Authors: Melanie McGrath
T
HE YEAR PASSED
and, at the end of the following July, Josephie, Rynee, Martha and Mary Flaherty found themselves sitting in the C.
D. Howe's
cargo barge among their few possessions. The couple's first son, Peter, born the previous winter, rested in Rynee's
amiut.
Behind them lay the Ungava tundra, lush with purple saxifrage and willow and clouded with whining mosquitoes. Early sun had made the air balmy, the waters of the bay were soft, swollen and grey, and clouds were beginning to gather. The sky buzzed with the cries of ducks and gulls and loons. Out on the open water, in the direction the Flahertys were headed, there was a light mist the colour of bone. In a few hours, that world would be gone for ever. On Ellesmere Island, their lives would be shaped by rock and ice, and they would look back on this last, busy summer with its cawing birds and blankets of mosquitoes with a terrible longing.
They knew now that Paddy Aqiatusuk was dead. Corporal Decker had approached Josephie with the news while he had been loading the barge at the quayside in Inukjuak. Josephie had stopped loading for a moment or two and then carried on with his task. It felt too late to change his plans. Something had been set in motion, which Josephie had no means to prevent. Perhaps he was afraid of a confrontation with the police if he changed his mind. Perhaps, he reasoned, with Aqiatusuk gone, Mary and the rest of the family would need his help more urgently than ever.
The Flahertys were one of four families moving north from Inukjuak that year. Levi Nungak, Johnnie Echalook, Mawa Iqaluk and their families were heading to Resolute Bay to be with relatives who had moved there in 1953 under the supervision of Ross Gibson. The C.
D. Howe
planned to pick up Joseph Idlout, his wife Kidlah and their extended family in Pond Inlet and take them up to Resolute Bay and there was the usual sorry cargo of consumptives and others being transferred to southern hospitals; but Josephie, Rynee and their children were the only family destined for Grise Fiord.
The ship soon passed the Belcher Islands, the largest of which had been renamed Flaherty Island after Robert Flaherty's expedition there. Now that Josephie Flaherty and his family were leaving the Ungava Peninsula, this rocky little island, with its blue cliffs and gravel beaches, would be the last physical reminder of Robert Flaherty's time there. By the end of the second day they were in Churchill, Manitoba. Camped on the empty side of the river, the Flahertys unrolled their sleeping skins and lit a willow fire to make some tea. During their twelve-year tenure at the Radiosonde hut they had had no need for camping equipment and most of what little they owned was old and worn or borrowed. Their tent was made from oddments of canvas patched here and there with duck and pieces of sealskin. It had served as their home during the summer months and was now in desperate need of replacing. They had no lantern or torch or primus stove. Clothes were a problem too. The girls possessed few warm caribou-skin clothes and they were short of
kamiks.
The baby, Peter, had no winter clothes at all. For twelve years Josephie had only ever hunted to supplement the family's diet of trade goods, and he had very little hunting gear. His .22 rifle regularly jammed and he was short of knives, traps and nets. The family did not own a
kayak
or an
umiak
, neither did they have a
komatik
or a dog team. But none of this concerned them because the police had assured them that once they reached Grise Fiord they would be provided with whatever they needed to survive on the land up there.
While medical examinations were being conducted on ship, the
Flahertys waited in camp. The family had been issued rations on board the C.
D. Howe
and a local had arrived sometime later with fresh whale meat. They had been at camp a couple of days when a policeman and a doctor arrived, asking to see Mary. During the inspection at Inukjuak, a nurse had noticed yellow spots in the little girl's eyes, one of the signs of the first onset of tuberculosis, and the doctor now wanted to take a closer look. An interpreter was summoned to explain the situation to the Flahertys. The news was bad. The yellow spots had got worse and the doctor felt he had no choice but to sign papers to have the two-year-old taken from her family and flown south for immediate treatment. Another, older girl, Dora Iqaluk, and her little sister, Mary, who were also staying in the same camp, had the same symptoms. Dora would be assigned to accompany the two younger girls. How long any of them would have to remain in the south it was impossible to say. Everything depended on how far the tuberculosis had progressed and how each child responded to treatment. Since TB was highly infectious, all three girls would have to be taken at once to the hospital at Churchill and isolated. The translator advised the Flahertys that they should say their goodbyes.
