Building an igloo.
Igloo Homestay on the Arctic Tundra
Building an igloo.
Quick, name the centre of Canada. No, it’s not Toronto, Ottawa, or even Winnipeg. The closest community to the geographic centre of the country is Baker Lake, Nunavut, about 1,600 kilometres north of Winnipeg, and a bit south of the Arctic Circle. Walk down the streets of this town of fewer than 2,000, and chances are that most conversations you’ll hear are in neither of Canada’s official languages.
It’s mid-April. At our home in Saskatoon, everyone is enjoying the warm spring weather. Well…almost everyone. With down-filled coats, boots, and other winter gear in hand, we’re off to the airport, catching a series of flights to Baker Lake where winter is still in full swing. We’ve been invited to take part in a practice run for a new tourism venture, where visitors would experience life in a traditional Inuit winter camp, living in igloos on the Arctic tundra. We’ll be the guinea pigs. How can we resist?
Next day, we’re in a completely different world. Gliding across the endless expanse of treeless tundra, our sled barely makes a sound except for small thumps as its runners cross low solid snowdrifts. The dogs, spread out ahead in a fan hitch, run at a steady pace until suddenly they sniff something in the distance. It's the familiar scent of caribou somewhere in the hills. Instinctively, they veer to the left and pick up speed. With no reins to control the dogs, the driver Samson relies on voice commands to steer. “Whoosh-ka, whoosh-ka” he calls out in a loud whisper, and the dogs understand they are to turn right and remain on course.
We are part of a caravan of dog sleds and snowmobiles heading south from Baker Lake, a 50-kilometre journey to the frozen shores of Pitz Lake where we will spend nearly a week living in an igloo. After a three-hour trip bouncing across the snow and ice we arrive at our new home – a large three-room igloo. We have to crouch to walk through the two-metre-long entranceway that opens up to a spacious living area. Connected by archways just high enough to crawl through, are two bedrooms, each with snow platforms for beds. We prepare these by laying down a canvas tarp on the snow, followed by layers of muskox and caribou hides, and finally down-filled sleeping bags.
We need three more igloos to accommodate everybody, so work begins almost immediately. Paul Attutuvaa noses around the camp, probing the snow here and there with his long knife to find the right type of snow. A younger member of the group, David Akaswnee, acts as interpreter for the older Inuit who speak only Inuktitut, and tries to explain what’s happening. “The snow has to be fresh but not too fresh, somewhere between hard and soft.” It’s not easy to explain; it’s just something you know from experience.
Attutuvaa and Jacob Ikinilik begin building the igloo from the inside, cutting the snow blocks from within a circle drawn in the snow. Each block is trimmed with the snow knife and slid against the adjoining one, the friction helping to keep them in place in their ascending spiral formation. Near the top, the spirals become tighter and blocks are placed at increasingly steeper angles. Then with only a small opening at the very top, about a foot across, Attutuvaa carefully trims a final block to close in the perfect dome. The result is an intricate engineering marvel, but the two experienced men make it look like the simplest of tasks.
As the igloo nears completion, the men’s wives, Martha Ikinilik and Hattie Attutuvaa, use home-made wooden shovels to break up the packed snow around the igloo. Then they throw the snow on the dome to seal the cracks between the blocks. In less than three hours, the spacious igloo is complete and Ikinilik stands back to consider the result. It still needs something – a window. Grabbing a long-handled chisel, he walks to Pitz Lake and finds a spot where the wind has exposed some smooth clear ice. He chisels out an ice block about two feet square and a half foot thick, then cuts a hole in the igloo and fits the window snugly in place.
While our goal is to experience authentic igloo life, our hosts decide to make an addition to the camp to accommodate visitors – an outdoor privy. Built of snow blocks like everything else, it ends up looking like a tall narrow igloo. It is soon dubbed the “igloo-loo”.
We’ve been fortunate to have travelled out and set up camp in reasonably good weather, but near evening it looks like our luck may be changing. Clouds gather on the horizon, glowing yellow-gold from the low sun, while the bluish-tinged, hard packed snow glistens as if coated with varnish. The wind picks up, sending drifting snow across the endless expanse. We have shelter but the dogs have to make do. They hunker down, some curling up into tight balls, noses tucked into tails, as drifts start to build around them.
Next morning we wake to a violent storm, forcing us to shovel our way out of the igloo entrance, now packed with snow. Before coming out, it is almost impossible to tell what is happening outside. The rounded aerodynamic shape of an igloo is the perfect building to withstand a blizzard. Other than snow in the entrance, it remains unscathed by the storm. Once outside, we’re faced with a complete whiteout. The biting wind and snow, the ground, sky, even our igloo blend into a violent sea of white. Only steps away from the igloo, everything becomes invisible, with no way to tell which direction we’re facing. The igloo-loo is only about 20 metres away, but we stick poles in the ground and string a rope to guide us when going between the two. We now have a much better understanding of how easy it would be to become lost or disoriented in that short distance, and how people can freeze to death just metres from safety.
The stormy weather lasts a couple of days, and we aren’t able to go far or do much. One afternoon, Attutuvaa comes into our igloo, bringing chunks of caribou meat to make a stew. We first assumed that he had brought the meat from Baker Lake. But no, he had just come back from hunting. After all, the main purpose of an igloo camp is to hunt caribou, so Attutuvaa isn’t going to let a minor inconvenience like a raging blizzard get in the way.
