Nunavut: Canada's Unbelievable Ancient Landscapes

Canada's western Nunavut region. From the hamlet of Kugluktuk and the harsh Arctic interior, to the Nunavut territorial boundary and beyond. An emerging tourist destination, along remote northern waterways. Kugluktuk is, we have beautiful waterways, lots of green foliage and flowers, beautiful sunsets. One of the nation's most secluded national parks. It's kind of the Grand Canyon, the north. And piecing together the geological timeline of Canada's Arctic. The reason this is important is this is how we tell the history of the Earth. Now, we reveal the secrets of Canada's northern boundary, more than 160,000 kilometres of Arctic frontier. High above the frigid waters of Coronation Gulf, the hamlet of Kugluktuk sits on the northern edge of the North American mainland. Kugluktuk lies just above the 67th parallel, just below Victoria Island, and is the westernmost settlement in Canada's Nunavut territory. Tuk region has been a natural and cultural crossroads for thousands of years. Kugluktuk means place of moving water, with three rivers emptying into Coronation Gulf nearby. Along with food and fresh water, these rivers were a source of precious metals for local Inuit. Copper found here was used to produce blades, harpoons and knives. Kugluktuk Inuit would eventually become known as the Copper Inuit, a distinct branch of the ancient Thule culture, with traditions and dialect all their own. Centuries later, the community has grown, now home to some 1,400 people. It continues to be a strategic hub, linking the eastern and western Arctic, and a last stop for excursions to the far north. Kugluktuk is also considered to be one of Nunavut's most comfortable communities. Despite its geography, located just above the Arctic Circle, Kugluktuk boasts summer temperatures as high as 30 degrees Celsius. It's no wonder this friendly community has attracted residents from all over the world, including their mayor, who moved from Denmark more than 60 years ago. My name is Red Peterson. I am the mayor of Kugluktuk. And we are in Kugluktuk at Nunavut. We're standing here right at the edge of the North American continent with the Arctic Ocean in the background. We're above the treeline, about a good 50 miles north of the treeline here. We're right at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, at the mouth of the Copper Mine River. Like many northern hamlets, residents in the Kugluktuk region lived a nomadic lifestyle until the early 20th century. And like many northern communities, Kugluktuk had an anglicized name, known as Copper Mine by English speakers until 1996. As a community, it was established in 1928 as a trading post by the Hudson's Bay Company. The Anglican mission and Catholic mission followed in 1929 with the RCMP, and it has grown since then. There really never was a name change. This place has always been called Kugluktuk when you speak in the Inuktitut language. And it was called Copper Mine when you spoke English before. Now we call it Kugluktuk in all languages. Kugluktuk is known to many here for its stark beauty and for decades, residents have been quietly sharing that beauty with the world. By Arctic standards, it's a very lush area. We have tall green grass and great big willows. We have an abundance of beautiful flowers in the season. The berries are going to be ripe very soon, and we're all going to be out picking berries. We have had canoers come up the Copper Mine River for more than 50 years now, and we've had some fairly prominent ones. Pierre Trudeau canoed this river. John Turner canoed this river. Gordon Lightfoot canoed this river and stood right here where we are and visited with us. We obviously welcome anybody to come here. It gives us publicity. It puts more people to know about the place, and hopefully more will come. It will help our economy, and we're quite excited about developing tourism or a visitor trade here. And Red Peterson is not alone. A whole new generation is trying to expand the tourism sector. Grant Newman is a long-time Kugluktuk resident, originally from Newfoundland and Labrador. Kugluktuk is, we have beautiful waterways, beautiful scenery, there's hills, lots of green foliage and flowers, beautiful sunsets and sunrises, just a really nice place to be. We're kind of the banana belt of the Arctic. We have warmer climates than most of the Arctic communities. A lot of people are coming to Kugluktuk to see the midnight sun in the summer where we have 24 hours of daylight. And then we have in the winter, the spring weather actually is better. We have lots of sunlight and warmer weather, but still have the snow so we can go out and they can stay in igloos, do skidoo trips, go look at wildlife like caribou, muskox, occasionally wolves if they're around, which they usually are around the caribou. For years, Newman has