Fifty years ago, landed on the southern shore of and Cold warriors settled Canada’s northernmost community. Now the changing climate is forcing them to adapt once again. BY LISA GREGOIRE ~ PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICE HALLEY

Residents of (from left), Kevin Kiguktak, Gerry Pijamini, Ooleesee Akeeagok, Daniel Flaherty and Peter Flaherty, cavort on the frozen shores of .

34 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 35 Ayles Ice Shelf

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P . A R R BAFFIN Y Jones Sound (RIGHT) C H A N N E L BAY sparkles in the shadow 0 100 200 km Bylot BAFFIN I. Island of melting glaciers. Nunavut’s second small- est community, Grise Fiord (BOTTOM) is made up of 40 houses and another 20 public and commercial buildings.

“You lean when I lean,” yells Marty Kuluguktuk Fiord’s assistant senior administrative officer. “Last year, it The vast landscape Inuit navigated for centuries by over the engine’s shrieking. We’re careening sideways on a shrank 1.5 metres.” We continue northward up the slope, Ysnowmobile around boulders and frozen , approach- pull a U-turn at the top and head south along a rocky ridge reading its subtle signs is becoming warmer, softer ing the foot of a glacier just east of Grise Fiord (pop. 141), dusted with snow. He points to a hill leading to town. Canada’s most northern community. Bare-faced in the cut- “That was all glacier just 10 years ago,” he says. “It’s gone.” and unpredictable because of the changing climate. ting May wind, Kuluguktuk knows only two positions on The glacier is Grise Fiord’s main water supply. Fragmen- the throttle: full and idle. tation is accelerating its retreat into the hills, and last On a steep embankment, we lean hard to no effect. The summer, the runoff didn’t fill the reservoir. In spring, when — Grise Fiord is at the epicentre of global climate change. uphill ski lifts, and we teeter on the brink of flipping over. the hamlet ran out of water, officials dispatched a front-end But it’s not just change that has Inuit families reeling, it’s the I pry numb fingers from the safety bars and clench his loader to chip off chunks of an iceberg just offshore. pace of change, says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who was nomi- waist like someone drowning. Kuluguktuk accelerates to flat A tottering scramble over jutting rocks leads to an nated for a Nobel Prize last year for travelling the world, terrain. “I don’t want to die today, Marty,” I yell with uncon- inuksuk on the edge of a cliff — a sturdy sentry over Jones raising concern about the impact of global warming and vincing levity. Sound and distant . Mountains separate pollutants on her people, the Inuit. He shouts back his trademark reply: “Nothing serious.” Ellesmere’s southern fiords like talons. The air is cool and In the wink of one generation, nomadic children raised Halfway up the glacier’s smooth white tongue, he pulls moist, and the evening’s 24-hour sun glows through a gauzy with dog teams in the 1950s wound up in sedentary nine- over to a pair of aluminum poles poking out of the ice and haze. Directly below us is Grise Fiord, a cluster of dots to-five jobs, many disconnected from the land, their elders cuts the engine. One of the poles is attached to a white metal tangled in a spiderweb of snowmobile trails. Like the and their P. Diddy-and-Facebook offspring. The conse- box and a solar panel — a remote weather monitor. “This 25 other Inuit communities in Nunavut — the two-million- quences of this wholesale cultural shift are well documented:

is where we measure the glacier,” says Kuluguktuk, Grise square-kilometre territory that covers Canada’s eastern Arctic MAP: STEVEN FICK/CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: BRIAN & CHERRY ALEXANDER PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY violent crime and suicide rates are climbing; life expectancy

36 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 37 is falling. Surviving on the land taught Inuit patience, persistence, courage — skills that could ground them, and their children, during this modern tumult. But the vast landscape they navigated for centuries by reading its subtle signs is becoming warmer, softer and unpredictable because of the changing climate. “It’s the very thing we’re going to need as we go into the second wave of change,” says Watt- Cloutier, whose book in progress, The Right to Be Cold, frames the climate-change debate around human rights and indigenous self-determination. “It’s ironic, the very thing we’re reaching out to is under threat.” When Inuit arrived on the southern shore of Ellesmere Island some 50 years ago, it was colder and farther north than any of them had ever been. They called it Ausuittuq, “the place that never melts.” “Never” proved to be a very short time. The creation of Grise Fiord and Resolute, on southern Cornwallis Island, established at the same time, was a social experiment perpetrated on a handful of ill-prepared families from northern and northern Baffin Island in what many believe was an attempt by the federal government to assert its ownership of the Arctic islands within what it considered its northern boundaries. Most of the relocated Inuit had never experienced 24-hour darkness or seen a before. The first few years were extremely difficult. Some families eventually returned home. Others made a life here despite being tethered to the air supply and government assistance common to almost any remote fly-in community. Those who stayed adapted to a new climate and a new environment and it appears they’ll have to do so again. Meanwhile, their leaders are lobbying governments at home and abroad. Mary Simon, president of Canada’s Inuit organization , is urging governments

