At the Edge of the World
Wednesday, July 12- Flight to Nunavik
6:30 a.m. Montreal: I am having a teary goodbye with the cat on my lap, as we sit together on the couch waiting for my cab. Okay, the cat is indifferent. But I am crying. I am having serious second thoughts about accepting a position to be the only social worker in an Inuit community on the shores of Hudson Strait. What had seemed to be an unconventional career option is rapidly turning into a much-regretted decision. Well, 6 weeks. It won't kill me. Will it?
7:15 a.m. I get to the Air Inuit counter, only to be told there is no ticket for me and therefore I must pay for my own travel up north ($2000.00) I do some deep breathing, then ask the agent to contact the social services department in Puvurnituq to confirm my presence on this flight. She does so. I am cleared for take-off.
7:30 a.m. I go through the security gate half-awake, until I realize the guard is rifling through my knapsack with diligence. She turns out every pocket until emerging triumphantly with my cherished ivory-handled pocketknife. I curse myself silently for not having put it in my checked baggage. She takes the knife away and says it is gone for good. I consider crying but she does not look like she would fall prey to my feminine wiles. I slouch off to my departure gate, wondering why Air Inuit would be a target for terrorism. Happily, my good friend J.of the Montreal Police is on duty at the airport this morning. She listens to my slightly biased tale of woe, and says she will try to get my knife back for me.
8 a.m. I am sitting drearily in my seat in the departure lounge when J. comes into the waiting area and waves my knife around, and says in a rather unnecessarily loud voice, `Were you planning on killing some seals with this knife, mon amie?” She says she will keep it until my return to Montreal.
8:15 a.m. I surreptitiously observe the others who are taking this flight to destinations all along Hudson Bay. The young Inuk teenager across from me reaches lazily into his pocket and pulls out a shiny black Ipod. So much for my politically correct decision not to bring along gadgets for fear of offending the economically-challenged Inuit with my shiny southern toys. I consider asking him if he wants to trade it for some shiny plastic beads.
8:30 a.m. Airborne! In-flight announcements are in English and French. There is no Inuktitut spoken on Air Inuit.
11 a.m. The first stop is Kuujjuaripik, whose gravel landing strip runs along the shore of Hudson Bay. The passengers have to disembark for the refueling. The sky is cobalt blue and cloudless and what at first glance I take to be boats out on the bay turn out to be floes of ice. Another southern woman who is on the flight approaches me. She is a nurse who has worked in Nunavut and Nunavik for the past 30 years since her arrival in Canada from Holland. She enthuses about the people and the communities of this region and reassures me that I have made a good decision to come up north. I wish I could believe her.
12 p.m. Sanikiluaq (Belcher Islands) There is nothing here but rocks and water. How can anyone live here? The only human habitation appears to be a cluster of Quonset huts near the landing strip. The nurse bids me goodbye at this point. We have had an easy conversation, and I feel bereft after she goes, and very, very alone.
As we fly farther north, the waters of Hudson Bay become aquamarine. Sometimes the plane flies eastward over land, and nothing grows here except lichen. We are beyond the tree line, and there is nothing but smooth rock and water. The pockets of water are tinged red, from iron deposits, I guess. I assume that these lakes were formed by ice, until we fly over one that is completely round and I wonder if it is a crater left by some long ago meteorite.
2.p.m. Puvirnituq. This is supposed to be a comparatively large settlement for Nunavik, but from the air it looks miniscule. I dread to see how small the community I am going to will be. This is my transfer point. I am greeted in the waiting room by R., who I had met in one of my 3rd year classes at McGill. He has been in Puvurnituq for the past 7 months. I am thrilled to see a familiar face in such an alien landscape. He introduces me to B., his colleague who interviewed and hired me. We have already communicated by telephone and video-conferencing so it is like meeting someone I already know. She has a subversive sense of humour and a love of the absurd, which encourages me.
I am quickly learning that the best way to approach traveling up north and by extension living up here as well is to roll with the punches. Many, many changes of scheduling and plans have occurred at the last moment, and in Puvirnituq another appears. There may not be enough room on the plane for both B. and I, so if only one of us can go, she will, and I will crash at her house here tonight and fly up to meet her tomorrow. She explains that my house will not be hooked up for phone or television and is not sure what I will have access to. I have to admit I would rather end the trip here, as I am completely overwhelmed with fatigue and sensory stimulation. Inuit travelers who are all speaking Inuktitut surround me, and I am fast losing my ability to be a good sport and appreciate this as a cross-cultural experience. Sherbrooke Street seems a million miles away right now.
They call the flight, and there is room for both B. and I. I thought the Dash 8 we flew up here in was small, until I board the Twin Otter. My uneasiness is not assuaged when the 2 pilots turn around in the cockpit to greet the passengers in Inuktitut and English. They are two young women, who appear to me to have only recently sworn off Barbies.
The rest of the flight is a non-event, if you can say that about flying over the Hudson Bay coast under a flawlessly blue sky, staring out the window at miles and miles of aquamarine water and luminescent ice floes. It is just rock, ice and water forever.
5 p.m:
We land at my community. Nothing could have ever prepared me for this place. Apparently there has been an Inuit settlement here in this inlet for a few hundred years. What there is now is a cluster of 50 prefab trailers running up from the sea, huddled in the dip between the rocky hills surrounding it. There is a little sandy beach at the foot of the village, where stranded ice floes lie beached and dripping in the warm sun. The sun. It is still high up in the sky, even though time is marching on to 6 p.m. I could be on the moon for all the landscape looks like Earth. I hoist my stuff and walk towards the nursing station truck sent to pick me up.
Whatever I have committed myself to in the next 6 weeks, it starts here and it begins now.