explored the waterways surrounding Kugluktuk in awe of its incredible scenery. Now, he's about to unveil Kugluktuk's only locally operated tour company. The reason the tour company started was through our other contracting company, we had a jet boat for some jobs, so we just thought the natural progression with the new cruise ship stuff and the new visitor center that's starting in Kugluktuk, that we would make it an official tour company and try to provide a much more involved tour for them, taking them out for day trips, either two hours, four hours or eight hour trips. We're looking at possibly exploring some of the other rivers that are a little bit further away now that we have a bigger boat, it's much more accessible. And while Kugluktuk offers many enticing possibilities, the lure of the river is impossible to resist. Today we're going to take you up the Coppermine River to Bloody Falls, which is a historical place for Kugluktuk, but it's also one of the prettier places and most beautiful places around Kugluktuk, so we'll go up the Coppermine River, which is then about an 11-kilometer ride to the falls. While Kugluktuk means place of moving water, Kugluk simply means waterfall. It is an homage to this pristine cascade that has been a landmark for generations. For longtime residents Grant Newman and Red Peterson, the beauty of this region has kept them here. They say they could not imagine living anywhere else. Kugluktuk, I would say the main factor I stayed is the people. If you're gone for a day, when you come back into town, everybody shakes your hand, waves at you. It's a very friendly community, a very caring community, and it's just, it's home, it really is. I have a family here, but it's the people that make Kugluktuk the way it is. I came here in 1953, which is 60-some years ago now, and I came as a fur trade apprentice for the Hudson's Bay Company, and I've worked here as a government administrator. I've run the co-op for a while. I was the, I've been mayor before. What keeps me here is basically it's home, obviously, after all these years. I have a large family. I had five children, 25 grandchildren. I think we're up to 37 great-grandchildren and even one great-great-grandchild now, so I'm here because it's home. This is where I live, and I'm sure this is where they'll bury me. Heading west from the hamlet of Kugluktuk, we trace the wide open waters of Coronation Gulf. Here, Arctic tundra, marked by low rolling hills, stretches for kilometers. Further, at the western extremity of the gulf, our course changes. Here, beyond the Ray River and the Richardson River, we head northeast, following the contours of Richardson Bay. This sheltered waterway was named after Sir John Richardson, a naturalist and surgeon who traveled on the voyages of Sir John Franklin in 1819 and 1825. On the second voyage, Franklin and Richardson parted ways, with Richardson leading a team that would chart more than 1,300 kilometers of coastline, from the Copper Mine River to the Mackenzie River. Centuries later, this stretch of coast seems barren and remote, but it continues to be prime hunting ground for local Inuit. All along the shorelines surrounding Kugluktuk, seasonal hunting shelters can be found. Many locals spend months each year on the land, hunting for caribou, muskox, and the mighty grizzly bear. Finally, 10 kilometers to the northeast, we reach the boundary of Richardson Bay, on approach to the bold rock faces of Cape Kendal. Cape Kendal is named in honor of Edward Kendal, a midshipman who, like John Richardson, traveled with Sir John Franklin in the early 19th century. Kendal Point is a bold, unmistakable landmark on Coronation Gulf. In Sir John Franklin's diaries, he describes it as a projecting rocky point, about 500 or 600 feet high. Nearly 200 years later, his description remains accurate. Offshore, we explore the rough open waters of Coronation Gulf. Here, geological wonders rise even higher. These are the Lawford Islands, a cluster of islands, large and small, barely visible from shore. Together, the islands measure 30 kilometers in length, with many less than a kilometer wide. Like many landmarks in the area, the island's English name was given by Franklin as his expedition teams passed by in the distance. He named them Lawford in honor of his first naval commander, Vice Admiral Sir John Lawford. From a distance, the expanse of the islands is clear, covering an area of more than 50 square kilometers, alongside similar island groups, including the Barrens Islands and the Cooper Islands. Upon close inspection, the Lawford Islands are majestic cliff faces, rising hundreds of meters above the sea. Back on the North American continent, we head west from Kugluktuk and Coronation Gulf, exploring Nunavut's remote inland region. This is the Ray River, a scenic waterway surrounded by autumn arctic splendor. From