The second part of Margot Mignon's account of a journey 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.

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"Just one more night and then we will be boarding the Louis Saint Laurent. The researchers have already arrived. Here in Resolute we are staying ‘in camp’ as it’s called. This means you get a place to sleep and three cooked meals a day. There is no menu, you have to eat what’s served.

We were supposed to be making a reconnaissance flight, but it was misty. When the mist lifted there weren’t enough planes available. Although what we missed out on would have been endless hills without any cover. An old seabed covered with petrified mud and cracked by frost. Cold. Wind.

Polar bears!
Today’s meal brought excitement. News of polar bears - not far from here! There were mixed reactions. Walkers like me scratched their heads. The four military people present said that there were no polar bears here in summer. The eyes of the Inuit lit up.
 
We drove to a camp inhabited by the Thule people, the ancestors of the Inuit we know today. This winter camp is a thousand years old. The ‘houses’ were buried into the earth. The floor was made out of flat stones and people slept on a stone platform. The roof was made from skins. You crept inside through a long tunnel. The house was ‘heated’ with whale-oil lamps.

I’m surprised how small these houses were. Just a little larger than a two-person tent, and who knows how large these families were. At least it was nice and warm being so close together. With temperatures of 60 degrees below zero that’s essential.

Global warming
But wait a minute, a thousand years ago it was considerably warmer here. In Greenland there was farming and birch trees grew. Here on Cornwall Island it was also a lot warmer then. Global warming! Back then? So what are we worrying about? As a matter of course it got colder again.

The biologist next to me is a bit annoyed. “That was a natural process, now it is caused by mankind. We don’t know what we are bringing down on ourselves. And where do we stop?”

After the year 1200 it got so cold and unpleasant here in Resolute Bay that even the Inuit stayed away. Until 1953 that is, when the Canadian government decided that it would be a good idea for people to settle in more places in the Polar region.

'Fantastic location’
Two groups of Inuit were persuaded to settle in ‘a fantastic location’; with the government supposedly providing assistance. But on the beach of Resolute Bay they were left to their own devices: the Inuit are perfectly capable of surviving the cold, aren’t they? Sadly, they didn’t have any sledge dogs, no knowledge of the new hunting grounds and there wasn’t enough snow to build igloos. Nor was there any fuel. They had to try to live through the winter under tarpaulins.

Deeply impressed we read the inscriptions on the crosses in the cold and windy cemetery by the sea. Most of the 200 Inuit living in Resolute are descendents of the first settlers. Until the 1980s it was not possible to return. In the end a number of young people stayed. The Canadian government has paid millions in compensation, but has not yet apologised. That hurts."