Inuvik is a quirky kind of a town. Located in Canada’s Northwest Territories, it’s only existed since the 1950s. The Canadian government decided that it needed an administrative centre in the Western Arctic and the existing native settlement at Aklavik was reckoned to be at too great a risk from flooding. And so, in 1955, they started to build a new one.
Because of the permafrost, every building had to be raised on piles, otherwise its heat would thaw the top layer of ground and the building would sink. And for the first few decades of its existence, no roads led here. The Dempster Highway from Dawson – still the only overland route south – didn’t open until 1979. By then, oil and natural gas had been discovered in this part of the far north.
When I visited Inuvik, I stayed in a bed and breakfast run by a woman called Val. She was originally from Ottawa but moved to Inuvik when she was fifteen years old because her father had been posted there with his job in the military.
‘I arrived on December 17th, 1973,’ she told me. ‘It was minus fifty-two degrees. I was wearing vinyl high-heeled boots and a mini-skirt. My hair was big, my nails were painted. I told my father I hated him.’
The family had arrived in the depths of winter. They would not see daylight for several weeks for Inuvik has a full month of total darkness each year.
‘The first thing I saw at the airport was this really fierce husky. It just looked at me and growled. And my mother said to my father, “What kind of hell-hole have you brought me and the kids to?”’
In those days there was no fresh bread or milk in Inuvik’s stores, Val told me. Bread had to be made by hand; for milk they used reconstituted powder. There were no paved roads. When residents didn’t need snow boots, they needed boots for the mud.
Val had stamped angrily off to school. On her first day, she wore her miniskirt.
‘The boys were just, “Waaah!” and the girls were like “Ugh!” None of those kids had ever seen a miniskirt before.’
Now, thirty-odd years later, Val is still there, married to Gord, and they have two children of their own. This is the strange thing about this far-northern outpost: so many of the people here come from somewhere else. They don’t have to be here; if they didn’t like it, they could leave. But there’s something about Inuvik that reaches out and embraces the newcomer. The people have time to talk; they’re not as hurried as their southern counterparts. Visitors feel welcome as they try their hands at dog-mushing, or browse the public library’s outstanding collection of northern books, or take a day trip to Tuktoyaktuk on the shores of the Beaufort Sea. Luxuries may be few in this remote land, and the winter temperatures may be frigid – but the people here are warm as whale blubber.
Getting there: You can reach Inuvik by driving the Dempster Highway (it starts just outside Dawson City and runs for 736 kilometres), or Air North flies there three times a week from Whitehorse and Dawson.
For more on Canada’s far north, read Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, from where the material for this article is taken.
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