its mouth at Coronation Gulf, the Ray River extends more than 100 kilometers inland. Like the Richardson River, its English name comes from a naval doctor on Franklin's early voyages. John Ray was from Scotland, a surgeon who spent much of his life exploring the North. During his voyages as a surgeon, Ray became a skilled outdoorsman and was given the name Aglukka, or Long Strider, by his Inuit companions. Continuing west, we soar high above the westernmost extremity of the northern territory known as Nunavut. Nunavut was officially established on April 1, 1999. It was divided from the Northwest Territories after decades of negotiation with the federal government. The goal was to create a separate territory for the Inuit people with the word Nunavut from the Inuktitut language, meaning our land. Nunavut is a massive expanse, a polar desert, stretching from the islands of James Bay and Hudson Bay to Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic. The territory is adorned with incredible mountains and cliff faces, along with vast open tundra. It is a geology that covers 3 billion years of Earth's history. But that landscape is often hidden, shrouded in snow and ice for nine months of the year. In summer, the landscape is barren, located mostly above the treeline. Throughout the territory, mosses, shrubs, and grasses stretch as far as the eye can see. Amazingly, Nunavut is home to just over 30,000 people, but measures the size of Western Europe. It is one of the lowest population densities on Earth. Further west, the altitude rises, and the splendor of Arctic autumn quickly becomes harsh. While coastal regions can enjoy favorable weather into October, the higher inland regions can be snow-covered as early as August. And here, tiny lakes dot the horizon as we approach the eastern edge of the Melville Hills. These pristine snow-covered peaks are a spectacular sight, rising more than 800 meters. They mark the first major change in landscape after endless Arctic tundra. And while the Melville Hills may not be tall by North American standards, they are vast, covering a massive area to the west of more than 44,000 square kilometers. And amongst the hills, we find one of northern Canada's most remote, pristine lakes. Blue Nose Lake is located 200 kilometers west of Kugluktuk. It is 53 kilometers long and 19 kilometers wide. But despite its size, the lake remained relatively unknown to Europeans until 1954, one of the last major geographical features to be mapped on the Canadian mainland. Continuing west from Blue Nose Lake, we return to kilometers of vast Arctic tundra. And here, we cross one of Canada's most remote geographical boundaries as we leave the territory of Nunavut and enter the Northwest Territories. Like Nunavut, the Northwest Territories is a vast expanse. It measures more than 1.3 million square kilometers, roughly 13% of Canada's entire land mass. The territory is a mix of boreal forest to the south and Arctic tundra in the north. And here, from high above, we experience one of the Arctic's most scenic features, Permafrost is a unique phenomenon, ground ice that is created when the mean annual temperature in a region reaches zero degrees Celsius or below. In the colder regions of the globe, that ground ice can be more than a kilometer deep. But on the surface, an active layer, sometimes just inches thick, freezes and thaws year to year. That cycle creates incredible designs, shapes, and land formations. These ground patterns can be seen throughout the north, known to scientists and locals as stone rings, pingos, ice wedges, and polygons. Permafrost exists throughout the cooler regions of the world, including more than 40% of Canada's land mass. And this region, along the Nunavut Northwest Territory's border, is home to some of Canada's most dense ground ice. It is known as a high-to-medium continuous region, with more than 90% of the landscape underlain by permafrost. Continuing west, just beyond the Nunavut Northwest Territory's boundary, we cross another geographical divide. Here, roughly 75 kilometers south of the Arctic Ocean, and just outside the community of Palatuck, we enter one of Canada's most amazing protected areas, Tuktut-Nogayat National Park. Tuktut-Nogayat National Park is on the northeast corner of mainland Northwest Territories, on the border with Nunavut. When Tuktut-Nogayat National Park was initially established, it was over 16,000 square kilometers. And since then, a couple thousand more kilometers have been added in the Sawtooth settlement area, to the south. So the total is 18,000 plus square kilometers. The park features a rich palette of landscapes and wonders. Tuktut-Nogayat National Park has kind of three amazing interwoven themes, I guess. Caribou, canyons, and culture. Caribou are the most important animal to the park, from a cultural perspective and a