Teslin to Dawson City, YT
Traditional territory of the Inuvialuit
Overcast for most of the day, some sunshine and no rain
This was our second day in Inuvik. I could be wrong about this but it’s the sort of size of town that once you’ve walked or cycled around a few times, you start to get a feeling of the layout of the place. Houses were on pilings. Some were abandoned (later we learned that it had to do with building standards and asbestos) and some were being newly built. I slept in until around 8 AM after watching and photographing the northern lights past 5 AM. We had pancakes to celebrate our first morning at the end of the journey.
My parents and I walked downtown, came across a small crowd gathering in Chief Kim Joe Park, and immediately were invited to hike around Boot Lake as part of a Trans Canada Trail/Midnight Sun Recreation Complex community celebration. I would have taken photos of the hike but spent most of it with a little boy on my shoulders giving him a boost on the trail. Got back to the park and shared in the community barbecue, tea and market. Then we headed to the Inuvik Community Garden for a tour of the world’s largest most northern commercial greenhouse.
The greenhouse was converted from a hockey rink owned by Inuvik Roman Catholic Residential School in 1988 and since then have become a role model for agriculture north of the Arctic Circle. The greenhouse is committed to providing healthy food and gardening training for the local community. It’s run by a small staff who are funded through the profits of the commercial sector of the greenhouse. The rest of the greenhouse is made up of dozens of raised beds cared for by greenhouse members—families, community groups, businesses.
It was getting towards the end of the season, but the photos still give a sense of the abundance of the greenhouse, the many well-tended garden beds with everything from strawberries to tomatoes to herbs and spices. Hand-painted boards lined the garden paths. Garden beds for Elders and children were in the middle of the space. The typical growing season is from May to late September, but they’re experimenting with individualized hydroponics systems with a vision of having healthy, accessible produce all year round.
We also stopped by Our Lady of Victory Church, famous along with Saint Jude’s Anglican Cathedral in Iqaluit as an orthodox church shaped like an igloo.
