Authors: Melanie McGrath
The high winds break open the ice and send the liberated sea into whirling whitecaps. One feature of the ice around Ellesmere is its mobility. The pack ice rarely stabilises before February. Before then it is in constant motion, floes smashing together, rafting one upon the other, grinding and jamming together.
Ellesmere Island had been claimed for Canada, near to where Paddy Aqiatusuk and the other Inuit were brought to shore, by the captain of the
Arctic
, J. E. Bernier, only fifty years previously. Early human populations used Ellesmere as a bridge into Greenland, coming up from the south and west, crossing on to Ellesmere from across the Cardigan Strait in the west and up past Coburg Island in the east. They travelled principally on the ice foot, a belt of ice formed between the high and low water marks of the tides. The ice on the foot is stable and relatively smooth. Later, when polar explorers came to Ellesmere Island, they named this characteristic feature “The Highway to the Pole.” A thousand years ago or more, Thule settled there for a while, but moved south when the Little Ice Age of the fifteenth century blew in. A tiny group of survivors persisted in the extreme northwest of Greenland and it was these the Baffin Islanders came across in the mid-nineteenth century. Some years later, the American explorer, Robert E. Peary, stumbled on them, named them the Polar Eskimo and hired a few as guides on his expeditions to the North Pole.
Paddy Aqiatusuk knew none ofthis.ifo first thought was to presume
there had been some mistake. The
qalunaat
had brought them to the wrong place. He decided to confront the detachment policemen. Until then, the priority had to be to establish the tents. The wind was icy.
The men hauled the group's possessions from where the
d'lber-vtile's
cargo barge had dumped them, tethering their dogs, and rolling out their canvas while the women and children hastily unravelled the guy ropes.
An RCMP Peterhead appeared from the gloom and headed towards them. An Inuk man leaped out into shallows and made fast the boat, followed by two policemen, one huge and massy, the other thin and reedy, and the trio made their way to the shore. The large policeman scanned the group setting up camp on the beach.
“Which one of you is Fatty?” the big fellow asked in Inuktitut.
Paddy Aqiatusuk bristled. He sensed Ross Gibson had been talking about him to this new fellow. Now neither could be trusted.
“Are you the boss?” The policeman introduced himself as Corporal Glenn Sargent and the white man beside him as Constable Clay Fryer. The Inuit special constable's name was Areak. Sargent was a well-built, powerfully handsome man, the kind women pick out in a crowd. He had cut his teeth on the
St. Roch.
After that he had been posted to the police detachment at Herschel Island on the northern edge of the Yukon and had followed this with a stint at Spence Bay before finding himself commanding the RCMP's most northerly detachment at Craig Harbour.
Aqiatusuk looked about him. “I think you have brought us to the wrong place,” he said.
Glenn Sargent sensed better than anyone how tough life on Ellesmere was likely to be for the newcomers. He found it hard enough himself, and his living conditions were very different from those of the newcomers. The
qalunaat
policemen were barracked in solid, insulated detachment buildings warmed by coal-burning stoves. They had constant and plentiful supplies of food and ammunition
and access to radio, boats and other equipment. “G” Division police enjoyed several weeks' paid leave every year along with hardship and isolation pay. They could keep in touch with colleagues and family over the radio. Each posting was for two years only, after which they had the option to transfer out to another detachment and at the end of it all, a Mountie knew he would pick up a pretty good pension.
Sargent knew that if Paddy Aqiatusuk and his family were to survive, they would have to be successful at hunting the marine mammals living in Ellesmere's waters. This would be no simple matter. Wildlife studies have now shown that groups of walrus regularly overwinter in the polynya at the western entrance to Jones Sound and there are narwhal in the area of the North Water. In the autumn belugas swim from Lancaster Sound into Jones Sound along the coast of Ellesmere before crossing over to Greenland, but this was not known in 1953. The staple food of the new migrants, Sargent thought, would have to be the ringed seal which gathered around fast ice along the outer coast and in the sounds, bays and inlets. Sargent knew there would be no time to lose. Winter came on fast and early and the new arrivals had no store of meat to see them through. He would have to take them out hunting in the Peterhead the moment they had settled. After that, he would follow orders to move them forty miles away, to a spot on the Lindstrom Peninsula staked out by Henry Larsen, near enough for them to be able to make it back to the detachment in an emergency or to trade fox pelts but not so near that they would be able to drop in on the detachment any time they wanted something. There on Lindstrom they would have to stay and meet their fate, whatever that might be.
