Arriving in Igloolik

In order to get to Igloolik, I first had to fly to Iqaluit. Luckily I'd put my down jacket in my hand baggage, but I was wearing ankle socks and trainers. How cold would it be? Ribbons of windblown snow were snaking along the runway - just at ankle height. In the event, it was only a short walk from the plane to the building, and the cold fresh air felt great. Iqaluit airport was positively heaving with people and an extraordinary quantity of luggage. Then 16 of us got onto an 18 seater plane and set off for Igloolik, just as the sun was setting. This was about 2pm. The flight was a couple of hours and it was completely dark by the time we landed, on a gravel runway, in Igloolik. This airport was tiny, and much less busy. Jennifer was there to meet me, a small figure muffled up in a huge down parka. Fantastic! Someone said something about how we must be really good friends for me to come and visit her here - so we laughed and confessed that we'd never met before in our lives! Jennifer and Ian completely welcomed me into their home - complete with baby Aowyn and husky dog Kuni (Inuit for kiss). The evening I arrived we all walked over to John and Carolyn MacDonald's house. John is a Scot who has been living in Igloolik for 23 years and reminded me very much of the Scottish Arctic Club members in his enthusiasm and seemingly boundless knowledge. The walk over to their house was the moment when I truly appreciated that I was in the Arctic. It was dark, but there were streetlights reflecting off the snow and Northern Lights in the sky. The houses were shrouded in frost. Ian and I had big down parkas and Jenn was carrying Aowyn in the hood of her amauti. The amauti is a traditional parka made with a big hood which the baby sits in. The hood is big enough that it can be pulled right over the baby's head to keep her completely warm and insulated from the cold. The snow squeaked under our boots and the air was crisp and cold on my lungs. It was all real, despite the horrendous journey to get here, I had finally arrived.

Outward bound...

After the delights of a drizzly Welsh New Year, wading in a waterlogged Lake District and accidentally finding a Scottish snowstorm on the return to Glasgow it was a bit of a shock to find myself finally on a plane across the Atlantic. I was armed with almost everything I hoped I needed for a couple of weeks in the Arctic. The only extra necessity was a pair of warm winter boots and so I'd built an extra day into my itinerary to allow time to hit the shops in Ottawa. Or not... as the case might be. I arrived in Newark, and then got stuck. Unseasonal fog in Ottawa meant that my connecting flight was cancelled, then the next, then the next. After a night in a hotel the next day was spent in the airport - and making friends with fellow passengers in the same plight. Tifenn, David and I came up with a great plan of driving six hours from New York to Ottawa - but decided that would be a bad idea when Continental staff appeared to say that if we did that, they wouldn't be responsible for getting our luggage to Ottawa! After being sent over to Air Canada, we waited nervously to discover whether we would be allowed to fly as standby passengers on a flight to Toronto. Toronto, not Ottawa - but at least it would be the correct country! We were ecstatic to get on the flight - all three of us had spent more than enough time in Newark airport. Unfortunately, the last thing I heard before getting on the flight was that no bags had been transferred from Continental. I spent the flight chatting to the wonderful lady in the seat next to me who had just spent the last day or two flying from Jakarta where she'd been visiting her daughter. The connecting flight to Ottawa wasn't due to leave until 6:20am, so we pulled some seats together and slept in a cafe in Toronto airport. Then when I got up at 4am, our flight was "on time" - were we really going to make it to Ottawa? Finally? I checked the arrival board - all flights leaving Ottawa for Toronto had been cancelled...maybe we weren't going anywhere after all. I didn't tell the others - let them hope! So I was very surprised to be boarded onto the plane. At this point I was utterly convinced that I would never see my bag again. I knew that I would arrive in Ottawa airport with just enough time to get to my connecting flight to Nunavut. Should I go even without my bag? Turning up in Igloolik without anything warmer than my jeans and trainers seemed to be the height of stupidity. But not to go? That too seemed foolish. So I checked in. "Would you like to check any bags?" asked the check in clerk. "No thanks" I said blythely, "They're somewhere in America". Then, I went back downstairs to rejoin the others. Skeptically, we allowed the baggage service officer to take our luggage receipts and go to "see if your bags are in customs". Yeah right, we thought. Not a chance. He disappeared for ages and I was beginning to get worried as I wanted to go through security for my flight to Iqaluit. Then, miracle of miracles, he came back, with a trolley upon which were sat our bags! Suddenly, everything seemed to be coming together and I rushed off to happily check in my bag and head through security to the gate. Looking outside, it seemed that my haste had been premature. It was properly thick fog. How on Earth could any pilot take off in that?! Nonetheless, amid all other flights cancelling, ours was called, we trouped onto the plane and were pushed off to taxi through the cloud. The guy sat next to me worked for a renewable energy company and lived in Iqaluit. He said exactly the same thing happened yesterday - they taxied out, sat in the plane for an hour, then taxied back to the terminal. It seemed as if history was repeating itself when the pilot said we were waiting in a queue of five, all of us praying for the visibility to increase. Some of the other planes gave up, we stayed. Then, our pilot announced that there was a jump in visibility - hopefully it would last long enough for us to get airbourne. To be honest, from my view through the window there wasn't any better visibility but incredibly we took off. I was on my way to the Arctic at last.

