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On the Lip of a Crater

Eleanor Whitworth June 29

In 2008, Eleanor Whitworth made a long journey to the far reaches of the Canadian Arctic – stopping at Resolute, a Canadian town of 24-hour sunlight and darkness, and the Haughton Mars Project, a research base located on the edge of a crater. In the March issue of Meanjin, she walks us through this cold, unforgiving frontier, and its strange mix of scientific and natural wonder. A brief extract is below, and you can read the full essay on our editions page.



Resolute is a remote Canadian town, and one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth. In Inuktitut, the town is called Qausuittuq (pronounced cow-sweet-tuk), meaning ‘place with no dawn,’ referring to the hundred days of 24-hour sunlight in summer, and eighty days of darkness during winter. The barren arctic landscape lends any object, from bucket to truck, a monumental quality. Given these extremes, it’s appropriate that in both English and Inuit, the name of the place has a sense of the unequivocal.

I was in Resolute in 2008 on my way to the Haughton Mars Project (HMP), a scientific research base located on the edge of the Haughton meteorite crater on Devon Island, where I was hoping to rendezvous with my father, who was sailing through the Northwest Passage. Before researching Resolute, I’d assumed it was established by the Inuit. In fact, the town was set up as an army base, and only became a permanent community in the 1950s when the Canadian Government forcibly moved Inuit families from Quebec to the arctic islands—much further north than they chose to live—to strengthen sovereignty over the Arctic during the Cold War. The families were left to fend for themselves, and had to seek help from Inuit groups to the south in order to survive. Today, the town’s population is about 200. As the ice melts, opening the Northwest Passage and increasing access to resources, army presence is again rapidly increasing.

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For three days the wind blew so hard that you took your life in your hands if you stepped outside. It’s eerie to look through a window and, due to the lack of vegetation, hear but not see the wind. Holed up, I talked with hotel staff and locals who ate at the hotel canteen. When I said I was Australian, on three separate occasions the immediate response was, ‘Aaaah, Crocodile Dundee!’ Before I left for the Arctic, polar bears were the first thing Australians brought up, closely followed by moose and the television series Northern Exposure. It would seem that (certain) animals hold a strong position in our imagination of place, and even in the West they retain a powerful role as totem.


 

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Comments

by P
29 Jun 10 at 18:33

I really enjoyed this essay (& its striking photos) in the issue – nice to read it again. Was drawn in straight away by the town’s name Resolute and that image, the polar bear skin, so striking

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by Eleanor Whitworth
04 Jul 10 at 17:14

Thanks P, there’s a collection with more Arctic photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eleanorw/collections/72157624007532481/

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