Climate change has made it possible to navigate the Northwest Passage, however, navigating the sea route through the Arctic Ocean is still only possible at the height of summer in an icebreaker.

Correspondent Margot Mignon is sailing the Northwest Passage on board the Louis Saint Laurent; the Canadian icebreaker is also carrying a team of researchers who will carry out multi-disciplinary scientific studies including the effects of global warming. The vessel will also re-supply several isolated outposts and search for unknown marine life.

                                                                         ***                                                                           

"In just a few more days I'll sail through the Northwest Passage, but first I have to go to Resolute Bay, high in the Arctic, to board the Louis Saint Laurent icebreaker. From Vancouver, I fly first to Edmonton and then further north to Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories. Yellowknife is a town built on permafrost, or permanently frozen ground.

Two years ago I visited Yellowknife to make a report about the effect of climate change on the permafrost. Roads and airstrips were slowly sinking into the mud. I rang the Transport Ministry to request an interview and to my amazement, the minister himself answered the phone. The Northwest Territories are about 33 times larger than the Netherlands but less than 35,000 people live there. As the minister said, why hire a spokesperson if it's really not necessary?

The minister readily agreed to my request for interviews and arranged for the head of the road construction department to take me on a tour. The following day we drove over buckled, fissured roads, being careful not to get stuck in the craters. This past Sunday, I checked the state of the roads again. The road in front of the parliament buildings have obviously been freshly asphalted but the road surface is cracking and buckling and melt water is seeping through already. Sometime around midnight, the sky began to darken slightly.

End of the world
We travel further north. After a two-hour flight we land in Cambridge Bay, on the south coast of Victoria Island. Everything is grey; it is misty, cold and raining. The pilot, wearing overalls, discusses our flight plans with air traffic control.

In the arrivals hall, I hear someone say that there's a golf course in this Inuit town. But no, there's no grass. If you want to hit a few balls, you have to roll out artificial turf. That's how everyone plays golf in the polar region.

Air traffic control says it is safe to continue on to Resolute Bay, more than two hours flying time over the frozen sea. Four soldiers are my only companions on the plane. Nobody visits this place. Resolute Bay, home to 230 people, is at the end of the world. The only populated places further north are a military base and the tiny hamlet of Grise Fiord.

We land and I feel as though I have never been so far away from the rest of the world as I am now. This is a stone desert, a moon landscape. It feels as though I am in a gravel quarry. There's nothing green here, nothing at all. NASA tests its moon vehicles here.

Tiny place
It's boiling hot in the hotel. It's 19 degrees Celsius outside and the heating is turned up to the max. I wander off and find a small church. The vestments and the alter cloth are made from sealskin. The heating was turned up to the max in the church as well.

I wander around a bit more to try and get my bearings in this tiny place that is home to 200 Inuit and 30 Southerners. On the east side of town, a stream fed by melt water runs towards the sea between the mounds of snow. I'm amazed to see a couple of kids swimming in the stream. A third child is doing wheelies on his bike in the snow next to the stream. Less than 200 meters away, small icebergs float in the sea.

Tomorrow, the Canadian air force will take me on a reconnaissance flight. I'm hoping to speak to an Inuit Ranger and visit a 1000-year-old Inuit village. When the Inuit came a millennium ago, it was much, much warmer here. What does that tell us about climate change?"