Few things are more important than caribou. Inuit throughout the Arctic have long depended on caribou, but for those who lived in inland regions, such as around here, caribou took on an added significance. Inuit living near the coast had access to seal and other sea creatures, but to those living inland, caribou was simply a matter of life or death. After providing a reasonably dependable source of food for years, something went terribly wrong in the 1950s when migrating caribou herds took a different route. Many Caribou Inuit faced starvation. This serious famine led the government to establish permanent settlements in places such as Baker Lake, moving many people off the land. For better or worse, this controversial move marked a profound change in the life of the Inuit, ending their semi-nomadic way of life, and making them dependent on settled communities. While hunting caribou continued to be important, many of the traditional ways began dying out, especially with younger generations who were born and brought up in town rather than out on the land.
Old timers such as Attutuvaa and Ikinilik are still well versed in the old ways, some of the last to personally experience a way of life that is fast disappearing. Spending a week with them proves to be nothing less than a rare glimpse into a bygone era.
Since the purpose of the trip is to relive the old ways, the Inuit dress in caribou clothing, rather than the modern snowmobile suits favoured today. The women go about their daily work inside the new igloo, sitting on the snow platform covered with caribou skins, a bluish light streaming through the ice window. They use traditional curved knives called ulus to prepare caribou hides for making boots and mitts. First they scrape the hides and trim the hair, then soften the hides by chewing and massaging them. To sew the pieces together, they use strands of caribou sinew for thread. A big piece of raw frozen caribou meat sits between the two women. Every once in a while, they use their razor-sharp ulus to shave off a thin slice of meat for a nice snack.
Today, everyone uses dark sunglasses as protection against snow blindness. In this land of white, white, and more white, the constant glare can become almost unbearable without protection. Jacob Ikinilik demonstrates an age-old solution to this problem. Taking a flat piece of wood, he fashions “glasses” that consist of very narrow slits, allowing only a thin sliver of light to hit the eyes. When wood wasn’t available in this treeless landscape, they used carved caribou bone, and held the glasses in place with braided pieces of caribou sinew.
Outside, the men demonstrate how to apply mud on sled runners. First, they gather dirt from hillocks where the snow is shallow, mix it with warm water to form a sticky paste, then apply it evenly to the runners of the overturned sled. Everything is left to freeze overnight. The next day, they scrape the mud with a sharp knife to form a smooth surface. While nylon and steel runners are more commonly used now, some dog team owners still prefer mud, claiming that it performs better in the bitterly cold temperatures of mid-winter.
The three Inuit children in the camp play outside almost non-stop, regardless of the weather. Any doubts we have about igloos being durable quickly vanish as we watch these three scamper to the top and slide down the other side.
In these cold conditions, we gain a new respect for caribou products when wearing boots made from caribou hide. The biggest challenge in living in snow is keeping your feet warm. We bring good quality winter boots with us, but they're not nearly as warm as the caribou boots we are given to try. The term “boots” suggests substantial, heavy footwear, yet these are anything but. Although they come high above the ankles like traditional boots, they have the feel and weight of bedroom slippers. It’s almost magical how something so seemingly flimsy can be so effective. This is footwear for dry cold snow only. The most important thing we have to remember is to brush the snow off our boots immediately after coming inside the igloo. If the snow melts on the caribou skin, our feet would soon get wet and cold.
While the inside of the igloo feels reasonably comfortable, the temperature is still below freezing. It has to be, considering what the dwelling is made of. Cooking inside can be tricky. We have to be careful not to turn our campstove higher than absolutely necessary. Heat causes an icy glaze on the interior walls, so that the snow no longer breathes. Besides, it’s not a good idea to melt your house.
When the weather improves somewhat, it’s time to go fishing. With lake ice still close to two metres thick, it takes a lot of effort with a long-handled chisel to break through, scoop out the icy debris, and make a small hole. Our fishing gear is basic – a hook on the end of a line tied to a curved piece of caribou antler fashioned into a handle. After jigging for a while, there's a sharp tug, and up comes a lake trout that barely fits through the hole. Ice starts to form in the hole very quickly, so if we don't keep it open it will freeze solid before long. With fresh lake trout and fresh caribou meat readily available, we rarely dip into the packaged store-bought food from town.
We settle into some of the day to day camp chores – catching fish, melting ice for drinking water, looking after the dogs, helping to build or repair igloos. We gain a tremendous admiration for people who not only have the skills to thrive in such a harsh and challenging environment, but appear completely at ease. It's obvious that the Ikiniliks and Attutuvaas really enjoy showing us how things were done in the old days. Through much of the trip, Jacob Ikinilik had been working on a soapstone carving, portraying a stylized man with his face looking up. He finishes the carving by the last day, and presents it to us as a parting gift.
When it's time to return to Baker Lake, we’re treated to yet another whiteout, this time caused by ice fog. We head off into the eerie monochrome landscape with no horizon, as people and dog teams seem to float in a sea of nothingness. Landmarks are invisible and our tracks have long since been obliterated by the storm. Ikinilik and Attutuvaa lead the way into the white void. No compass or GPS for these guys – they navigate by the feel of the wind and the angle of the snowdrifts. After a couple hours, we stop for a rest and bring out the thermoses of hot tea to help warm up. Ikinilik and Attutuvaa have a serious-looking discussion in Inuktitut, gesturing in different directions as if they’re discussing the route home. Back onto the sleds, we float and bounce through the endless void for a couple more hours. Then as we come over a slight ridge, faint grey shapes loom far in the distance, and the buildings of Baker Lake begin to stand out. We’re right on course.
The last reality check for us comes on the flight home. When travelling to most exotic places in the world, a final step on the homeward journey is going through the rigmarole of passport and customs checks. This time, however, it’s simply a matter of getting off the plane – no customs, no passports, nothing. While it ranks among the most exotic trips we’ve ever taken, we’re not returning from some far-flung corner of the globe, but from the centre of Canada.
Repairing a sled.
Building an igloo.
Life inside the igloo.