excerpt
…and softer than the softest eiderdown on earth. Worn next to the skin it
was like being touched by the breath of angels. The Inuit women gathered
the down at certain times of the year in gullies where willows grew four
or five feet high and where the muskoxen liked to browse. As they moved
among the trees, they left clumps of down behind on the branches. The
women would gather it and weave it into the warmest, lightest garments
on earth. Ken led them to one such gully where they each gathered a
handful of the down.
In the evening, they once again sat around the dining table long after
they had eaten. Keith’s children had overcome their shyness and joined
them. One of the tourists, Bruce Muir, gave them stacks of paper and
crayons that he had packed and they began to draw the most marvellous
pictures. Bruce became their Pied Piper for the rest of the time the group
stayed at the lodge, and everywhere he went a group of children tagged
along behind him.
The next day, Keith and Ken re-enacted the visit to the grandmothers.
When Ken arrived and the grandmothers walked over the edge of the hill,
Bailey began to film while Gary McLaren hopped from one foot to the
other. “This is going to be such an amazing film!” he shouted.
The grandmothers had brought more drawings. Ken had also brought
gifts: Swiss army knives for each of them and for Bessie, a Konica camera
and many rolls of film. The Inuit were the most photographed people on
earth and were invariably represented as short, plump and smiling – but
what did the photographers who had taken those pictures know of them?
Ken wanted to see the images they would capture of each other. The gift
of the camera was so appreciated that before he left, he gave his other four
cameras away, along with all his film.
While the grandmothers prepared a feast, float planes arrived carrying
several of the “bosses,” accompanied by a government minister from
Yellowknife. They were the same tired men asking the same stale questions
and this time they talked to the others as well. What was Ken doing
here? What was their purpose? They were here to enjoy the Arctic, was the
uniform response. No one travelled on vacation with an entire film crew,
they protested.
“I do,” Ken said. “And so do the people who buy my paintings.”
The next day, some of the group set off with Keith and his oldest son to
explore the tundra while Joan and Michael went off on their own adventure.
Karen and Ken launched a boat and went fishing for Arctic grayling.
Ken angled over to an esker, a collection of boulders and rock deposited
by the glaciers, where they cast their lines into the water. They sat quietly
and, after what seemed like a long time, a thin black band appeared on
the horizon. It was no wider than a jet stream but stretched to infinity
on either side and moved toward them at a furious clip. “I’ve never seen…
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