Ricky Pijamini learns about climate change in school. Is he worried? ‘No way! It means longer summers and more fishing.’

Pauloosie Nungak rides an old washing to help her people prepare for the future by selecting an Inuit insists that the time to mitigate global warming has nearly machine drum scavenged from the model community to address building and engineering expired. “We can’t stop it entirely,” she says, “but we can town dump (ABOVE) as Jason Qaapik (at challenges related to slumping permafrost and to experiment maybe slow down the process.” left) and Gerry Pijamini wait their turn. with culturally sensitive design and sustainability. Watt- Grise Fiord is a traditional, family- Cloutier, who was instrumental in helping to push through Viewed from a Twin Otter about 2,000 metres oriented community, with sled dogs for the 2001 Stockholm Convention banning Persistent Organic above-ground, the Arctic’s puzzle-piece geography becomes hunting and wooden frames for drying Pollutants, which were turning up in the flesh of marine real and identifiable: the retreating shores of Cornwallis seal pelts (LEFT). mammals that are a critical part of the Inuit diet, is unflinch- Island, Wellington Channel — windswept and textured ing before world leaders and international forums. She like fur — bumpy Devon Island. Canada’s third largest

38 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 39 ‘Young and elderly aboriginal residents, in particular those pursuing aspects of traditional ways of life, are the most vulnerable.’

island, Ellesmere is the most northern of the Arctic Archipelago and its most mountainous, though 40 percent of it is pinned under shrinking cloaks of ice, some of them 900-metre-thick remnants of the last ice age. Clouds obscure the aerial view. We hunch against the air- craft’s chilled interior until a wall of rock suddenly, and alarmingly, materializes out of the mist. The plane banks 90 degrees west, drops onto the runway and halts on half a kilometre of gravel. With eight passengers and luggage on board, there was scant room for food and supplies for the community’s only store, a common misfortune with just two scheduled flights weekly. The town went smoke-free for a couple of days this summer when the store ran out of $20 packs of cigarettes. “Do you know what we got today?” asks the exasperated store manager, Doug Field. “Coffee whitener. Two boxes of coffee whitener.” Unlike Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, with its cappuccino and racquetball, Grise Fiord, the territory’s second smallest community, is traditional and family-oriented. There are about 40 dwellings and another 20 public and commercial buildings. No housing shortage here; no food bank. Women make parkas for their bachelor brothers, and everyone hunts or knows someone who does. Many rely on seal, beluga, nar- whal, muskox, ptarmigan, Arctic char, hare, caribou and for food and skins. But subsistence hunting, even here in the High Arctic, could eventually be threatened as animals react to a fluctuating ecosystem. Thanks to our addiction to fossil fuels, even southern Ellesmere has an earlier spring, a warmer summer, a later freeze-up and less sea ice for travelling and hunting. Less ice eventually means more international shipping through the Arctic as well, more resource exploration, a greater risk of environmental contamination — and reduced habitat for the polar bears and seals that eat, mate and reproduce on the ice. But while bureaucrats wring their hands and multinational mining magnates calculate poten- tial profits, while scientists scramble to fill gaps in research that was too expensive to conduct and wasn’t a priority until yesterday and while earnest urbanites ponder what it’s really like in the Arctic, Grise Fiord residents keep fish- ing and hunting while they can, because that’s what they’ve always done. Some Grise Fiord hunters, especially in a crowd, shrug and tell you they don’t want your pity. They’ll adapt. Others say differently in private. “Everybody wants to be warm, but the

Zipporah Kalluk-Aaronsen wears a hand- made parka and stands beside a polar bear pelt in Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, which was created in the 1950s at the same time as Grise Fiord.

