“We think there’s an opportunity for all of us arriving with open minds and open hearts to actually be changed,” Edmunds says at our first briefing. My Out of the Northwest Passage cruise zig-zags through Canada’s youngest territory before crossing Baffin Bay to Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and Inuit stronghold.Īdventure Canada sends passengers to shore in Zodiacs in Nunavut. The company only goes where it is welcome.Īn Inuk from Labrador, Edmunds loves showcasing Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homeland in Canada that encompasses autonomous land claims regions in Nunavut, Nunavik (Quebec), Nunatsiavut (Labrador) and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Northwest Territories and Yukon). Photo by Jennifer BainĪdventure Canada expedition leader Jason Edmunds always works with communities to develop a plan that’s about “connections and what they want to show us” instead of just what we might want to see. Quads are one of the ways people get around in and near Grise Fiord. Nunavut has about 39,000 citizens scattered across 26 communities that aren’t linked by roads, so what precious few visitors there are each year must arrive by plane or ship, like our 198-passenger Ocean Endeavour. It is a strange and fascinating thing when cruise ships - even small ones like ours - come calling. With our four-hour visit, that number temporarily climbs north of 300 although we work hard to spread ourselves out. Speaking of people, Grise Fiord has 129 of them according to the last Canadian census, or 135 of them if you ask locals for the current count. The post office in Grise Fiord is a friendly counter within the Co-op. I’m Canadian enough to know the horror of minus 40, but anything beyond that is daunting. He figures it must drop to minus 50 or minus 60 before everything shuts down. “Yeah, that’s possible,” concedes Ningiuk, who was cold enough to wear ski gloves and a down jacket with his ball cap and sneakers.

But experts have also calculated that the average yearly temperature is minus 16.5 Celsius and that puts this place in the running for coldest community honours. The tight-knit community, on the southern side of Ellesmere Island at Jones Sound, boasts stunning mountains that are perfect for sledding and for “one crazy guy who snowboards” (look it up on YouTube). Article contentįor our guided walking tours, we broke into small groups.

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