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Canoesworthy
It's North Pole season in the High Arctic, and more than a dozen trekkers are now fanned out across the top of the world.
According to outfitters in Resolute Bay, several teams are currently en route to the geographic North Pole. Another team is skiing to the North Magnetic Pole, near Ellef Ringnes Island west of Ellesmere Island.
The first expedition to reach 90 degrees north will likely be a team of Britons guided by Iqaluit resident and polar veteran Paul Landry.
On March 11 the group flew to Ward Hunt Island, just north of Ellesmere, to begin their trek. By May 7 or 8 they hope to reach the pole, where they will be picked up and flown back south. The participants include Fiona Thornewill and Catharine Hartley, who hope to become the first women to walk to both the North and South Poles. They reached the South Pole several years ago.
Another expeditioner, Hyoichi Kohno of Japan, is trying the reverse trip. He was scheduled to fly to the North Pole and attempt to ski south to Ellesmere. From there, as part of his "Reaching Home" expedition, he hopes to walk, ski and kayak through the Canadian North to Alaska, then Siberia, and eventually Japan. Kohno's trip will last five or six years.
Maybe the most impressive Arctic expedition this spring began not in Nunavut but in Russia. That's where Norwegian Borge Ousland departed in February as part of an effort to make a solo, unassisted 1,800-kilometre ski trip clear across the ice cap to Canada.
Ousland is already a legend in adventure circles, having skied solo and unsupported across Antarctica two years ago.
A final trekker headed to the top of the world is Dave Mill. Mill, a Scot, left from Ward Hunt Island in mid-April and will try to walk solo to the pole.
Another team -- a group of six Frenchmen -- is currently skiing to the North Magnetic Pole, which is more accessible than the geographic pole. They hope to make the trip in 42 days. Several expeditions have had to scrub their pole attempts this year.
With more hunters than beluga whales along Nunavik's coasts, agreeing on a beluga management plan for the region may be an impossible mission. But with the current plan expiring, a new plan needs to be in place by the end of June.
To the dismay of hunters, any plan will probably call for a reduced beluga harvest -- exactly the opposite of what they had hoped to see as the present plan comes to an end.
To their further dismay, new beluga rules will involve quotas that change every year. This is likely to frustrate hunters, many of whom want to scrap quotas completely.
The quotas cap the number of beluga hunters can take. The Eastern Hudson Bay's quota is 90 beluga, or 18 per community. For the Hudson Strait it's 100 beluga, or 25 per community. The five communities along Ungava Bay are limited to only 10 beluga each.
The only region with ample beluga is the Hudson Strait, through which beluga from the large Western Bay herd migrate. Scientific population studies from 1996 showed 23,000 beluga there, with only 3,000 in James Bay and 1,300 in the Eastern Hudson Bay.
A team of Canadian Rangers patrolled Ellesmere Island this Spring in an attempt to assert national sovereignty in the Far North. The patrol, involving Rangers from Yellowknife and Grise Fiord, was based out of Alexandra Fiord on Ellesmere's east coast. Between April 6-11 team members made daily forays from the base camp, looking for suspicious activity and showing the Canadian flag.
The patrol came only weeks after the release of secret military documents revealing that hunters and tourists may be slipping onto Ellesmere Island from Greenland and poaching polar bears. Greenland has dismissed those fears, though at least one such poaching case was documented several years ago.
Rangers have been conducting the patrols for several years. In addition to concerns about poaching, Canadian Forces worry the nation's claim to the High Arctic could be eroded by foreign commercial activity, including increased shipping through the Northwest Passage.
Another sovereignty patrol is slated to take place this summer on Prince Patrick Island in the Northwest Territories.
Despite high hopes for alternative energy, it may be decades before Nunavut shakes its dependence on diesel fuel to generate electrical power. Diesel, like any petroleum product, is expensive and dirty. It costs a lot to buy and ship to Nunavut, and when it gets here it pollutes the air and likely contributes to Arctic melting.
But for the foreseeable future it will be the only way Nunavut's 26 communities get almost all their electricity. Only three towns in the territory draw energy from sources other than diesel.
On the outskirts of Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay and Coppermine, a few lonely windmills spin in the Arctic breeze. In each case, the wind turbines contribute a negligible amount -- less than 5 per cent -- of their communities' power needs.
Other forms of clean, "green" alternative energy are even less developed in the territory. The power authority said they are keeping an eye on advances in solar energy, and are also looking into harnessing creeks to generate tiny amounts of hydro power.
Larger-scale hydro systems -- similar to the mega-projects in Quebec and Labrador -- have been studied for the rivers in the Kivalliq (check out www.kivalliq.com), but are decades, and hopefully centuries, away from development.
Nunavut's communities are powered almost exclusively by diesel-burning generators, which each year convert 34 million litres of fuel into electricity for the whole territory.
The cost of a barrel of crude is three times what it was in 1999. Last year Nunavut residents (Nunavummiut) were spared a hike in their power rates, but if oil prices stay high, rates could rise at the end of this year.
Transporting it northward adds about one-third to the original cost, and requires a series of ships, trains and even airplanes to get it to tank farms in each community. And while many Southern companies are doing cutting-edge studies in the field, their breakthroughs often transfer poorly to the Arctic environment.
Windmills, for instance, require lubrication to rotate -- and it's hard to keep them spinning when the temperature drops to minus 40 C. They also deal poorly with the gale-force gusts that wrack the North. A windmill installed in Iqaluit many years ago operated for only hours before breaking down. Turbines placed in other communities suffered similar fates. Both the Rankin and Coppermine windmills are less than five years old and are still in the experimental stage.
Nunavut residents can scratch mooseburgers off their menus. Despite rare sightings of moose on the tundra, the gangly forest-dwellers aren't moving into Nunavut. That's the conclusion of wildlife biologists who work in the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions.
Many years ago a hapless moose meandered to the outskirts of Arviat and ended up on residents' dinner plates.
And every few years Arviat hunters bag one of the big deer on a trip to the treeline, 50 miles distant but in general, harvesters aren't reporting more moose on the barrens. The same is true in western Nunavut. For years, hard-core moose-lovers in Coppermine have travelled south to the forest to bag the big ungulates. Once, in mid-wintered, a cow moose even wandered up to the sea ice.
But moose seem no more common in the central Arctic than they've ever been. Recent reports about climate change have suggested that, as part of global warming, southern mammals are moving into Nunavut.
But those shifts haven't shown themselves yet. In fact, some opposite trends have arisen. One phenomenon which Keewatin barrenland hunters have observed is that muskox are spreading south and east. Over the last several years the shaggy tundra creatures have been getting closer to Arviat on Hudson Bay, and there have been several confirmed sightings of them turning up amongst the white spruce and tamarack of the northern forest.
This article first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 104 in 2001.
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