40 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 41 Robert Flaherty and roommate Franky Noah look out on a cloudless day (LEFT). Ice floes bob in the bay following spring break-up (OPPOSITE). Last year was the northern hemisphere’s warmest since record-keeping began in 1880.

than hunter: baggy jeans, hoodie, ball cap, sneakers. Sure he’s proud of con - quering the world’s largest land predator, but for dinner, he prefers spaghetti. There are a little more than a dozen individual polar bear populations in Canada, according to Ian Stirling, one of the world’s leading polar bear researchers. They range from the Beaufort Sea to Davis Strait and from the High Arctic to Hudson Bay. An emeritus scientist with Environment Canada and adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, Stirling has stud- Arctic and Inuit need a cold climate,” says Jeffrey Qaunaq, ied polar bears, seals and the impacts of climate change for 30, a father of three and a conservation officer with Nunavut’s four decades, paying particular attention to the bears’ south- Department of Environment. “I don’t try to think about it, ern range in western Hudson Bay, where significantly less but I still worry.” Grise Fiord mayor and schoolteacher ice — and therefore less access to seals, their main food Meeka Kiguktak worries too. “If we cannot go out hunting, source — means bears there are now smaller, less healthy what are we going to do?” she asks. “What will we eat? It’s and having fewer cubs. hard to empower a community when you are dependent.” He started noticing problems in the mid-1990s. “There were some fluctuations within the data,” he says, “but it was “We were looking for seal holes. My dad was a long-term, unidirectional trend, and I began to suspect waiting near one. We’d been out for hours. I was driving climate change.” By 1997, the hypothesis became fact. “And around, and we were just about to head home but my dad all the data we’ve collected in the 10 years since then have saw something far away. It was a polar bear.” Daniel Flaherty been consistent with everything we said back then. Sadly.” is recounting how, on his fifteenth birthday two days ago, The western Hudson Bay population is clearly dwindling. he aimed his father’s rifle and shot a bear. Flaherty’s father, From 1987 to 2004, it has shrunk to 935 from 1,200. Raymond Mercredi — a Saskatchewan Cree-Chipewyan The polar bear is the Arctic’s iconic symbol. Its predicted who’s been here for 30 years — spent hours today marinat- demise not only put eco-celeb Leonardo DiCaprio’s natty ing wild meat and simmering it in a rich gravy. He has knickers in knot but convinced the U.S. government to invited half the town to his spacious home to enjoy a feast label polar bears “threatened” under the Endangered Species of polar bear and muskox, spaghetti and hot dogs. Sticky- Act, thereby preventing American sport hunters from drop- faced toddlers waddle about, teenage girls muster on the ping $30,000 a shot in northern communities to bring couch in T-shirts and jeans, boys play hand-held video home a hide. games, and the front door constantly swings open for new Aside from Stirling’s bears and the Beaufort Sea popula- arrivals. Flaherty, a grade nine student, looks more rapper tions, which are also in decline, it’s unclear how other groups ‘I think Inuit are realizing there’s not a lot they can do to make the changes needed, and the world community is not addressing these issues,’ says Mary Simon.

42 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 43 High Arctic hunters report more bears than ever and claim there is no crisis. But ‘things don’t look good,’ says Ian Stirling. And that’s troubling for some Inuit. The bear facts