How it all began...

Well over a year ago I heard about the Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowships. One of the presenters at the Scottish Arctic Club slideshow gave a talk about his trip to Greenland to visit the original Inuit kayak builders there. Another friend went to America to study science communication methods after her PhD. A close friend of the family had had a fellowship to look at the role of women in science in engineering. It seemed that a lot of people I mentioned it to could recall a friend, or friend of a friend who had taken advantage of this fantastic funding opportunity. So obviously I applied. My original application talked about visiting Alaska, Eastern Canada and Mexico. By the time the interview came round I had toned this down to visiting Eastern Canada in September/October - about the end of their tourist season. This seemed like a good place to go as it would have climatic, social and economic similarities to Scotland. Unfortunately (and I should have anticipated this!) I got bogged down in the minutiae of finishing off my PhD. I submitted within a week of going to Disko Island, West Greenland so suddenly it was the end of August, my viva was scheduled for mid-September and I hadn't even thought about the Winston Churchill Fellowship. Realistically, it seemed that the earliest I would be able to travel would be January or February. After a month in Greenland I was itching to go back to the Arctic - but in January? No-one but me (and my supportive family) seemed to think that this would be a great plan. Won't it be cold and dark? I was forced to agree. Google turned up something called the Return of the Sun festival, held in a place called Igloolik. However, I could barely find any more information about it other than that it was an ancient ceremony revived in modern times by the Inuit Elders to try and keep their traditions alive. Even the tourist office I emailed in the Nunavut capital had never heard of it and were very discouraging of my intention to visit in January. One of the few hits on Google was a weblog. Jennifer and Ian (www.nunablog.ca) are teachers who moved to Igloolik several years ago. They went to the Return of the Sun festival last year and wrote it up on their blog. I wrote a comment on their blog asking about the celebration, Jennifer emailed back, and the next thing I knew I had an invitation to stay in Igloolik. Opportunities like that just have to be taken! Google also found me a cross country ski trip in Cree territory. Skiing every day with talks and demonstrations of traditional hunting, survival and cooking methods sounded like a suitably fun way to learn about a different sort of tourism experience. The owners of an ecolodge in Temogami, Ontario were also happy for me to come and learn about how their business operates. In fact, Caryn suggested that rather than staying for a few days as a guest, I could stay in staff accommodation and help out for as long as I liked. Those three components should occupy me happily from the beginning of January to part way through February. Then I've got another 10 days or so until my flight back to the UK on the 21st of February. I'm hoping that talking to people on the way will throw up new ideas of things to do, people to see and places to visit which will fill that extra time. So that's the plan... I'll just have to wait and see how it all works out.