My Working Vacation
August-September 2001
This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Robert Morris
Sitting cross-legged on a pebble beach high in the Arctic, shivering and eating frozen, raw Arctic char, I thought to myself, "I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be".
Gino, the Inuit elder responsible for us, had scooped water for the coffee from the edge of the lake and chopped the fish into four big pieces to eat while we waited for the water to boil. We emptied our bags and pockets of the chocolate, bagels and other snacks we had brought to share and passed the food around. As we crouched in the windbreak Gino had created with his Honda and a jacket, waiting for the little Coleman to heat the water, I had a few moments to reflect.
I work half-time, at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site in Steveston, BC, as an historic asset maintenance officer. The other three quarters of my working hours are spent teaching people how to build traditional pattern Inuit and Aleutian kayaks at my boat building shop on Granville Island in Vancouver. Recently I began to build kayaks in the style of the culture of the people of the Boothia Peninsula, the Netsilik.
While I was on holiday in Ottawa last year, I received a phone message. Would I be interested in assisting with the building of traditional kayaks in a community in Nunavut? My answer was short and to the point. "Yes!" I made sure that part of the holiday was dedicated to observing and drawing kayak frames at the Museum of Civilization (Ottawa), and the Canadian Canoe Museum (Peterborough).
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Photos by Robert Morris |
Netsiligmeot kayaks are very long (over 20'), and very slender (usually under 19"). Formerly, because it was only possible to get within killing range of swimming caribou, the kayak was a critical tool for survival. The introduction of the rifle around the turn of the century made it possible to hunt caribou on the land, and the kayak gradually fell out of use.
There are still people alive who remember kayaks and kayak building, but with each year that passes, fewer remain to pass on their knowledge. So in 1999, three elders in the community of Kugaaruk (formerly Pelly Bay), approached the senior administrative officer to help them develop a business based on building their traditional kayaks.
The elders wanted to develop a culturally based business where each visitor would have the opportunity to build their own traditional Netsiligmeot kayak with the assistance of an elder and youth pair.
One of the key concerns in the new territory of Nunavut is the survival and transmission of traditional knowledge. Elder-youth projects have a high priority.
The concept that has developed is of a ten day experience, with a week of boat building at a traditional site-a family fishing camp at the mouth of a river, with ancient stone fish weirs and tent rings-followed by a three day paddle back to town.
Plans call for an emphasis on cultural immersion with legends and songs in the evenings, in addition to learning the art of kayak building by day.
When the kayaks are completed, participants will launch for a three day tour back to the town. The finished kayaks will then be shipped to their builders' homes for them.
My associate Mark Reuten and I were hired for phase one of the project and flew to Kugaaruk in September 2001, where we spent two weeks building two boats with the three elders - Jose, Gino, and Otto - and three youth - Ooliak, Jeffery, and Rachel.
Our shop was a room in the business centre. The floor was flat and it was warm, but our tools were restricted to the hand tools-all that will be available to us this year when we are out on the land.
The object of building the first two kayaks was to establish agreement on details of the boats we will ultimately build with visitors. We needed to share our understanding of the construction process and to make our expectations of each other clear.
While Mark and I have built well over a hundred traditional skin-on-frame kayaks, our area of expertise is teaching boat building to southerners. The elders are the Netsiligmeot kayak building experts so they will set the pace and direct the tasks. Our role will be to facilitate.
The first phase of the project was fun and the days lasted well into the evening as we learned each others' methods and crossed the linguistic divide.
Mark and I had been determined from the beginning to learn and use the Inuit terms for the parts of the boats and to use the language during construction. This was a lot of fun, and even now we catch ourselves saying tikpik instead of rib or uhuruk instead of bow stem. Using Inuit terms was a real way of demonstrating our respect for the elders, their knowledge and skills.
One day Josie's daughter brought lunch for him. With a grin he handed me a piece of meat, saying "Netsik!"-seal. I took a tentative bite, and discovered it to be very tasty. So are arctic char, caribou and musk-ox.
We took only two days off during the two weeks we were in Kugaaruk. The first day, Otto took us to his fishing site. This was about two hours out of town. We traveled to the end of the road that is being built to the DEW line base, then set out across the tundra to the camp at the river's edge. The camp was a white canvas wall tent pitched at at a bend in the river where stones had been arranged in the water to form a series of walled pools. With an eerie sense of déjà vu I realized that I recognized the site. I had seen it in a National Film Board documentary.
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©Robert Morris runs the Brewery Creek Small Boat Shop on Granville Island. He can be reached at 604-618-7546 or brewerycreek@ hotmail.com.
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We had tea and bannock and Otto's two grandsons fooled around with their kattivak (two pronged fish spears) while we made a cache of the tent and equipment. The polar bear skin that had lined the tent bottom was folded fur side out, and placed on the ground. The tarp was folded and placed on top of that. The tent was folded and placed on top of the tarp and the coleman stove and two by four tent poles were placed to hold everything down for the winter.
Our second day off was the next to last day in Kugaaruk. We were invited to go hunting tuttu (caribou) with the elders. Several hours out onto the land Mark and I began to run low on fuel. After a conference, Gino was picked to shepherd us back to the road, where we could make our own way into town safely.
We picked our way along the tops of eskers, crossed steep little valleys and skirted small lakes, following Gino's lead. The colours and light were unlike anything I encounter in southern Canada. The landscape was an odd mixture of desolate and fertile depending on where I focused my gaze. Areas of raw rock coloured by lichen were spaced with areas of moss, some of it deep and soft, and some thin, barely covering the stones and boulders below.
At the edge of one small lake, Gino signalled our halt for coffee. He unwrapped a frozen char from his jacket, set up the windbreak and began to prime the coleman.
By the time the coffee had boiled up and been poured into cups, the wind had dropped and the sun had come out. I could feel the rush of energy from the fish warming my body and the sun warming the back of my neck. The only sounds were the wind, the water and three contented people sipping coffee from mugs. Life seldom gets better. I'll be returning.
Ed. Note: Robert returned to the far north for Phase Two this summer, Jul 23-Aug 9.