History in the making as supply boat makes it through retreating ice
Hi this is Glenn on the 7th of September. I’m looking out at the sea in Cambridge Bay. Ever since we’ve arrived– we’ve been here for for 6 or 7 days now – the weather has been continuously very windy and overcast. It was snowing earlier today and the temperatures have plummeted. So autumn seems to be very short-lived here in the Arctic and winter is already upon us.
We’ve had a couple of unusual things happen. One is that a cruise ship came in - well that in itself is not unusual – but what is unusual is that for the first time ever in history a boat from Montreal has arrived delivering supplies.We’ve talked to locals and this has never happened before and it is because of the retreating ice that it was considered economically viable to bring in the ship. So that was quite a bit of history in the making. As I mentioned a cruise ship came in and people got off and you wondered with these people all pouring off the ship what they expected when they arrived here in the Arctic — you wondered if they expected people coming out in kayaks to welcome them. But they turned up at the town and they came and went very quickly it was a nice sunny day yesterday and they looked around the town and disappeared during last night. We woke up and the big Russian ship that apparently was an ex-spy ship had long since gone.
We’ve had some great meetings here in Cambridge Bay. We’ve met Michelle Gillis the mayor, and we’ve talked to a number of people and have been carrying out interviews and talking to them about their lives up here in the north and we’re looking forward to seeing how those interviews work out. We’ve also had some media coverage – Nunavut News North interviewed us for the newspaper up here – it covers all of Nunavut and they’re very interested to hear about the expedition. And Canada News North interviewed me on the radio so we’ll be the radio up here as well. So that is good news for us as it means that the message for our project is getting a wider audience. One of the things we’ve been thinking about and talking to locals about is perhaps bringing some children out from the UK to study up here as part of a youth elder camp so they can learn some of the skills that the elders and the people up in the north use. This is in an embryonic phase but it has received a huge amount of enthusiasm from the locals up here, so we’re going to look at that when we get back as well.
Anyway all is well. Yesterday Rob, who is a wildlife officer with whom I’m staying with at the moment, and I went out to his cabin on the coast here and on the way back in the middle of the road were three huge Grizzly bears – a huge mother and two pretty large cubs. This is unusual – even Rob himself said it was quite unusual and basically they are getting more and more plentiful on Victoria Island. A few years ago there weren’t any bears on Victoria Island but now as things are changing, warming up and they’re moving north and their territories are spreading. It can actually be a problem for the community here because bears start coming into town or near town they present a threat in a number of ways not only to people but also they start breaking up people’s cabins and causing damage and by doing that they themselves become threatened because obviously people don’t want that to happen and they become what is known as nuisance bears and they end up getting shot. So once again climate change seems to be responsible for another problem. Anyway love to all. We will be back shortly and give a new blog update so everybody knows the conclusion of this year’s work.