conservation perspective. The park was initially established when the people of Palatuck and Inuvialuit leadership and Parks Canada all agreed that the calving grounds were so important that they should be protected in a national park. And recent studies say the Blue Nose West Caribou Herd could use the help. While the herd was made up of some 112,000 animals in 1992, it has fallen dramatically, but more recently stabilized to around 20,000. Nearly all hunting of the Blue Nose West Caribou Herd has been suspended since 2006. And Tuktut-Nogayat National Park holds cultural stories as well, best experienced through the voices of the park's own people. I believe that one of the most amazing ways to experience that place is to see it through your own eyes, but also have it interpreted through the eyes and through the stories of an elder or a cultural host from Palatuck. And they can tell stories of when they were on this landscape, hunting or fishing 30 years ago or two years ago. It's a living cultural landscape, which is one of the things that makes it such an amazing place to experience as a visitor. But the most notable feature here may be the landscape itself, an incredible mix of tundra, bold peaks and valleys. Tuktut-Nogayat is rolling tundra hills that are cut into by river canyons that are some of the most spectacular in North America. They're filled with rock pinnacles, waterfalls, ledges of limestone and broken rock, incredible bands of color. It's kind of the Grand Canyon of the North. Beyond Tuktut-Nogayat National Park, we head northwest, on approach to the community of Palatuck. But along the way, we encounter one of the Northwest Territory's most scenic gems, the winding contours of the Brock River Canyon. Now, in the heart of Arctic autumn, these river banks and rising canyon walls are covered in snow and ice. And while the river remains calm and pristine through much of the fall and winter, it will churn rapidly in spring, carrying melted snow to Amundsen Gulf, kilometers to the north. Over millions of years, that flow has etched an incredible landscape. It is a formidable and unique geology that attracts scientists from around the world who set up camp in the summer months to learn more about this unique part of the world. I'm Rob Brainbird with the Geological Survey of Canada, based in Ottawa, and we're here at the Brock River, in the Brock River Canyon, near Palatuck Northwest Territories. We're in the western Arctic, just east of Palatuck, which is also just east of Inuvik, and it's on the very northern coast of Canada's mainland, just south of Victoria Island in the western Arctic. Rob Brainbird has been interested in the Brock Canyon region for more than 20 years, an area he briefly surveyed in the 1990s. Now he's returned, keen to continue assembling a geological puzzle to understand what's happened here over the past billion years. So the area that we're working in here is called the Brock Inlier, and it's one of a number of different geological regions that comprise a large sedimentary basin that formed approximately a thousand million years ago, so a billion years ago. Scientists are interested in this particular time period because it was a time when there was a supercontinent on Earth, and many people have heard of the supercontinent Pangaea, which existed about 350 million years ago. There was another supercontinent that existed about a billion years ago in this area, and it was called Rodinia. So we're just starting to understand how that supercontinent formed and what it looked like. So this area holds answers to how we think that supercontinent might have formed, and in terms of large sedimentary basins that lay within the interior of that supercontinent. So these are pieces of a puzzle that we're trying to put together to help us reconstruct that sedimentary basin, and the sedimentary basin records the history of things like climate and the atmosphere and the oceans that existed at that time. In the end, Rob Rainbird hopes to produce a detailed survey of the region. The final product here, or the most important product of our work, will be a series of geological maps that would be available to the public, to mining companies, to oil companies, to people from the local communities to make decisions about land use. But this year, the project is in its beginning stages. Rainbird has traveled here and assembled a unique and qualified team. So my crew here comprises five people, and two of them are PhDs that are specialists in a particular kind of geology. Alessandro Ielpi is a visiting scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. And from high above, Ielpi wastes no time, taking advantage of a rare clear day in the canyon. Okay, I'm just going to move three meters. He carefully scales the canyon walls, documenting sediments deposited by the ancient river systems that