Grise Fiord - The Most Northern Community in Canada! ... And you thought it was Resolute Bay, Didn't you?

Final destination in the high arctic! OMG Grise Fiord! There are only two flights each week that go to Grise, and of course that is weather permitting, as always. There is a very small runway nestled in the mountain side which makes landing very difficult. Nothing larger than a twin otter can land and the wind has to be below ten knots. It is very easy to be trapped in Grise for these reasons.

Grise was established in the 1950`s during the Government of Canada`s High Arctic Relocation.This is the only community in the North that actually has a decreasing population, currently there are only 114 residents. I urge you to watch the documentary Martha of The North, which shows the hardships these Inuit families faced when they were moved from their homes in Northern Quebec under false promises of fertile lands, excellent hunting and the choice to go home after two years if they wanted. 

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to have tea with one gentleman who appeared in the film. Larry received the Order Of Canada for his efforts to gain reconciliation with the government. It was not until 2010 that the government finally gave a formal apology, admitting to the inhumane treatment and forcible relocation of these families.

On a happier note, the people in Grise were amazing and very hospitable, similar to Resolute. I really enjoyed my short trip there. Here are some pictures!

I was really having second thoughts when I saw this thing.

Me at the back of a terribly small plane.

This is Grise!
The first two days we had light like this for 30 minutes,
then it was black...all night and all day.

Me.
Getting ready to drive the GN SUV.

Looty Pijamini's monument of the first Inuit settlers of 1952 and 1955 in Grise Fiord
(commissioned by the Canadian Government)
Unfinished monument. The blob on the left is supposed to be a dog.

Friday Night in Resolute Bay - Let's Go To The Dump!

Resolute Bay has a population of approximately 250 people, and many polar bears. Resolute is considered the gateway to the magnetic North Pole and, therefore, is frequented regularly by adventure tourists. There are three hotels in this small community, most communities only have one. 

The town.
A plane crashed in the mountain a couple of years ago...let's not think about that.

I have to tell you that this small community quickly became my favourite out of the nine communities I have had the opportunity to visit in the North. The people here are SO friendly and warm. You feel a great sense of family and community spirit. Everyone looks out for each-other. People even take turns on voluntary polar bear watch in order to keep the children and community safe. 

It goes on forever!
Watch out for polar bears!

Speaking of polar bears....It is Friday night, so what do we do for fun in the High North? Well, we decide to drive down to the dump to watch polar bears, of course! Four of us piled into a van, with cameras in tow, hoping to get a glimpse of a real, live polar bear. There are so many polar bears in Resolute that the community has 30 tags per year, (compared to 20 in most). Half of these are sold to Southerners who hunt for sport. The dump had some arctic foxes and a polar bear popping up in the background. Honestly, I couldn't differentiate the bear from the piles of snow.

This photo was taken a couple of days before I arrived by a man staying at the hotel.
The bears go to the dump to eat, they don't seem to care if it is still hot and on fire.

At the airport.
This is the closest I got to a polar bear.

We worked in clinic for a mere two days before we decided to head to our next destination, Grise Fiord. 

Health Clinic

Proof I was in Resolute.
Arctic ocean in the background.

High Arctic Adventure - Arctic Bay

After leaving Pond Inlet, I arrived home for a four day mini vacation. Next stop was Iqaluit to meet my new dentist for the high arctic trip. Our first stop was Arctic Bay on Northern Baffin Island. The plan was to stay for two weeks, but we cut our visit down to ten days due to the fact that we were struggling to get patients in. There was a dental team in just a couple of weeks ago, and the community seems to have been over-serviced. I welcomed the slower pace since I have been working a lot of overtime and could use a bit of a break. Did I also mention that I caught a horrible flu that made it's way around town not once, but twice. Not fun to be sick in the Arctic!

Arctic Bay has a population of approximately 1000. There is a Northern Store, a Co-Op, a couple of convienient stores, and a heritage centre where they sell local carvings, mittens and artwork. There are also three churches in the community.

Street and Skidoo.

Northern Store, just three houses from the health centre

The Bay. Too frozen to use these. Two dog teams are tied up on the ice.

