When you visit these remote northern latitudes, you notice it right away. Perhaps it’s the built-up static electricity of a cold climate. Or the added magnetism, with the North Pole much closer than usual. But way up here, hundreds of kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, there just seems to be more energy. Every time you step outside, everything kind of crackles.
And that electricity is definitely in the air on this sunny but cold day, as we load off the gangway and into Zodiac boats. Anticipation hangs heavy as we make our way through the shallows at the mouth of Coningham Bay, at Prince of Wales Island, Nunavut. Here, with tundra in all directions, the sight lines seem to stretch forever, and everyone searches the shoreline for the kings and queens of the Arctic.
Soon, they appear, at first just tufts of white across a dun-coloured horizon. One, two, three, we count. Then more, as many as a dozen. Big males, mothers and cubs. A safe distance away but seemingly close enough to touch.
“You only see this many polar bears together when there’s lots of food,” says Mark Mallory, a wildlife biologist and renowned ornithologist, who is driving this Zodiac today. As if on cue, his radio crackles, and soon we’re off to see another northern wonder. “We’ve got belugas, too!”
We are several days into the ultimate voyage for modern-day polar explorers. While many ships sail the High Arctic, completing a Northwest Passage remains special. Embarking on the small expedition ship Ocean Endeavour with in the port of Kugluktuk on the western edge of Nunavut on the Coronation Gulf, I’m set to sail more than 5,000 kilometres over 17 days, all the way to the coast of Greenland.
Adventure Canada’s small expedition ship, Ocean Endeavour.
Tim JohnsonThe Northwest Passage has long been a fabled route, and it figured heavily into the history of Canadian Arctic exploration. For centuries, European sailors, searching for an easier way to the riches of China and India, navigated north — and mostly found frustration.
Some of these trips ended in mutiny, while others, including the infamous Franklin expedition of 1845, found tragedy. The first successful voyage didn’t happen until 1903, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen took three years to navigate the full length of the Northwest Passage.
Today, for about a month every year between August and September, the ice melts enough to allow ships through. And while trips to Antarctica are growing in popularity, the allure of the Arctic remains distinct. In addition to the wildlife — you won’t find any polar bears or narwhals in the ultimate south — two other factors set the Far North apart: recent human history, and rocks.
On one of the first full days of the voyage, we land at an uninhabited area called Port Epworth. Some would look at this windswept place and see only desolation. But geologist Marc St-Onge, one of our guides and a visiting scholar at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, gets excited about it. Because of the stromatolites.
Once, this landscape of dwarf birch and alder and rhododendron was the floor of a prehistoric sea. And there, layers of primitive, single-cell organisms grew. The oldest ones date back 3.5 billion years. Now fossilized, they look like ancient coral when I admire them at my feet.
The ancient rockscape here inspired author Margaret Atwood to write a short story called “Stone Mattress.”
Tim JohnsonThink about what these have seen, not just the whole march of human history,” says St-Onge, noting that’s just a tiny fraction of their existence. These fossils mesmerized Margaret Atwood, too. The literary legend sails every year with Adventure Canada, and penned a short story called ,” where stromatolites play a starring role. (St-Onge as well — the geologist in the narrative is based on him.)
I walk across the tundra to chat with Susie Evyagotailak, one of our on-board Inuit cultural educators. Standing alone, she’s resplendent, with her sunburst fringe made from wolf fur. She points to a nearby place where she recently discovered the remains of a soapstone lamp. This was once a place of trade among Northern peoples, and Evyagotailak notes that a long-ago hunter, who was perhaps hauling a muskox or caribou, left it behind in his igloo. “Each one would have his own lamp, to keep warm,” she explains.
Northwest Passage voyages navigate in both directions — into it, and out — and we continue east. During a bright summer night, the ship passes relatively close the final resting places of the Franklin expedition’s H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror, discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Landing on a broad, sandy beach in Gjoa Haven (Uqsuqtuuq in Inuktitut), I make my way to the hamlet’s impressive museum.
The explorer Amundsen spent three winters and two summers here. Former mayor and longtime teacher Joanni Sallerina happens to be in the museum when I visit and interprets the artifacts for me. Some, he explains, were brought back all the way from Norway. “Amundsen had learned how to speak Inuktitut in Greenland, and he got a lot of local help,” says Sallerina. “People here showed him how to build an igloo and wear caribou and use a dog team.”
As the Ocean Endeavour continues north, the wind and cold stiffen, even in early September. Our excursions include sightings of polar bears, narwhals and glaciers, visits to historic RCMP posts, and walks on the world’s oldest rocks (yes, even older than the stromatolites). At the Bellot Strait, our captain is careful to enter at high tide.
A view from the Bellot Strait in Nunavut.
Dennis Minty / Adventure CanadaThis narrow waterway is the key to our Passage, cutting out hundreds of extra kilometres. It is a place of strong currents, a stretch of gunmetal grey between the Boothia Peninsula and Somerset Island. To our right is the northernmost point of the Americas. To our left, there’s nothing but islands and ice, all the way to the North Pole.
After snapping photos from the bow, I walk to the stern of the ship, joining a tight cluster of other guests, spiced rum in hand. There, author, geographer and guide James Raffan raises a toast as we pass Zenith Point, the absolute end of the North American mainland.
Inspired, one guest starts to sing the Stan Rogers classic named after this sea route. Enchanted, everyone else joins in: “Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage, to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.”
The quality of our voices is poor — this is no professional choir singing. But somehow, the majesty and vastness of this place elevate everything, coupled with the magnitude of the moment. Plus, that crackling Arctic energy. All of it propels us ever-forward, with many wonders still ahead.
Tim Johnson travelled as a guest of Adventure Canada, which did not review or approve this article.
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