im Lund spent more than what the average Canadian worker Tearns in a year to slay the Arctic’s fiercest predator and return home with the hide and the video to prove it. But all he’s got so far is the video. In May, Lund, a dentist and sport hunter from Montana, paid $33,500 (not including airfare, permits and other fees) to Grise Fiord hunter and guide Kavavow Kiguktak to track and shoot a polar bear. A week later, the U.S. government listed polar bears as a threatened species under its Endangered Species Act, ban- ning the importation of hides — including those from animals already killed. As of July, Lund’s hide and 19 others belonging to American hunters were piled in the storage room of Edmonton taxidermist Richard Page pending the outcome of a lawsuit launched against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by Safari Club International, an American hunting group. Page estimates another 40 or so American hides are stranded elsewhere in Canada. Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), the territory’s aboriginal land- claim organization, supports a sustainable sport hunt in areas where bear populations are stable. According to Gabriel Nirlungayuk, NTI’s director of wildlife, the number of Nunavut bears has doubled to about 15,000 in the past three decades, so the ban is not only disappointing but puzzling. “To our knowl- edge,” he says, “it’s the first time a species has been listed as threatened because of climate models and a forecasted decline.” Roughly 450 polar bears were taken in Nunavut in 2006-07 — 120 by sport hunters and 330 by subsistence hunters. Quotas are set annually by the Government of Nunavut in partnership with the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board based on scientific and traditional Inuit knowledge of Nunavut’s 12 bear popula- tions. According to government status reports, six populations are increasing, four may be declining and two (Davis Strait and Foxe Basin) have unknown status. Each population is shared among communities that hunt in Grise Fiord figures the area and tags are distributed by community hunter associa- tions. Those associations decide how many tags go to local Named by Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup, Grise Fiord hunters (about 78 percent) and to sport hunters, who contribute means “pig fiord,” for the piglike sounds made by walrus an estimated $2.5 million in revenue annually, $1.87 million of are faring. Research in remote, cold places with sporadic air them, especially older people. They’re having a hard enough that once inhabited the fiord. which stays in Nunavut. More than two-thirds of sport hunters service is prohibitively expensive. High Arctic hunters report time trying to pass on traditions, and with less opportunity, Population 141 (2006 Census) are American. more bears than ever and claim there’s no crisis. Stirling says what are they going to do?” Location Southern Ellesmere Island, 1,544 kilometres from Each winter, three guiding companies, employing nearly two bears at higher latitudes might be healthier because plenty of Canada has lost, on average, three percent of its sea ice the North Pole and 1,160 kilometres north of the dozen people, funnel approximately $250,000 into the tiny hamlet sea ice still forms annually, seals can make dens and the every year for the past 30 years — eight percent, if you Sunlight 24-hour daylight from May to August; of Grise Fiord. While some guests track wolves and muskox, most bears have a platform from which to hunt. But if you believe measure only the summer minimums, according to 24-hour darkness from October to early February seek an encounter with the great white bear, which can take days the models that project continuous Arctic warming and Christophe Kinnard, a glaciologist with the Geological Extreme temperatures Lowest recorded since 1985 is or weeks to procure. Grise Fiord usually gets 35 polar bear tags per corresponding sea ice depletion, “then I think things don’t Survey of Canada. Not long ago, scientists predicted the -47°C (January 1990); highest recorded since 1985 is year, one-third of which are allocated for sport. Marty Kuluguktuk, look good,” says Stirling, and that’s troubling for some Inuit Arctic Ocean would be ice-free in summer by 2100. Now 14.3°C (July 1999) a hamlet employee and sport-hunt facilitator, says guides are now with whom he’s worked. “It worries and confuses a lot of it could be 2030 or sooner. Average temperatures -31.4°C (January); 3.5°C (July) pursuing clients in Russia, Europe and Mexico. L.G.

44 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 45 Daniel Flaherty checks his e-mail in front of windows hung with thick curtains to dim the brilliance of the 24-hour sun.

But when it’s so fast and so big, it looks like a clear sign to me.” There are other signs. In the planet’s geological continuum, we’re in the mid- dle of an interglacial period, and accord- ing to the Earth’s orbital and rotational elements, which are cyclical, we should be cooling toward its next ice age in 3,000 to 5,000 years. But it’s getting warmer, instead.