Church to the right of the health centre

Stuart and I had the opportunity to visit the school and meet some great kids in grade 5 and 6. This school has a dental therapist who takes care of all of the children's oral health needs, so instead of doing a dental presentation Stuart showed pictures from his trip to Africa, which the kids loved!

Grade 5/6

All giggles. They loved having their picture taken.

I was thrilled to see the toothbrushes in the classroom!

Inuit Languages

My past trips were in the Kitikmeot region towards the West. There the dialect was called Inuinnaqtun. In the Baffin region it is Inuktitut. My wonderful clerks, Julia in Clyde, and Ruthie in Pond, haves been trying to teach me the basics. I am pretty bad and get laughed at on occasion. It's a hard language to speak!

I found that very few people chose to speak Inuit languages in the communities I had visited before. Mostly, just elders spoke their native language. I had no problems speaking to people in English as it was preffered. There was even concern that the language and culture were in risk of dying. Here in Baffin, Inuktitut is definitely the language of preference, especially young children who often do not speak English at all. I am so grateful to have my interpreters!

Also, syllabics are used here, where they were not in the Kitkmeot region.

Pond elementary school

Lesson:

ullaku - good morning
atii - please
qruyannami - thank you
qanuippi - how are you
ii - yes
aaka - no
kiigu - bite (important for me!)
taima - all done (VERY important)

I am noticing that there are slight differences in dialect from Clyde River to Pond Inlet, even though they are only a short hour plane ride away from each other, which is making leaning Inuktitut even more difficult.

Inuktitut Syllabics

Million Dollar View

Let's get you up to speed. I have been in Pond Inlet since October 18th. I have been trying to get caught up on writing, but it has been a bit difficult while working 75 hour weeks. I'm just a bit tired!

Pond Inlet has a population of about 1700 people. This is the largest community I have worked in, so far. It is located on the Northeastern tip of Baffin Island. I only had two days with picture opportunities where the sun was shining. It has been very overcast weather since I have arrived.

Mountain range

Small piece of a large iceberg that floated in last week.

Moon and mountains

Nanuq

Clyde River is regularly frequented by polar bears. Sometimes they will come right in town to the Northern store! I was told when I first arrived that I should not walk to and from the clinic because of this danger. However, I like to walk, so in the day, when there were lots of people around, I would take the ten minute walk, risking being eaten by a nanuq (polar bear). Sadly, two days later there was a sighting near the airport which is very close to where I was staying, so my walks were short lived.

The week before I arrived there were two nanuqs hanging around town. There are always people on lookout. Eventually one got too close and was killed for obvious safety reasons. Polar bear pie was being passed around town, or so I heard (not a joke). The other bear was clearly worried he too would also become pie and decided to leave.

Nanuq hunting seems to be well regulated in the North. Names are drawn at random for tags that expire in a couple of days when a new name is then drawn. Each community has an allotment for tags, Clyde has around 20. If bears are killed in selfdefense, the number of tags subsequently goes down.

Nanuq is considered country food here. However, the big prize is getting paid for the skin from buyers down South. A young lady I met got $12 000 for her polar bear skin. The price can be much higher depending on the size of bear.

Google image. I did not encounter these cute bears.

Clinic

We were off to a bumpy start as far as clinic went. When we arrived we had no instruments; no forceps, elevators, or restoration material, we didn't even have lidocaine (freezing). We tried to see some patients, but we could only perform an exam and tell them to come back when we got our supplies and anaesthetic in. By Saturday we had all of our shipments and were able to start properly seeing patients. Let the 12 hour + shifts begin!

Our little op

Health Centre and Dental Waiting Room

We see a lot of deep decay and perform a lot of extractions and fillings. We have patients as young as 17 months old coming in with decay so far gone that we have no choice but to remove the teeth that are causing abscesses. We sometimes take newly erupted adult teeth (6 year molars) out of 7 year old children. Obviously we see  lot of tears in the day. This makes some people uncomfortable, but the patients are just scared and should be allowed to cry. As Julia said "I don't mean to be rude, but this is some scary shit!". We are fortunate enough down South to have sedation, here there is nothing. There are waiting list of young patients to be flown to Iqaluit or Ottawa to have sedation, but it can take up to two years to be seen. By that time it is really too late, people can only suffer from a tooth ache for so long. In a perfect world there would be no tooth aches, especially for children.