Pass It On

Young kayaking prospect, Kugaaruk, Nunavut, Canada 2002

It's late February here, and in this part of the world it's time to sort photographs and review past paddles and dream up places and reasons to start all over again come spring.

Sorting some old photos on my hard drive I found this ten year old portrait of a young paddler patiently waiting his turn on the gravel beach in Canada's Arctic. It reminded me why I teach and coach paddling today.

In the spring of 1998, I made plans with the late "Kabloona", Victoria Jason to join her for a month 300 or so kms north of the Arctic Circle in a hamlet known then as Pelly Bay. Victoria was returning where she had "walked" during her transit of the North West Passage.

To my knowledge she's still the only woman to complete a kayaking passage through that historic northern route, and she completed it alone. She returned to Pelly Bay in order to paddle the bay where she pulled her kayak on the first passage......short Arctic seasons dictated she walk across sea ice on different legs of her journey. Victoria took four summers to complete the passage, in early spring her kayak "Windsong", followed on a komatik, the traditional northern sled, as she walked parts of historic route.

Victoria asked me that spring to take a kayak "instructor's course" with her as she planned to "pass on" kayaking skills while she was in Pelly Bay the coming summer.
"What harm could that do" I thought, and we took a four day "Basic" instructor's course at the University of Manitoba, a course sanctioned then by the Manitoba Recreation Canoe Association. That course was my first introduction to any formal paddling instruction. Led by Mick Lautt of WAVpaddling, a team of provincial paddling coaches took us through the course and allowed me passage on the condition that I assist another instructor with a number of classes before actually teaching.

Little did they know I would be knee deep Pelly Bay itself that summer "re-acquainting" Inuit as young as this little guy and hamlet Elders, some who actually remembered their fathers building and paddling skin covered craft. Pelly Bayhunters used kayaks to pursue and spear caribou crossing the water in herds.






Pelly Bay elder, Martha Ittimangnak remembered the painfull labour of covering over the spruce kayak frames her husband created from bone and driftwood. "we used caribou skin, wet it first to make the hair come off easier," she said through her son-in-law Vincent Ningark. Martha was 80 during that 1998 interview, or at least, that was the popular estimate. Martha was born on the land long before the written record keeping began in her world. People lived on the land then, as much part of the natural world as the caribou, seal and narwhale they still hunt.









Motorboats began to replace kayaks as southern technology encroached in the 1950's and 1960's.

The nomadic population of Pelly Bay was first documented by search parties looking for the missing Franklin expedition. Hunters reported seeing surviving remnants of the tragic British expedition near Pelly Bay. Ill clad British sailors dragging small boats on a death march into oblivion, seeking the same passage Victoria paddled.

Pelly Bay is known now by the traditional name of Kugaaruk in the new territory of Nunavut. ( The bay it sits on is still Pelly Bay)
One of the last of the Nomadic communities to stop wandering it was "settled" when missionaries arrived and built a Catholic mission. In the late 1950's the nomadic congregation became a stationary community on the east shore of the Bay.

(The same mission is seen behind the young paddler in the top photo and the motor boat above.)

Victoria returned early from the Arctic the next season, unable to speak she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died in May 2000 at the age of 55.

I returned from that first trip committed to the concept of "passing in on" and have been teaching ever since.

In 2002 Victoria's daughter Teresa and I returned to Kugaaruk, to continue passing it on. We watched and paddled alongside as the community developed an Inuit owned and operated Sea Kayak tour of the area.


Her influence also started a traditional kayak building program in the community and Vince, "old Martha's" son-in-law was one of the first to paddle his traditional craft on the water that same evening.

Later I got to paddle the long narrow boat myself.


In 2002 Michael, a Pelly Bay hunter and guide used an ancient craft preserved in resin to gather Arctic Char for the camp supper.


Phil and grounded Ice Floe 2002

While she was there Victoria wanted to make sure every Inuit child in Kugaaruk actually paddled a kayak, and not just see photographs in the school. Making sure that happened on our watch, I found the pint-sized paddler patiently waiting his turn.

VIctoria "re-acquainted" the Inuit of Pelly Bay with their ancestral craft and in the process started me on the path of "acquainting" paddlers all over the country with the kayak and it's double blade paddle.

I never forget that every skill I teach today originated with the arctic hunters.

Pass it On.


**(Victoria Jason's award winning journal "Kabloona In the Yellow Kayak" still sells in Canadian bookstores)**
**See also, "Return of the Kayak", Canadian Geographic January/February 1999**

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