Ricky Keyoota Pijamini, 11, is climbing boulders, guiding me to a mountain called the Greenlander, just Climate change impacts the sea ice in many complex and west of Grise Fiord. Sunday morning brings more sun, a interconnected ways, and some conditions compound oth- comfortable -8°C but not a soul to life. Everyone’s in bed. ers. Energy trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases Days blur into nights, when the sun shines all the time. affects wind formation and direction, explains Kinnard, and People visit and drink tea past midnight, fix snowmobiles at wind impacts ocean currents. More warm water from the 3 a.m. or leave for hunting because the ice is colder then, Atlantic Ocean is migrating to the Arctic, for example, erod- harder and faster. And every 24 hours, the sun draws a huge ing ice from below, while warmer air thins it from above. halo in the sky. The opposite is true here from mid-October Wind and currents crack it and move it around, creating open to early February, when the sun disappears altogether. water, which absorbs more heat from the sun than does ice Pijamini points to rabbit tracks. “I want to be a hunter, — accelerating the melt. Sometimes these conditions lead to to get money for sport hunting,” he says. He’s been prac- more abrupt alterations. In 2005, a 66-square-kilometre slab tising: 15 seals and one ptarmigan so far. A is of ice broke off from the Ayles Ice Shelf on the northern coast next, he boasts. Yes, he learns about climate change in of Ellesmere, creating a floating ice island slightly larger than school. Is he worried? “No way! It means longer summers Manhattan. And in July, a four-square-kilometre chunk split and more fishing.” from the neighbouring Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. The mountain seemed closer from town. Halfway there, “The loss of sea ice is stunning,” says Kinnard. “When I we rest on a lichen-spotted rock. The snow provides looked at the maps of the Arctic Ocean from summer 2007, unlimited amusement. Pijamini makes brittle, powdery I remember feeling scared. Maybe scared is not the right word. snowballs with forceful palms and throws them at rocks and Impressed.” Last year was the northern hemisphere’s warmest at me. After a break and peanut butter sandwiches, we year since record-keeping began in 1880. Arctic Ocean ice was embark. Soon, we are sweaty from exertion. He unzips his 39 percent smaller in 2007 than the previous 20-year average. parka and lies, face down in the snow. “I want to feel the “You see these data,” he says, “and always, as a scientist, you cold,” he says. “Ahh, that’s better.” About halfway up the have to think, is this real? Is it possible that it’s something else? slope, our conviction wavers. We look downhill at smooth They turn to what they know. When hunters leave town, they conduct their own informal research, comparing current and past experiences fishing, hunting, camping.

46 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 How we live could destroy a culture. And that makes climate change an issue of human rights: the right to live connected to the land; the right to be cold. white chutes between rocks, and within seconds, we’re consensus: shrinking glaciers, warmer temperatures, unpre- riding the snow-pant luge to the bottom. dictable winds, earlier ice breakup, later freeze-up, more “The ice is so unpredictable now. People are worried about rain, less snow and more mosquitoes. it, but what can we do?” says Pijamini’s grandmother Peepeelee These observations are consistent with what scientists Pijamini, a teacher. “It’s saddening to see the way our hunt- have noticed as well. In May, the federal government pub- ing and camping are all changing.” She pours tea while her lished “From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing husband, artist Looty Pijamini, works on a $5,000 sculpture Climate 2007.” Compiling a decade’s worth of research of Sedna, mermaid goddess of the sea, being pulled by a into one book, with contributions from 18 lead authors and beluga whale. “It’s kind of scary to go to Devon Island to go dozens of other sources, it details the most critical climatic fishing and come back to find large cracks where there are issues facing each region in the country. strong currents,” she says. “It’s way different than before.” She The first and longest chapter is on the North. Authors high- has noticed other things too, like more cumulus clouds, the light four key findings: changes to the cryosphere (snow, ice, kind Inuit associate with southern parts of the country. permafrost) have important implications for infrastructure Traditional camping trips in June are abbreviated. People maintenance and design; as the climate changes, the shift- return early for fear of being trapped by open water. Seals moult ing range, distribution and accessibility of flora and fauna at different times now, she adds, and their skin is thinner. will impact human populations; increased Arctic navigabil- For years, scientists have come North with cameras, radio ity will bring economic opportunities but also challenges collars, ice-core samplers, freeze-dried food. They spend associated with culture, security and the environment. The weeks in remote locations and gather valuable data that fourth finding speaks directly to many Grise Fiord residents: help them, and us, understand our modulating North. But “Young and elderly aboriginal residents, in particular those many Inuit don’t have access to that research. Most of their pursuing aspects of traditional and subsistence-based knowledge of global warming comes from personal obser- ways of life in more remote communities, are the most vul - vation or mainstream-media reports that can be oversimpli- nerable to the impacts of climate change in the North. An fied and sometimes inaccurate. erosion of their adaptive capacity via the social, cultural, So they turn to what they know. When hunters leave political and economic changes taking place in many com- town, they conduct their own informal research, comparing munities today will further challenge their abilities to adapt current and past experiences fishing, hunting, camping. to changing environmental conditions.” Enhanced eco- Five years ago, in an ongoing commitment to document tra- nomic opportunities might mitigate those challenges, it ditional knowledge, Nunavut’s Department of Sustainable adds, but the net impact is “difficult to predict.” Development released a series of reports called “Inuit Combined with Nunavut’s traditional-knowledge study, Qaujimajatuqangit of Climate Change in Nunavut,” based these two reports sound an unequivocal warning: how we on existing data and contemporary interviews with elders and live and do business could destroy a culture. And that, says hunters. Grise Fiord participants noted many abnormal Watt-Cloutier, makes climate change an issue of human things, but in some observations, there was a general rights: the right to live connected to the land when most of the Earth’s peoples have, at their own peril, forgotten how; and the right to be cold. “Our culture is not trivial. It’s not window dressing. It’s not legends and folklore,” she says. “It’s based on wisdom and sustainability. It’s our life.”

