Missing Beechey Island: Arctic 7

High Arctic Explorer: Arctic 7

Sunday August 7, 2022
[ed. I didn’t draft very many blog posts on the second part of our trip ‘High Arctic Explorer.’ I’m not sure why I didn’t. Oh well. One of the characteristics of travel in the Arctic is that you are always, ALWAYS, at the mercy of ice, wind, fog, and swell. Around the middle of the trip Barbara, the host, asked if I would give a short talk on what the ‘adventure’ part of adventure travel looks like when you’re in the middle of it. This is what I said:]

Cruising in the fog

I have a bit of a story to tell you tonight. It won’t be very long but it starts off when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I didn’t like to clean my bedroom. Those who have seen my woodshop would say that I haven’t changed much. One day my mum put her foot down and told me I had to get my room tidied up. I must have been near the end of the task because I was in the process of capturing and disposing of the immense dust dinosaurs that had accumulated on every horizontal surface and under my bed.

I remember I was running the dust cloth over the top of my dresser and listening to a CBC program about the Franklin expedition and the three graves on Beechey Island. I stopped dusting and listened. Something in that story caught my attention. It wasn’t immediately a desire to see the place, just something that remained a tickle in the back of my mind as I grew older.

Like most white kids of my generation I was completely ignorant of the fact that Franklin was a very short English blip on the vast richness of the Arctic’s past. Still it was, for me, the beginning of an interest in the land and her peoples.

Fast forward to 2015 and my introduction to Adventure Canada. A friend Photographer, Scott Forsyth, was going on a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador and his excitement about the adventure was contagious. We joined him on that trip and learned that Adventure Canada offered a trip into the Northwest Passage. The teenager with the duster in her hand appeared and announced, “I want to be on that trip.”

On the Newfoundland Labrador trip there was one day when we couldn’t make a landing because of the swell and I was a bit disappointed but loved the talks aboard the ship that were offered instead.

It took until 2018 for us to embark on our Northwest Passage trip. As soon as we arrived in Ottawa, I was introduced to ice charts and the true meaning of adventure. At our first briefing Jason showed us an ice chart with a whole lot of red on it. In fact, the Ocean Endeavour had turned around half way across Davis Strait and headed back for Kangerlussuaq. Instead of starting in Canada we were to spend an unanticipated day in Ottawa and then fly to Greenland.

Fast forward again further into the trip and a few ice charts later. We were heading for Beechey Island where we planned to land. As we got closer the ice coverage near the shore got thicker. There was to be no landing on Beechey. I was disappointed but, by then, I was thinking differently about adventure. Before Beechey Island, I had considered adventure through the lens of hiking, canoe, and bicycle trips that had a few blips in them but, in general, proceeded as planned. Of course, I knew the possibility of not being able to complete a trip according to plan was there, but I tucked that bit of info in the back of my mind where I didn’t give it much attention.

Jason and the ship’s captain tried to shift the schedule and the route to get us through a Northwest passage. In the process I think we saw Beechey twice more. Once it looked like we would be able to land but our human concept of time, the ice, swell, and fog had other ideas.

For the rest of the trip the ice continued to determine our course. The specific details have faded, but it seems we sailed toward several communities in hopes that we might be able to disembark and fly south. We spent an extra day at sea sailing as fast as we could back to Mittimatalik where the Adventure Canada staff pulled off one of their routine miracles. Somehow, on the long weekend in September, folks behind the scenes chartered every available small aircraft in Yellowknife to fly us from Mittimatalik to Yellowknife where we boarded a 737 charter that took us to Edmonton.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, I have never set foot on Beechey Island and this might or might not be the trip where I can do that. The other thing that has changed since my first trip is my attitude to adventure. When I was young adventure involved a certain amount of discomfort and it was all wonderful. Now I truly appreciate a warm bed, hot food and a shower when I go adventuring.

Something else I appreciate is that when I come on one of these adventures it is not so much to experience a specific place but to experience whatever the land, her people, the weather and the ice have in store for me. If we set foot on Beechey Island I will be truly delighted, and if we don’t, I will have fond memories of the welcoming give of mossy tussocks under my boots in Disko Bay, seeing Nancy’s paintings take shape, the ethereal blue of the icebergs, and the many laughs and stories that are part of this voyage. Regardless of whether we return home via Resolute, Kangerlussaq, or some other landing place, I will have had an adventure and that’s what I signed up for.

Ice

[ed. Once again we missed Beechey Island. Instead we experienced a cruise amongst the pack ice halfway between Canada and Greenland where the water was 2km deep. Quite a number of people have been to Beechey Island but I’m willing to bet that not very many have been in a zodiac negotiating among the ice pans in the middle of the ocean. That is another sort of adventure.]