Living in the Middle: Living somewhere in the middle, what’s it like?
I live somewhere in the middle.
Going a step further, I’d say at one point, my family was one of the most isolated families in North America, perhaps even one of the most isolated in the world. Building an igloo in the spring of 1980 (though that was my brother, not me, for clarification).
Would you believe it? Keep reading.
Here’s a map of the United States taken directly from Google Earth. As you can see, it’s quite a vast area.
Now, some of you may not be aware, but just north of the United States, there’s another country. That’s Canada. It’s also quite a large place, even larger than the United States.
However, what you might not know is that while Canada is quite large, it doesn’t have a very dense population, with only a few people scattered mainly along the borders. The entire population of Canada’s northern regions is about 31,000, covering an area of over 2 million square kilometers. So, living in the northern regions as I did, I was already “somewhere in the middle” in quite a significant way. I spent three years in a resort bay with a population of about 250. It’s quite an isolated place, but lively as an Arctic community—this is where all journeys to the Arctic began. Here’s a map of the resort; zoom out for scale. Google Maps. As a rough guide, the distance from New York to the resort is about the same as from New York to San Francisco… but the flight to the resort is true north. To give you a sense of Canada’s scale, the resort is closer to Russia than the Canada-U.S. border.
The resort is also quite cold… here’s a typical February morning on my way to school (and yes, we went outside for breaks).
A typical February morning at the resort.
In 1977, when I was 14, we moved to a research camp situated in the northern middle of Keewatin. The arrow in this picture points to the location. I lived there with my parents, three siblings, and a graduate student.
Here’s a better perspective from Google Maps.
Our camp consisted of three prefab buildings, totaling about 3,000 square feet.
Aerial view: Sakwakjuak. Generator shed on the right, main camp in the middle, brown tank for fuel storage.
View of Sakwakjuak from Weather Station Hill.
Same view in spring.
The small buildings were for storage and the diesel generators (my responsibility). No power meant no lights or radios. Not great.
Generator shed, with two Ford 20KW and one Lister 4KW.
It was a fantastic place, especially for those with a bit of adventurous spirit. We had a pet fox right outside our doorstep. I’m on the left.
Feeding the fox, October 1977.
I didn’t actually go to school, but I learned a few useful things. It was either learn how to fix something when it broke or die. No Coast Guard, no 911, no phones, no tow trucks, no garages, no Walmarts. That’s me on the right, 16 years old, replacing the diesel engine of a boat I worked on every summer using a homemade A-frame made from scrap we found at the dump.
Me with Guy Amarok, summer 1979.
There was a small town about 50 miles south of us, but we only had access part of the year. And when I say “small town,” I mean around 150 people, with a plane delivering mail twice a week. Double-digit phone numbers. Store about the size of a 7-Eleven.
At the camp, we had no TV, no phones, no internet, no satellites, no GPS, no FedEx. We had a single-sideband HF radio for high-power CB use in emergencies.
Radio station at Sakwakjuak, summer 1980.
We had food ordered a year in advance, so our kitchen was like a sort of store.
Kitchen at Sakwakjuak, summer 1978.
Of course, my mom wasn’t too pleased when I put up an antenna 60 feet high. No hospitals, ambulances, doctors around. Tricky.
Installing a cube quad antenna for 12.125 MHz SSB. That’s me at the top.
We traveled by snowmobile and made igloos when we needed shelter. Here’s a typical trip, me on top of the igloo with fish caught through a hole in the ice (that ice is over 6 feet thick).
March 1978 at the camp.
Apart from the camp, there wasn’t much else. This is the same building where I was feeding the fox, but this is during early summer, with about 10 feet of snow. We stored things on the roof to prevent loss during snowstorms.
View from Sakwakjuak, March 1978.
Still, we had plenty of fun. Reading, camping, hunting, fishing, tinkering, goofing off in the lab. We even had Legos.
Camp life. I’m in the back canoe, using two paddles as masts and a tent fly as a sail, lashing two canoes together. We sailed 15 miles that day.
Fish caught! Midnight, June 1979.
Building something in the workshop. With a welder and a drill press, I could make a lot.
Playing with Legos. We had a ton of Steam Trawler sets.
In the summer, visitors came by plane or boat, and in the winter, by snowmobile and sled.
Visitors dropping by for lunch in a Twin Otter. Probably part of a mining crew.
Visitors from town arriving on Ski-Doos and Komatiks (sleds).
We had three kinds of visitors at our camp. First, we had a lot of Inuit friends who would come by often. They were always welcome. It took about 2-3 hours by snowmobile from town (Chesterfield Inlet), so weekends were always lively.
Inuit culture is very hospitable, and knocking on doors is considered rude because it implies the person doesn’t want to see you. We often had a dozen or more visitors around.
Spring 1988.
Sometimes they’d bring fresh caribou, which was amazing raw.
But sometimes, there was music.
Getting ready for music: Looks like a banjo and an accordion.
We also had scientists and grad students visit. In the winter, 1-2 people, and in the summer, up to 25 would stay at the camp.
On busy days, everyone pitched in. This is a typical scene in the lab. Even the Inuit visitors helped out.
A typical day in the lab. That’s me in the T-shirt on the right.
And then there were surprise visitors. Often people doing mineral surveys and such would stop by. Sometimes they’d drop in for lunch while flying.
We didn’t have family up north, but we were “adopted” by local families and got along very well with them.
We also had radios. Since all long-distance calls were made via radio links back then, we could hear almost everything happening in the Eastern Arctic. Plus, there was another radio that all the village Inuit used for communication, so we got all the local gossip too. So, we weren’t completely isolated.
Still, it was hard to see visitors leave.
Wanna know how isolated we were? For fun, I overlaid South Dakota on top of our area. According to Wikipedia, South Dakota, with an area of 200,000 square kilometers, represents an average-sized U.S. state. For Europeans, it’s roughly the size of the UK. And here’s the kicker: we, just one family, lived in an area the size of South Dakota or the UK.
(For my readers in India, updated with an overlay showing Gujarat—again, we lived in an area the size of Gujarat with just one family.)
The yellow represents South Dakota. We were the only people living in that entire area.
The purple represents Gujarat.
Now, let’s take it a step further. It might sound unbelievable, but this whole area was originally inhabited by Inuit people. However, when we moved there in 1977, they had all relocated to the small town I mentioned earlier.
But historically, say before 1900, this entire area was home to thousands of Inuit who knew this land like the back of their hands. They would regularly migrate far into the region, seeking food or meeting other families. And they did it all as families, using only tools they made themselves, wearing warmer clothes than we did, eating just meat. In fact, many lived a lifestyle that many would characterize as the “Stone Age.”
Still, amidst the unforgiving life, we had this:
Even in the middle of nowhere, some things never change. And there’s a lesson here that I believe in: it’s not about how isolated we were but about the connections we chose. Minority actions may be feared, but many people’s actions bring comfort.
A note about the photos: All photos were taken with a Canon TL 50mm lens, shot on Kodachrome by my father. By the way, shooting below minus 40 degrees isn’t easy. The slides were scanned with a Canon Coolscan, with no color correction, editing, or Photoshop done. And these are just a few random photos; there are thousands of amazing ones.
Illuminated igloo with a Coleman lantern. A harpoon is set up in case a bear comes. The hunter is about to enter for the evening.