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6:30 a.m. Montreal: I am having a teary goodbye with the cat on my lap, as we sit together on the couch waiting for my cab. Okay, the cat is indifferent. But I am crying. I am having serious second thoughts about accepting a position to be the only social worker in an Inuit community on the shores of Hudson Strait. What had seemed to be an unconventional career option is rapidly turning into a much-regretted decision. Well, 6 weeks. It won't kill me. Will it?
7:15 a.m. I get to the Air Inuit counter, only to be told there is no ticket for me and therefore I must pay for my own travel up north ($2000.00) I do some deep breathing, then ask the agent to contact the social services department in Puvurnituq to confirm my presence on this flight. She does so. I am cleared for take-off.
7:30 a.m. I go through the security gate half-awake, until I realize the guard is rifling through my knapsack with diligence. She turns out every pocket until emerging triumphantly with my cherished ivory-handled pocketknife. I curse myself silently for not having put it in my checked baggage. She takes the knife away and says it is gone for good. I consider crying but she does not look like she would fall prey to my feminine wiles. I slouch off to my departure gate, wondering why Air Inuit would be a target for terrorism. Happily, my good friend J.of the Montreal Police is on duty at the airport this morning. She listens to my slightly biased tale of woe, and says she will try to get my knife back for me.
8 a.m. I am sitting drearily in my seat in the departure lounge when J. comes into the waiting area and waves my knife around, and says in a rather unnecessarily loud voice, `Were you planning on killing some seals with this knife, mon amie?” She says she will keep it until my return to Montreal.
8:15 a.m. I surreptitiously observe the others who are taking this flight to destinations all along Hudson Bay. The young Inuk teenager across from me reaches lazily into his pocket and pulls out a shiny black Ipod. So much for my politically correct decision not to bring along gadgets for fear of offending the economically-challenged Inuit with my shiny southern toys. I consider asking him if he wants to trade it for some shiny plastic beads.
8:30 a.m. Airborne! In-flight announcements are in English and French. There is no Inuktitut spoken on Air Inuit.
11 a.m. The first stop is Kuujjuaripik, whose gravel landing strip runs along the shore of Hudson Bay. The passengers have to disembark for the refueling. The sky is cobalt blue and cloudless and what at first glance I take to be boats out on the bay turn out to be floes of ice. Another southern woman who is on the flight approaches me. She is a nurse who has worked in Nunavut and Nunavik for the past 30 years since her arrival in Canada from Holland. She enthuses about the people and the communities of this region and reassures me that I have made a good decision to come up north. I wish I could believe her.
12 p.m. Sanikiluaq (Belcher Islands) There is nothing here but rocks and water. How can anyone live here? The only human habitation appears to be a cluster of Quonset huts near the landing strip. The nurse bids me goodbye at this point. We have had an easy conversation, and I feel bereft after she goes, and very, very alone.
As we fly farther north, the waters of Hudson Bay become aquamarine. Sometimes the plane flies eastward over land, and nothing grows here except lichen. We are beyond the tree line, and there is nothing but smooth rock and water. The pockets of water are tinged red, from iron deposits, I guess. I assume that these lakes were formed by ice, until we fly over one that is completely round and I wonder if it is a crater left by some long ago meteorite.
2.p.m. Puvirnituq. This is supposed to be a comparatively large settlement for Nunavik, but from the air it looks miniscule. I dread to see how small the community I am going to will be. This is my transfer point. I am greeted in the waiting room by R., who I had met in one of my 3rd year classes at McGill. He has been in Puvurnituq for the past 7 months. I am thrilled to see a familiar face in such an alien landscape. He introduces me to B., his colleague who interviewed and hired me. We have already communicated by telephone and video-conferencing so it is like meeting someone I already know. She has a subversive sense of humour and a love of the absurd, which encourages me.
I am quickly learning that the best way to approach traveling up north and by extension living up here as well is to roll with the punches. Many, many changes of scheduling and plans have occurred at the last moment, and in Puvirnituq another appears. There may not be enough room on the plane for both B. and I, so if only one of us can go, she will, and I will crash at her house here tonight and fly up to meet her tomorrow. She explains that my house will not be hooked up for phone or television and is not sure what I will have access to. I have to admit I would rather end the trip here, as I am completely overwhelmed with fatigue and sensory stimulation. Inuit travelers who are all speaking Inuktitut surround me, and I am fast losing my ability to be a good sport and appreciate this as a cross-cultural experience. Sherbrooke Street seems a million miles away right now.
They call the flight, and there is room for both B. and I. I thought the Dash 8 we flew up here in was small, until I board the Twin Otter. My uneasiness is not assuaged when the 2 pilots turn around in the cockpit to greet the passengers in Inuktitut and English. They are two young women, who appear to me to have only recently sworn off Barbies.
The rest of the flight is a non-event, if you can say that about flying over the Hudson Bay coast under a flawlessly blue sky, staring out the window at miles and miles of aquamarine water and luminescent ice floes. It is just rock, ice and water forever.
5 p.m:
We land at my community. Nothing could have ever prepared me for this place. Apparently there has been an Inuit settlement here in this inlet for a few hundred years. What there is now is a cluster of 50 prefab trailers running up from the sea, huddled in the dip between the rocky hills surrounding it. There is a little sandy beach at the foot of the village, where stranded ice floes lie beached and dripping in the warm sun. The sun. It is still high up in the sky, even though time is marching on to 6 p.m. I could be on the moon for all the landscape looks like Earth. I hoist my stuff and walk towards the nursing station truck sent to pick me up.
Whatever I have committed myself to in the next 6 weeks, it starts here and it begins now.
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posted by catherine at 11:50 am
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