Twilight hung off the cloud and the day seeped gradually into the night. The temperature fell to freezing, the winds began to fluster the tents and the cold slid under the ropes and came creeping across the mattresses lying on the shale. Everyone began to feel very hungry. Sargent had promised the campers traditional stone stoves
or
qulliqs
but the discharged cargo still lay under tarpaulins on the beach beside the detachment. Anukudluk, from Pond Inlet, had a primus stove but no one had any matches with which to light it. For tonight they would just have to eat whatever Sargent had given them. They unpacked flour, sugar, lard and settled on hardtack biscuits and a couple of tins of sardines and ate their meagre first meal on Ellesmere Island in turns, passing Anukudluk's torch between the tents. Exhausted, Aqiatusuk and his family lay together in the fog of their exhalations and told each other stories and as the night deepened they gradually drifted into unconsciousness.
Paddy Aqiatusuk woke the next day to the hum of the Peterhead. The mattress he had been lying on had sucked up water during the night, his back and kidneys throbbed and his gallstones were troubling him. The men pulled on their
kamiks
, went outside and stumbled over shale towards the boat. Greyish clouds slumped across the sound and spilled on to the beach, obscuring the view of the detachment. Sargent wanted some of the men to help unload the supplies the
d'Iberville
had dropped off on her first pass. The crates would need to be checked off against the bill of lading and loaded into the detachment store before the weather got to them. lames Cantley had ordered the year's supplies for the High Arctic in Ottawa in May, but until Sargent unpacked them and checked them off it would not be clear exactly what and how much had been sent. After that, they would all go out hunting.
Having been assured that the Department would supply whatever they would need in the north, the Inuit had left most of their gear at camp in Inukjuak, for the benefit of their relatives, and Sargent was shocked to discover some serious shortages. Some had brought their
kayaks
, presumably because no one had told them that the ice conditions up in the High Arctic were too dangerous for kayaking, but no one had brought an
umiak
or a whaleboat, which would have been more useful. Many of the hunters did have their rifles with them, but for the most part these were ancient, lowcalibre
.22s and their bullets would be almost useless against walrus and polar bear. Sargent hoped that Cantley had been generous with his order of supplies.
His hopes were dashed the moment the men cracked open the crates. There appeared to be no duck for mending the tents, nor any first aid supplies, rifles, oil lamps, fish hooks, soapstone or snow-knives. The three hundred caribou skins promised on the bill of lading had been reduced to a few dozen buffalo pelts. Some of the supplies were completely inappropriate. There were dozens of men's overalls in sizes far too large for any Inuk, boys' fingerless wool mittens that were an invitation to frostbite and batteries for pieces of equipment the Inuit did not possess. Sargent radioed through to the C.
D. Howe
and the
d'Iberville
to establish that the missing cargo had not been loaded on to the wrong ship in error, but both vessels reported an empty hold. In Resolute Bay, Ross Gibson was noting down similar anomalies. Either the correct cargo had not been loaded while the C.
D. Howe
and the
d'Iberville
were in port at Quebec or it had been mistakenly offloaded somewhere else en route, or, worse than either of these, Cantley had not ordered it.