Josephie and Rynee Flaherty reeled at the news. They were in no doubt about what it actually meant. They had heard the stories and were prepared to believe them. Their daughter would be taken to some huge building full of sickness, then she would be stripped of her caribou-skin clothes, bathed and disinfected. From there she would be placed in an isolation ward and forbidden to speak Inukti-tut. She might also be tied to the bed to prevent her from wandering off and spreading infection and to make it easier for the doctors to administer the great many very painful injections the treatment prescribed. For the duration of her stay in the south, the likelihood was that no one would tell her parents where she was or whether she was dead or alive. If they were lucky, she would be sent back to them months or years from now, dressed in a skimpy cotton outfit, bewildered
and cold and unable to speak her parents' language. Otherwise, these few moments might be their last together as a family.
There was nothing Rynee and Josephie could do to stop their daughter's being taken away. If they resisted, the police would take her anyway and so they said their goodbyes and a frightened and tearful Mary Flaherty was removed from the camp with Dora and Mary Iqaluk and taken to the tiny hospital in Churchill. From there the girls were transferred on to a noisy cargo plane and sent south. Many years later, Dora recalled the journey. In all the rush, Mary's bottle had been left behind and she became so hungry during the flight she tried to eat a doll made from rabbit fur. The three girls were taken to a sanatorium which looked like a prison. The girls found it terrifying. Soon after their arrival, Mary was separated from the two sisters and put in a ward staffed by nurses who did not speak Inuktitut. One time Dora managed to sneak away from her own ward, she found Mary tied to the bed, crying. For the next three years Mary Flaherty neither saw nor had any news from or about her parents. She became
aattimajuq
, one who is separated from her family, cut adrift. According to Inuit custom she would not be talked about openly. Until she came back to them she would be a living ghost, at once a presence and an absence too painful to be acknowledged.
The C.
D. Howe
left Churchill and sailed on round Salisbury and Nottingham islands and out across the Hudson Strait. The strait was well known for producing rough weather, particularly during the August storm season and sure enough near Resolution Island, a fierce wind whipped up the swell and pretty soon they found themselves surrounded by huge slabs of churning pack ice. A half-dozen crew rushed down to the Inuit quarters to distribute lifejackets and, not long after, the ship began to lurch and roll alarmingly, clipping ice floes on either side. The blasting wind swept her up on to the crest of each wave of white water, then dashed her back down to the foot of the swell. Hail began drumming against the ship's hull,
while up on deck the wind ripped the tie-downs from the tarpaulins, which began billowing and humming in the wind like rogue sails. The sound set off the sled dogs, who howled and scrabbled wild-eyed at the doors of their crates. Suddenly the ship seemed to come alive. Guns, fish hooks, stone lamps and sewing gear scurried across the floor. Fire extinguishers rattled in their clasps, doors swung and crashed shut. Water flowed out of some broken tank or tap and tore along the linoleum. In the Inuit quarters men, women and children threw up where they sat, unable to stand let alone make it to the washrooms. Everyone was terrified. They knew that if they were swept to sea, within two or three minutes in a high swell in Arctic waters they would all be dead. Rynee Flaherty clung to her bunk with Martha in her arms and little Peter tucked in her
amiut
, while Josephie tried to gather their possessions. There was no prospect of sleep. This was Torngak, the evil spirit who played havoc with those who broke taboos and he would not stop until he was done with them. They had to sit and pray and hope they would get through it.
After what seemed like days but was probably hours, the storm fell away, leaving them flattened and edgy. No one spoke. People fell, exhausted, on to their bunks. The C.
D. Howe
proceeded north in still waters towards Baffin Bay. A few hours later they found themselves above the 65th parallel. An empty cold filled the air. They were moving through an ethereal blue iceberg forest. Red Northern Lights shot across the sky. Once again they crossed the Arctic Circle. For the next day or so nothing seemed to move on the horizon. At the 70th parallel, where the West Greenland Current gave out, broken floes and bergy bits appeared in open water. Five degrees farther north the High Arctic began. From here the great polar desert rolled away a thousand miles north to the tip of Ellesmere Island.
At the beginning of September, forty days after the Flahertys left Inukjuak, the C.
D. Howe
finally swung into Resolute Bay and dropped anchor in the midst of a deep and sinister fog. Leo Manning, the Department interpreter, appeared in the Inuit quarters to tell the Nungaks, the Echalooks and the Iqaluks to pack their things
and make ready for the cargo barge that would take them on shore. The Flahertys were to remain on ship until they reached the Craig Harbour detachment.
