When I mention to others that I lived in the Yukon, many ask me why there are communities in Canada’s far north. “It must be so cold and dark,” they say. The answer for the thousands who live in the Arctic is simple yet overpowering: it’s home.
It’s hard for this transient generation to understand how that reason can hold such sway. For the Inuvialuit who have lived on the coast of the Arctic Ocean for nearly a millennium, it is what grounds their way of life—embracing and cherishing the harsh and stark land. Those who have moved more recently from further south find themselves relating to what Robert Service called “the spell of the Yukon”—an intangible and unexplainable allure towards the vastness of the forests and tundra.
The Dempster highway begins near Dawson City, Yukon, and winds its grey ribbon across 700km of wilderness to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. When I visited in 2017, it was the last year that the final stretch on the Mackenzie Delta from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk was traversed via the ice road. A new, all-season road was constructed overland between the two towns, making the ice road obsolete. But with the all-season road came concerns that the enhanced connection to the outside world could bring unwanted change to the area that has been set apart for so long.
The ice road to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories connected the town on the edge of the Arctic Ocean to the main highway system only in winter. It is now linked by an all-weather road.
Reindeer are guided by Inuvialuit herders on snowmobiles near Inuvik, NWT. The herders move the reindeer from their winter habitat towards their spring calving grounds on the Mackenzie Delta.
A truck climbs the pass into the Richardson Mountains. The road from the south is the only connection the communities in the Mackenzie Delta have to the outside world in the winter months. The completion of the all-weather road will bring a steadier supply of goods into the area.
A resident fills up his snowmobile in Tuktoyaktuk.
Drummers perform during the Inuvik Muskrat Jamboree on April 7, 2017. Communities in the Mackenzie Delta all hold celebrations when longer daylight hours return, heralding the impending onset of spring weather.
A limosine drives down the ice road in Inuvik during Muskrat Jamboree celebrations.
Snowshoe races during the Inuvik Muskrat Jamboree are held with traditional snowshoes only – no aluminum allowed.
The herd of about 2,000 reindeer was brought from Alaska to the Mackenzie Delta in 1935 and are an important source of food for the community.
Danny Gordon holds a pair of muskrat tails twisted together to hang and dry. Danny, an 81-year-old living on the Mackenzie Delta still gets out on the land to hunt every summer.
Children wait in the pit area during the Muskrat Jamboree snowmobile races.
A building is shovelled out in Tuktoyaktuk.
A woman dressed in traditional Inuvialuit outerwear watches the reindeer crossing north of Inuvik.