There was nothing to be done for now. The new arrivals needed to get out and hunt. It was already well into September and the new camp had no meat and none stored for the winter cache. For the next six weeks, until the light gave out and the dark period came upon them, the men would have to go out hunting every day to stand a chance of gathering sufficient food for the winter. While they remained near the detachment Sargent would take them out in the Peterhead. Once they moved out to the Lindstrom Peninsula, they would be on their own. A party set off the next day before light with Sargent and Areak. Fryer stayed behind sorting the supplies. The women and children watched the Peterhead disappear over the horizon, then gathered their bags and began to walk towards the cliffs in search of grass, willow twigs and a source of fresh water. For several hours they scrambled over the moraine, clambered along the
rocks, until they finally reached the cliffhead around midday. From there a series of tremendous, barren peaks stood together like teeth and between them were valleys filled with greenish-grey glaciers, heavy with debris. A few crows observed the group's progress, their presence indicating that somewhere, in a sheltered inlet or on a south-facing plateau, the women would find lemmings or Arctic hare or at least a few small birds, but none was visible. They pressed on along the cliff, eyes set on the boulders and gullies until they came upon a rock basin and there, at its lowest point, where water and blown soil had accumulated, were tufts of wild heather and the spore of Arctic hare. The air felt as dry as old leather and it had a peculiar empty chill. They looked out for any sign which might lead them to a water source but there were none of the patchwork stains and rock moulds which usually indicated the presence of a summer run-off. The only source of fresh water appeared to be from the green-grey glaciers or from the stone-ridden bergy bits which had collected in turquoise piles along the shore. Ungava was full of lakes and rivers, but here there were none. They returned to the camp full of foreboding.
The men arrived later, in a more upbeat mood. Sargent had taken them out beyond Jakeman Glacier to the east of the detachment and there they had shot three fat walrus and seen plenty more. The coast was very ice-bound, but there appeared to be seal about too. While the men flensed and butchered the animals, took their heads and lay them facing the sea, pulled out the stomach contents and gave the gristle to the dogs, the women cleaned the entrails to bury under rocks for winter. Tonight, they would set up their
qulliqs
and by the deep-orange light that walrus blubber gives they would boil up blood soup and make a stew. The next day, when the walrus spirits had left their heads, and they were safe to touch, Paddy Aqia-tusuk would pull out the tusks and begin to carve in walrus ivory.
That night it was so cold in the tent that Aqiatusuk dreamed frozen dreams. By the morning, though, the temperature had clambered above freezing and the group was feeling more cheerful than
they had been since leaving Inukjuak. Sargent decided that the best use of the camp's time would be to pass the next few days unloading and checking the stores. After that he would take the hunters out for caribou before moving them to the permanent campsite on the Lindstrom Peninsula.
The lack of caribou skins in Cantley's supplies was particularly worrying. Buffalo hides did provide some insulation, though not as much as caribou, but they were heavy. Once the snow arrived, they would have to be removed lest they collapse the tents. Besides that, the black skins cut out the light inside the tents and the women would be forced to do their work sitting on the shale outside. This would prove particularly difficult for Anna Nungaq, stepdaughter of Paddy Aqiatusuk, who had been crippled by polio at the age of two, was largely immobile, and found it hard to keep herself warm. She would have to spend her days in the darkness inside the tents and, when winter arrived, the other women would have to join her. The cold would be too savage to remain outdoors. They would need lanterns, but there were none among the cargo. The caribou skins were also urgently required for clothing because buffalo hide was too inflexible to wear. Their supplies of winter clothing were perilously short. The previous summer the Inuit boats had all been hired out to scientists up in Inukjuak and the Inuit had not been able to find a boat to take them down to Richmond Gulf, near Kuu-jjuarapik, to hunt the caribou there. For a winter such as the one they were facing on Ellesmere, each hunter would require a new set of caribou clothes, each of which used up six caribou skins, the children would have to be kitted out in caribou undergarments and every family would need new caribou sleeping bags. In all, the camp would require at least 150 skins.
Sargent contacted lames Cantley in Ottawa, but the reply was not encouraging. Cantley had been let down by his supplier somewhere in western Canada. He said he would endeavour to find some more skins and have them airlifted to Craig Harbour before the winter was out but he could not guarantee how many or when they
would arrive. As for the rest, he did not really see there was a problem. The Inuit had been moved to Grise Fiord to enable them to lead traditional lives. So far as Cantley was concerned, lanterns, soap, washtubs and most of the other things Sargent said were missing were really just luxuries and he had judged that the Inuit could do without them.