The Country Mice

Looking east, deep into the Pangnirtung fjord

We wake up knowing it’s our last full day. How much can we absorb, how much more can we savour this indescribably attractive corner of the planet?

The prime reason for visiting this remote Inuit community has been to explore food issues in the north. We have spoken with youth, elders, white, Inuk, government officials, residents of the community. Everyone has an opinion and there is no single answer for what is ‘right,’ what is the next step, what can be changed, what should be saved.

Every person interviewed represents a separate stratum of opinion. It’s stupefyingly complex. I will try to recount all these opinions in a series of coming posts, and of course Liliana will be exploring the topic this coming year for school. But on this last day, is there something, someone, somewhere we’ve left untapped?

Daily water delivery to Hannah’s house

Liliana heads out Hannah’s door to take some photos of the landing turboprops, and for a final playdate with the puppy she’s befriended. I go to return the hazing gun (I bet not many of y’all can add that activity to the penultimate day of a vacation) and wander down to talk with a conservation officer at the far end of town. I want to get a permit to take home a raw sealskin and leaving Nunavut without a marine mammal exit permit might cause a bit of fuss on switching planes in Ottawa.

The south side of the fjord, at the west end of the hamlet

As I walk to the federal office I see a very small man out on his very small porch, sparks flying as he sharpens something on his grinder. I see the shape – a half moon with a metal stem.

“Hello!” I call out, in my friendliest southernly manner. “Did you talk to Hannah?”

It’s a hamlet, remember? Everyone knows everyone, especially elders such as Hannah.

He looks at me.

“Did Hannah ask you, telephone you to make an ulu?” I’d spoken with her about one earlier in the week and she’d said she’d ask around to see if someone would have one for me. Clearly I’d found that someone. What luck!

“Is that ulu for me?”

He’s quiet until now.

“You come back. Five o’clock. Fifty bucks.”

I smile. What a great little community. Here I am, walking along, and see the guy Hannah called to make an ulu. Wow! Can’t wait to come back and pick up the finished knife.

I make my way to the conservation officer’s building. A huge metal garage, packed with stacks of sealskins, maps, pamphlets, walrus skulls and a canvas kayak. The officer is a soft-spoken South African, from Kelowna, here for six years, while his wife stays in BC as his children finish up university.

I get my marine mammal release permit, tell him the location of some gigantic lumbar vertebrae (above, and contrasted with Liliana’s size 7 foot) we saw on the beach (he thinks they’re whale) and hear his opinion on Canadian sovereignty in the north. He’s enormously compassionate regarding the struggles of people in the north and he’s also a bit lonely. I feel badly for leaving him after 30 minutes of conversation.

I meet up with the patient Liliana who’s been perched on a rock and waiting an hour, and we go to say goodbye to Ooleepeeka at the Angmarlik visitor centre. Ooleepeeka is a sweet woman we met on one of our first days wandering around the hamlet. On an earlier visit she invited us in to have tea and cookies and to play cards with some of the elders… those little ladies tossed down the cards with gusto but without knowing the language or the card game we were happy to watch and listen to the laughter.

On this visit Ooleepeeka calls out some girls and asks them to give Liliana a crash course in throat singing. Throat singing is typically performed by females, sometimes with a competitive element (she who laughs first — loses) or to tell a story.

This particular entry level version they teach Liliana is just to get going… the girls demonstrate a few other patterns, beautiful and hypnotic. They hold on to each other to ensure they keep the rhythm.

After our goodbyes, we head back to the Lodge to say goodbye to Louis Robillard, whom we’ve not seen since our arrival, when he tried to clear out a room for us in his hotel, but equally never gave up on securing us our rightful spot at Hannah’s house.

Louis is chopping tomatoes and making ketchup in the hotel kitchen when we arrive and once he gets the last few in the pot he stuffs various herbs into a tea ball, tosses in the ball along with salt and pepper, grabs his pipe and tobacco and we go sit outside in afternoon sun. Louis has fierce opinions about what is wonderful about life in the north, and of course, about what he’d change if he could. It’s a good life, we concur.

We make our way back to see Hannah and to have a final dinner. Arctic char, boiled vegetables, and as a special treat for our last day, a cake. Hannah laughs about it – she is unsure about making a cake from a box and thinks maybe it should have come out more level. The cake is sweet – tastes like chocolate milk — crazily sweet but we are touched by Hannah’s joy in having a young person in her life.

As we are eating I thank Hannah for calling the man about the ulu.

“The ulu! Ohhhhh! I forget.”

Oh, but that’s all right, Hannah, I say. I saw him today. He was making the ulu right there.

She’s not listening.

“Oh! I sorry, I forget to call.”

