THAWING OUT

After the intense bustle of my 76 days in our Arctic aboard the Canadian icebreaker, CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, it took some time readjusting to life larger than my tiny seafaring cabin. Even after all this time, I may be home but I’m far from settled.

Now, sitting here in a landlocked office below the 49th parallel, my time in the far north feels like a past-life memory. Worse, sometimes it feels like it never happened at all - despite my cache containing thousands of photos and volumes of notes, arising from countless interviews and experiences. But, there are times when the Arctic is once again intensely real to me.

Every time a southerner whines about a trivial thing in their have-everything world, I see the smiling faces of the youngest Arctic children who are still happy with practically nothing in theirs. When I see the teenagers around me throwing away their unlimited opportunities, I recall those far-north adolescents whose future is too-often a dead-end path to despair and suicide. Each time I endure some huckster trying to sell the value of buying yet another new something, I hear those old hunters explaining what it meant to their hamlet’s survival when they were able to bag that one extra caribou. And, all the commotion about Boxing Day sales and cross-border buying orgies for all that must-have crap, reminds me of that Inuit woman’s annual shopping spree down south – a six-hour flight, roundtrip – so she could purchase affordable groceries for her family.

Life’s contrasts above and below The Circle are so striking – on every measurable level – that it seems inconceivable for it all to be in the same country. There’s much more than climate change destroying Canada’s Arctic. Perhaps that’s why I’m so unsettled.

***********************
If not now - when? If not us - who?
All content © Canadian Arctic Service Corps. All rights reserved. Any use without prior written permission is prohibited.