carved this canyon. Two, seven, five. Ielpi will then compare the sediments to others he's collected, here and in Europe. For other researchers, the magic of the Brock Canyon can be found closer to ground. The other person that's working with us here is Elizabeth Turner, who's a professor at Laurentian University, and she's a specialist in carbonate sedimentary rocks of Proterozoic age, or of Precambrian age, that are particularly well exposed here. I've been working in northern Canada for 25 years, and one of the best things about northern Canada is the great exposure of the rocks, because they've been recently glaciated. So what Katie and I are doing here is we're measuring, in quotation marks, these rocks, the ones that form the canyon. It's called the Mickelson Islands Formation, and it's a succession about 500 metres thick of dolostone. It typically contains a lot of information about paleo-earth surface environments, the biology of the seafloor, and it also contains geochemical information that we can extract to tell things about the composition of the atmosphere and the oceans. Using what appears to be a simple measuring stick and hammer, Elizabeth Turner and Catherine Hahn carefully extract rock from the canyon's lower walls, documenting visual features of the rock and preserving it for further study. So this high-tech measuring device is our measuring staff, and Katie is able to measure the layers. So she measures from a layer or a surface that represents a change in the properties of the rock, and she measures upwards to another surface, where I've determined that things change yet again. And then I will describe the properties in there in my book, take a sample and a photograph. And then we can go back to the lab and saw the rock in half, make a thin section, which is a very thin slice of the rock that you can view with transmitted light under the microscope, and we can drill powders out of it for stable isotope analyses, and we can laser that rock and understand what the trace elements in it are, and that tells us all kinds of things about the ancient Earth's surface and the oceans. The layers that we're looking at here are layers of bacterial mats. Essentially, it's the same stuff that forms pond scum today, but was alive a billion years ago, and that's really the major form of life a billion years ago. Each little layer lived on the sediment on the seafloor in the shallow illuminated tropical sea, and because sediment is constantly accumulating, each little layer got buried and had to reestablish itself, and that's how come a rock like this has many tiny layers inside of it. They're called laminations, and it's a laminated rock, which then tells us the story of that little community of organisms which dominated the Earth at the time. In fact, they dominated 90% of Earth's history. Now in mid-August, the scientific season is nearly at an end. The snow and ice that will soon cover the canyon is not far away, but they are keen to return. Alessandro Aielpi, Elizabeth Turner, and Rob Rainbert say the Brock Canyon continues to hold geological mysteries yet to be revealed. The reason this is important is this is how we tell the history of the Earth. History of the Earth is a series of events, most of which don't ever get recorded. These rocks are almost a billion years old, roughly, and to have undisturbed, undeformed sedimentary rocks that are carbonate rocks and contain all this biological and geochemical information of that age is quite unusual. I was here in 1993, and I remembered this as being one of the most spectacular places I've ever worked in the Arctic. I've worked in the Arctic since 1986, and I would have to say this is probably the most beautiful place that I've ever encountered. And I'm just thrilled to be back here working and sharing my experiences with students and other researchers. Just too bad that more people can't get to this area because it is so remote and so special. Continuing northwest, following the banks of the Brock River, we reach Darnley Bay, a sheltered corner of Amundsen Gulf and the Arctic Ocean beyond. And here, we finish our journey above the tiny outpost of Palatuck. It is home to just 350 hardy residents and is the easternmost community along the Northwest Territory's mainland coast. From the pristine Arctic waters of the Coppermine River and its historic Bloody Falls to the Ray River and the waters of Canada's northern interior to the Brock River and its ancient geological wonders, the interior of Nunavut's western region is a remote gem, with its growing communities attracting visitors to a world of wonder, geographic frontiers revealing Earth's most remote landscapes, and Arctic wildlife knows no boundaries. This region is only now being fully explored and understood. A landscape whose mysteries will build a brighter future, here on the Edge of Canada.