) to hiking and cross-country skiing, by herds of caribou and flocks of migrating birds. Dog- or snowmobile-pulled sled tours bring visitors to the ice floe edge to see abundant wildlife.

On Inuit culture trips, participants sleep on caribou skins in igloos and observe seal hunting and meat drying. Even golfing is an adventure in Nunavut on Canada's most northerly 18-hole tundra course in Gjoa Haven. For daring and experienced divers, a few outfitters offer diving in gin-clear, but frigid waters, to view marine life and shipwrecks.

North Pole expedition

From Resolute, on the south coast of Cornwallis Island, explorers can join expeditions to the North Pole. Less intrepid visitors can tour the weather station and Polar Continental Shelf Project research camp, based here.

Because of Nunavut's remoteness and changeable climate, it's essential to bring warm clothing, even in summer. Most tour operators offer all-inclusive trips, including meals, transportation, shelter, guide services and suitably warm gear — either modern expeditionary clothing or caribou-skin parkas.

In this age of traffic jams and concrete jungles, it's reassuring to know that there are still wild and remote places where nature reigns supreme.

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TRAVEL INFORMATION

Nunavut Tourism: www.NunavutTourism.com

More things to see and do in Nunavut:

Arctic Cruise – Adventure Canada Expedition to Nunavut and Greenland

Nunavut - Birding, Wildlife and Whale Watching

Lonely Planet Greenland and Arctic