Open Writing

The little fishing boat chugs in towards the shore. The frozen figures on the beach are silent, waiting, staring out to sea like the statues of Easter Island. There is no jetty, only the sand and coral shingle, and the lights of the settlement are cool in the distance. There are children and babies too, held close and snuggled in the Arctic air: they have been waiting in the darkness for hours, for the boat was due back long before midnight, and now it is almost two.

It is the custom among these people to be all together, whether they are hunting caribou or catching the beluga whales that live in these icy waters. We are at the top of the Hudson Bay, guests of the Inuit people for a short time, and the presence of our small group on the fishing boat today meant that this time there was no room for the families to sail with their menfolk. A new and larger fishing boat has been promised by the Canadian government if this first experiment in “eco-tourism” succeeds, so for the past two weeks we have been living and travelling with our courteous, considerate hosts; not in any brash, hastily assembled hotel, but in the community centre, snug and cheerful, alongside an overnight pilot from Churchill.

The master and crew of the once-a-year supply ship would socialise here, and you might find the odd scientist or fieldworker, anthropologist or pastor, for there are several churches that lean slightly into the frozen ground. People can’t be properly buried here; the permafrost spews them upwards again, so in the cemetery wooden crates with little crosses and brief name tags heave upwards, pushing aside the protective piles of stones, like splinters rejected by the body of the ice-bound land.

This is Coral Harbour, on the eastern side of Southampton Island. Millions of years ago the seas were warm and corals bloomed. In the 1950s the migration patterns of the caribou herds changed, and this created famines in the inland Caribou Inuit: many people starved to death. The Canadian Government moved the survivors to several coastal communities in an attempt to provide a solution, and this included education and social services.

We had set out early this morning to sail to Native Point, a summer camping ground on a small island about three hours away. It is looked upon as a sacred place. We sailed in under a blue sky, and in twos were rowed to the shore in a skiff. The sand was strewn with creamy stones, the fine-ground silt of long-gone tropical seas, rock hard now and glinting with tiny facets of shell and the orange curl of miniscule crustaceans. Huge skulls of bowhead whale lay bleached and scoured by the wind, and everywhere between the glacier polished rocks were the bones of bear and arctic fox.

To walk, to look, to stand, to feel - this was a memorable day, and it had been a privilege to come here. Now it was time to retrace our steps and set sail again. The weather had been perfect, whereas a few days before, on another trip, a storm had blown up and we unschooled travellers in these parts had thought we were doomed. On this night, we were in good time, the skies were clear and the weather was calm. We left the island in silence, straining our eyes to see the last point of land become one with the sea.

At the end of July the pack ice is already beginning to form at the top of Hudson Bay, and as darkness fell the chill came and we covered our heads and ears and huddled together on deck. There was nothing to do but sit close and leave to the Inuit the steady chug-chug of taking the boat home. One of them brought us mugs of hot chocolate and cookies, and so we settled down to sit, shoulder pressing shoulder for warmth, and wait. There was no moon to give us light, only the stars, the diamonds of the night.

There is no word to replace ‘suddenly’. And so, suddenly, without warning, the engine stopped: it remained lifeless for an hour before one of the crew came up from trying to solve the problem to ask if anyone had a torch. Something else was required, either a screwdriver or a penknife, I had a little travelling torch and someone else provided item number two, so having handed over these necessities we huddled down again like Emperor penguins.

It is said that everything comes to him who waits (and to her too, presumably), for as we sat and waited something truly wonderful happened. Someone shouted “Look, look up, it’s the Northern Lights. They’re right above us.“ And indeed, they were.

They appeared out of nowhere. Above our stranded little boat, our cold bodies, our worried minds, the floating, dancing, magical curtains of light had come to cheer us, to lift our spirits, as if to say “Don’t worry, we’ll look after you, we’ll keep you company until it’s time for you to go.”

And so it was. It was another hour before the engine flickered into life, and throughout that time we were looking upwards, our chins to the sky, laughing and exclaiming, watching the curtains dance in the night wind, move when we called out, swing down nearer and nearer, swing away, twisting and turning. If the boat had not broken down, we would have seen nothing. This hour of pure joy would not have been given to us. Just imagine: to be unexpectedly waylaid upon the water so that we might enjoy such a command performance. What a gift for the memory.

We can see the lights of Coral Harbour now, and the boat is chugging steadily in. How tired of waiting they must be, how cold, those little groups on the beach, but there is no sound, no wailing of babies, only torchlight penetrating the darkness, seeking out returning husbands and fathers. They have brought us safely back, richer by far than when we left this morning. “Thank you, thank you very much”, and “Goodnight”, we say as we are helped off the boat. We have to leave the next day, and we run like children towards the lighted windows of the community centre.

The following year the Inuit people of Coral Harbour were given a new fishing boat.