The Flahertys watched the others leave, then went to their bunks. The storm had unsettled them so much that they had barely slept or eaten. Peter had begun refusing his mother's breast. The Flahertys hadn't been able to bring themselves to imagine how Mary might be by this time. They felt drained and uneasy. For a few hours they took some rest. A while later, when the fog still showed no signs of clearing, Manning came back down to the quarters to tell them that the ship could not sail in current conditions and that they would be put ashore until it was safe for the C.
D. Howe
to continue on.
No one got much sleep that night but for the first time in forty days the Flahertys scarcely noticed how tired they were. There was two years' worth of news and gossip to catch up on. The Resolute Bay camp had been having a hard time of it, they said. The weather on Cornwallis was unlike anything they had ever encountered in Inukjuak. They could barely breathe the winter air, it was so cold, and in summer, dense fogs descended for days. A ceaseless wind ripped across the island and the hunting was hard. Polar bears came up from the south and crossed over on their way to Bathurst Island, but they were fearsome and the dogs were not trained to contain them. The hunters hated having to go after them, but in the winter, in particular, they had no choice. They had to grit their courage. They would much rather hunt caribou, and the meat was infinitely better, but they had to cross all the way over to Southampton Island to get any. The first winter they had gone very hungry and had been reduced to raiding the rubbish dumps at the air base and the weather station, which Ross Gibson had expressly forbidden them to do and seemed now determined to prevent.
The policeman had begun daily inspections of the tents, pulling up the sleeping skins and poking into the pots and pans, looking for
stuff that might have been taken from the dump. They wondered if the extreme cold had not affected him in some way. He seemed even more agitated up here, constantly drilling them on the need to maintain the traditional Inuit way of life, as if he knew anything about it. In any case, most of the men were hoping to find work of some description at the air force base. At least the men got fed there, though their wives and children still had to be provided for. Right now, there was only the odd day or two of casual work and it paid badly, but they were pinning their hopes on being offered some formal waged employment at the base in the future.
They had not had much contact with the camp at Grise Fiord, they said. A few dog teams had come in during the spring, bringing the police for their annual leave. They had heard that Aqiatusuk had died. It was a different world up there. From what they had picked up there was game on Ellesmere Island but it was almost impossible to reach and the camp was completely cut off. There were no weather stations, no air bases and no prospects for employment whatsoever. The Grise Fiord camp was not really big enough to be viable but there was no other way for them to survive except to keep on hunting and trapping. The loss of just one hunter or carver like Aqiatusuk could put the whole camp in danger.
The following morning the fog had thinned considerably, though it was still misty and there were sharp spiny ice crystals in the air. losephie Flaherty woke to the sound of boots on the shale and throwing back the tent flaps he saw the old Inukjuak detachment
pulisi
, Constable Ross Gibson, striding towards the camp. In two years Big Red had aged to an almost shocking degree. The policeman was still huge and powerful-looking but not much else remained of the man losephie remembered. His face was livid with red blotches and darkened, leathery-looking spots and when he took off his hat to scratch his head losephie could see that his hair had receded and thinned. He moved at a strange angle, like willow twigs in fierce wind. He did not seem happy.
Gibson had come to check on the newcomers and to make sure
the Flahertys were prepared to leave whenever the fog cleared, which it did, as if on command, shortly after. It was hard saying goodbye and strange boarding the ship alone. The previous night's discussions had been rather gloomy and the Flahertys were nervously anticipating arriving at their destination unsure of what they would find. The C.
D. Howe
moved out of the bay, cleared Barrow Strait and began to churn steadily through the waters of Lancaster Sound. By the end of the following day, she had turned northwest and was steaming along the east coast of Devon Island, where, two years before, Ross Gibson had noted the shadows on the cliffs and glaciers. The sun came out, refracting from the ice crystals in the air and scattering millions of tiny rainbows. The ship ploughed on, sliding finally through Lady Ann Strait and into Iones Sound. It was then that the Flahertys caught their first glimpse of Ellesmere Island. For two years now, the place had lived in their imaginations as an icier version of the gentle, willow-covered hills and sand strands of Inukjuak, but with more and larger game. The Ellesmere Island of their imagination boiled with seal and beluga, the rocks were white with the guano of plump snow-geese and the cliffs were dotted with their eggs. In this imaginary Ellesmere, caribou wandered along snowy paths to their grazing grounds and walrus lay sleeping soundly at the edge of the shore-fast ice. Blooming willow, pink saxifrage, purple heather and yellow Arctic poppies were watered from a hundred little streams and the muskeg was firm and not too hummocky, with cloudberries ripening on every south-facing slope. It was not fanciful, this imaginary Ellesmere, nor was it an amalgam of their hopes. It was rather what they had been led to expect.