Dreamscapes Travel & Lifestyle

WINTER 2017/2018 DREAMSCAPES 49 and depot built in 1852 by the Belcher Expe- dition. It's a striking place: every time I've seen it, after my first visit in 2009, it has impressed me with a sense of foreboding that hangs about it like a grim shroud. Yet, like all truly captivating mysteries, the whereabouts of Franklin and his men could have been solved decades earlier. For years, the Inuit oral history of the region spoke explicitly about where the ships ended their journey. Had searchers taken Inuit guides' accounts seriously—they liter- ally pointed to the exact spots—Sir John's end would have been resolved much sooner. A WORLD AWAY All of this came back to me this past summer, on an Adventure Canada expedi- tion to the area. As in the past, I was the resource photog- rapher for Adventure Canada, a family-owned business based in Missis- sauga, Ontario. They've been taking passengers by ship to the remotest parts of the Arctic for more than 30 years, and I was happy to go along and revisit some of the sites I've been to over and over. We travelled from Greenland through the Northwest Pas- sage, ending in Cambridge Bay, with a stop at Beechey Island. This trip, like the 51 other visits I've made to the North, including Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Yukon and Northwest Territo- ries, was a revelation. My first-ever trip was to the floe-edge outside of Pond Inlet, Nunavut. Is "enrap- tured" too over-the-top? How about "enthralled," "captivated" or "overwhelmed"? Somehow, they all fall short, yet that is how I felt from the first moment I stood in that vast wilderness and realized how little I knew about the Inuit, their culture and traditions. Until the moment when a narwhal showed its tail before my lens that day, I had thought of the Arctic as flat, white and cold. And yet, there are mountains, like the 2,147-metre peaks on the northeast side of Baffin Island. I associated autumn colours with the deciduous trees of my native Ottawa Valley, yet, here they were, blan- keting the ground in a quilt of lichen, tiny flowers and berries. My first Arctic mission was to photo- graph polar bears. What I ended up capturing was a slice of the vast wealth the Arctic offers: seals, birds, narwhal, walruses, Arctic hares and foxes. Since those early days, Arctic tourism, led by companies like Adventure Canada and First Air, has flourished. Some come because part of Franklin's soul lurks in their chests and they want to experience the thrilling allure of not knowing what is over the next hill. Others come as witnesses, borne out of fear that we

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