Sunday night, at the Enokhok Inn in Kugluktuk, we had dinner with Red Pedersen, a longtime trader, area administrator, and territorial politician who served as Speaker of the Northwest Territories’ Legislative Assembly in the 1980s.

Pedersen proudly informed us not only that he was a member of the Kugluktuk Ranger Patrol, but also that his son is a Ranger, his grandson is a Ranger—and now his great-grandson is a Ranger.  Four generations serving Canada’s North.

From that perspective and from his 60 years in the Arctic, Pedersen offered us a frank run-through of challenges facing Kugluktuk formerly Coppermine, and all of Nunavut.

Housing is in short supply, with construction costs twice those in the rest of Canada. Energy is expensive. Food is expensive. Unemployment is omnipresent, as is the boredom that comes with it. Thirty to forty youngsters enter kindergarten every year. Only six graduated from high school this spring.

The answers aren’t easy.  For those who want to harvest the region’s plentiful caribou, seals, birds, berries, it can cost upwards of $40,000 to kit up a snowmobile, ATV, and/or a boat and motor. And, as Pedersen pointed out, being born Inuit does not make you a born hunter—you have to have a teacher and you have to learn.

There’s another change Pedersen talked about. He grabbed our attention when he told us that Kugluktuk’s beach has a summer lifeguard. Who would swim? This year saw the longest-ever stretch of above 30-degree days. The fireweed grew three feet high. Arctic cotton, growing here for the first time, provided a snowy white cover to the rocks. Also for the first time, narwhales, an Atlantic Ocean mammal, were spotted in the bay. Climate change is a daily reality here, where putting a foot in the waters of Coronation Bay means stepping off the North American mainland.

Pedersen urged us to think about the bigger picture of the North. How can individual northerners benefit from the southern money being spent here? Why can’t there be a local branch of a Canadian university, dedicated to Arctic studies? Why are all furs sent south as pelts where their value at auction is but a tiny fraction of their retail value?

While we listened to Pedersen, Nadene McMenemy and Johnny Kootoo were cooking and serving.  They are the managers – newly arrived from Iqaluit – of the 12-room Enokhok Inn, which opened in May. Kootoo is Inuit; McMenemy is a transplanted Newfoundlander.  They have been married 20 years, always living in the north.  She cooks, he does the rooms, and together they do the airport pick-ups. They asked us for an early checkout because new guests were arriving. We were pleased that, for them, business is good.

We woke up to cloudy but rainless skies and the magnificent red and white sight of the Louis visible in the harbour. Away we go!