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July 20-23 Inuvik (‘vik’ means ‘the place of’) is a town of 3500 people. None wealthy, quite a bit of poverty, and everyone very friendly – saying ‘hi’ as we passed on the street. The town sits beside the Mackenzie Delta, and it is the east channel that serves the community. From here it is about 160 km to the Beaufort Sea and it widens to about 70 km at the sea. The Delta starts south of Inuvik. As in Dawson, all the buildings are built off the ground and here “utilidors“ (utility corridors) above ground contains water and other services (see pictures) to serve each house. It is not possible to place any infrastructure in the ground.

The ‘Igloo Church’ ( Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church) was built about 1920 by a man with grade 5 education, using no blue prints. Building lumber is not available here and was floated down Mackenzie River from a mission sawmill in Fort Smith NWT – 1600 km upriver. A remarkably beautiful place, and the whole structure rides on a concave concrete platform which sits on coarse gravel insulating the permafrost. The gravel was hauled from 80 km away. A local artist Mona Thrasher, deaf and almost blind, painted 24 inside murals in 13 months. We liked her work so much that we bought a print of her magnificent painting of an arctic wolf.

We spent extra time here to see the town and to fly north (45 minutes) to Tuktoyaktuk. Seeing the huge Delta from the air was special! And all the pingos. No they are no animals. They are perfectly circular mounds created on the permafrost by freezing of surface water. They form in recently drained lake basins or old drainage channels where hydrostatic pressures push water up and the unfrozen saturated sediment progressively freezes. There are over 1400 of them in the Delta and some are 50 metres high (pictures).

‘Tuk’ has a stable population of 1000 people. Sadly the hotel and restaurant is closed, but a B&B operates. We saw one of the old DEW line sites, a military radar post from the cold war. AND - we put our feet into the Beaufort Sea! It was surprisingly warm; we guessed 14C. A young gal on our tour had planned for this by dressing in a bikini under her clothes. She swam! You can also see some pictures of the local community ‘refrigerator – a series of tunnels and rooms 10 metres underground, hacked out of the frozen ground by hand, where the temperature in the permafrost is a constant -6 C.

The next day in Inuvik we went on a four hour boat tour of the Delta. Although the islands are low and flat, one cannot see over them, and so it felt as if we were touring a few of the hundreds of ‘rivers’ that link up to form the Delta. How easy it would be to get lost here, but our local guide Paton knew every bend. There was little wildlife to see at this time of year though we saw a seal, ducks with young ones and arctic terns. The main river, wide and fast, is the highway for all types of barges.

On July 23rd we started south and the beginning of the Dempster was fine. That was about to change!

17 Inuvik & Tuk