It’s almost midnight. We’re standing on a smooth 1 patch of new sea ice near Coburg Island, a 2 ⁄2-hour snow- mobile ride east of Grise Fiord and a kilometre or so from the open waters of Baffin Bay. The polynya (open water surrounded by sea ice) has almost completely frozen over, trapping several dozen beluga whales. Jeffrey Qaunaq, his wife Susie, their three sons and Susie’s father, Aksajuk Ningiuk, have invited a few visitors to witness this rarely seen phenomenon.

Cashier Shannon Kalluk rings in an order of slushies and stuffed toys at the Grise Fiord co-op store (LEFT).

48 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008 Raynee Flaherty sews slippers by a window with a view of Jones Sound.

cles as well as in blood, and can live for months under ice. They bust open air holes with their backs, dive more than 500 metres and feed on cod. Some of these belugas may die. Some may be hunted. But they are patient, tenacious, communal and adaptable, and despite Mother Nature’s trickery, many will live and thrive. They are like the Inuit, who face a similar trickery and the same promising odds. In one generation, Inuit were swept up by both a social and an economic revolution. In one more, they will undergo an environmental one. “I think Inuit are realizing there’s not a lot they can do to make the changes needed,” says Mary Simon, “and the world community is not addressing these issues.” Nor is Canada. Watt-Cloutier worries mostly about those responsible for maintaining infrastructure such as community sewage lagoons, water reservoirs, public buildings and mine tailings ponds, all of which could be undermined by melting permafrost. “Our hunters will likely fare better than our insti- tutions,” she says. “They will be challenged, of course. There are more accidents on the ice now, and people are losing their lives and their machines. But they are ingenious, and they are definitely adapting.” In a time of worrying ambiguity, this, at least, is true. I visit Ningiuk after our trip to the polynya. With the aid The wind hits my face like a slap. Swaddled in down and of an interpreter, he gives me his observations of the sky, the fur, we huddle like penguins beside a hole two metres long ice and the wind. Amid his tidy collection of teacups and and about 30 centimetres wide, and wait. A white adult bel- family photos is a narwhal tusk, a harpoon and a laptop uga breaches, blows spray from a valve on top of its head and computer. When I ask about the laptop, he smiles proudly. inhales deeply before plunging back into the indigo aperture. The internet offers quick access to current weather condi- Suddenly, the portal is a churning mass of grey and white tions and detailed images of the floe edge and shifting sea bodies, pushing, bobbing, gasping, diving. This would be ice, he says. Oh, and MSN Messenger is a great way to stay thrilling if the whales weren’t in such obvious distress. in touch with friends. But a trapped animal is a hunter’s good fortune, and Qaunaq and his family prepare to harvest. Jesse, 12, aims the Lisa Gregoire is a writer based in Edmonton. Photographer Second World War-era Enfield .303 rifle into the water. Patrice Halley lives in Cranbrook, B.C. His father stands to his right, ready to harpoon the wounded prey before it sinks. The elder, Ningiuk, is on Jesse’s left; he’ll choose an animal, and on his CG mark, Jesse will shoot. Twenty minutes pass. Steadfast and eventually encased in a thin layer of ice from the whales’ ON THE WEB spray, they are statues in a timeless diorama. Finally, the elder yells, the To comment on this story and see boy fires, and the father plunges the video clips, additional photos of harpoon into the whale’s rear flank. Grise Fiord and related stories, visit Ningiuk has seen belugas trapped www.canadiangeographic.ca. like this before. But it’s nearly spring, he For an interview with photographer explains, cracks will soon appear in the Patrice Halley, log on to ice and the whales should survive. photoclub.canadiangeographic.ca. Belugas have copious blubber reserves See video of the ice-trapped belugas. and the ability to store oxygen in mus- VIDEO: LISA GREGOIRE

50 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC OCTOBER 2008