But I saw him today, I say. He was making it. I’m going back this evening.

“I no call.”

A pause.

Comprehension.

“You get ulu?”

Uh, no. Not yet. I’m going back after dinner.

And how to explain my sheepish self that moment? Here I am, southern gal sauntering along, seeing a guy making a knife. Hey, buddy, wanna sell that ulu?

Hannah laughs and laughs. Then her eyes narrow.

“How much?”

Fifty dollars. She approves, tells me to get going and to pick up my knife.

When I return a little while later with my new ulu, she inspects it.

“Nice.”

I’m happy she’s happy. Really Hannah? You think it’s a good one?

“I tell you it is nice. How many times you want me to say it?”

Ten times, I say.

“Nice nice nice nice nice….”

We have a good laugh and in the most fortunate of moments, I have my camera nearby when she reaches to hug Liliana. “I want keep you, honey. You [that’s me she’s talking to] can go home. I keep her.”

Hannah also finally shares the identity of the pictures in the hallway. Over the first few days when we inquired who they were she’d only say, “Old pictures. Old people.” Today she lets us know – they’re pictures of a baby Hannah.

If you’ve read any other of these posts you can probably surmise this is a tender moment. Hannah no doubt has seen scores of us southerners come and go, dropping in and out of her life. Small wonder that she might choose to remain reserved.

So the sharing of the moment where we see her, and her parents, from very long ago, marks a special final moment for us.

We are grateful.

Hannah is flustered and nervous today. Twelve people are coming for dinner and she needs to begin cooking. Maybe you go out soon?

Last night she fretted about a number of new guests arriving and proposed we sleep outside: “I don’t charge you for sleeping. Only for food.” I’ve heard the dogs whine and the ATVs rumble past and I don’t know how we’d sleep in the all-night sunshine but I tell her no problem. Liliana looks at me, says nothing.

Hannah’s ulu stash

But this morning the worry about rooms seems to have passed and now she just wants us out of the house so she can cook for the crowd. She sits at the kitchen table, slicing up a caribou haunch with her ulu. Her daughter Julia pulls a pan of bannock from the oven, then finishes slicing up the Arctic char.

It will be a party, I smile to Hannah.

No! Not a party! I hate parties! I don’t like that at all.

I wonder what unhappy memory the word ‘party’ evokes for her and I wonder if it has anything to do with the banning of alcohol in Pangnirtung.

Diorama from the parks office. Cute and cuddly, not like the orientation video…

As we intend to hike in the Auyuittuq park tomorrow, we go to the national parks office to register and have a compulsory one-hour orientation which includes a rather frightening video on what to do when confronted by a polar bear. My little chicken is sufficiently disturbed that the guide offers us a hazing gun – essentially a pistol with a charge that emits a sound similar to a screaming woman (yep, that’s what he said. “It really scares the bears.”).

Pang garbage dump with photobombing fly! (look in the very centre)

After a wander through the abandoned Hudson Bay Blubber Station (ground it up and shipped it back to England to light their lamps, I hear) and the more contemporary turbot and Arctic char fish processing plant, we traipse a couple of kilometres east of the hamlet, down a dusty road to what’s referred to here as the Canadian Tire of the North. In fact, it’s the Pangnirtung garbage dump and we’ve been told that if enterprising enough one can find a piece or a part to fix, repair, replace or build anything. It’s all there. In fact, it’s a sad testament to the isolation of this northern community. Goods come in, they don’t go out. Cargo ships are in the business of transporting and they’d rather carry air than transport items without recompense. For who will pay to ship garbage? No doubt the answer to that question will be placed on a future generation but in the meantime cans, paper, glass, refrigerators, kitchen chairs, plastic bags and pocketbooks decay, rust and blow about the dump.

Stew Caribou

Arctic char en four

Hannah greets us with a smile on our return. “I tired. I cook all day. You like caribou?”

Simmering in a large aluminum pot are chunks of carrot, potato, turnip and caribou. She dips in a spoon and lifts out a meaty cube. “You try.”

Have I mentioned that I’ve eaten more animal protein this week than I have in the last thirty years?

As I chew Hannah whispers to me about the young woman who has just taken a room for the night. “Not good. She vegetarian. She not eat my dinner.”

And Hannah is very proud of the meal she has prepared for the guests who are to arrive any minute. A pot of caribou stew, a baking pan of Arctic char, rice, salad, steamed vegetables, blueberry pie – all laid out with love and care by this rather elderly great grandmother.

I swallow the caribou and I tell her it is wonderful.

Her beautiful brown eyes crinkle with a grin. “You sure? You no vegetarian?”

For this week, Hannah, just for your sweet smiling self, I no vegetarian.