Up Here Magazine

Bhante Andrew’s bare feet stick out from his ochre robe as he sits on a lichen-covered rock near the Ingraham Trail about 30 kilometres outside of Yellowknife. Every day, the 33-year-old Theravāda Buddhist monk walks to this area from his camp to meet people and collect alms, or food offerings. Some drivers give him fish, moose, army rations or vegetables. Other locals aren’t sure what to make of him.

There is an eddy on the Wind River, under the shadow of lofty, bald mountains, where grayling hover in water so clear you can count the speckles on their rosy bellies. Standing there, watching those fish with Bobbi Rose Koe, I suddenly decided to tell her my secret. It was 10 years ago, and I was guiding a 14-day canoe trip for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Yukon chapter during the fight to protect the Peel watershed from development.

Upon graduating from Grade 9, Farrel Kablutsiak receives a certificate of excellence and a very Nunavut gift—brand-new black hip-waders. He must try them on as soon as possible. “His mother asked him to have supper first,” says the boy’s grandmother Agnes Kablutsiak. “But he was too excited.” That’s not unusual for teenage boys, Kablutsiak included.

For five generations, Carissa Waugh’s family has had a fish camp on the Yukon River just north of Whitehorse. It’s near a spot on the braided, arterial waterway that widens and glints like a gold coin in the sun when seen from a plane. On maps, the area is shaped like an anatomical heart. In this slower section of the river, salmon can rest on their long migration from the Bering Sea to spawning grounds anywhere from 150 to 3,000 kilometres upstream.

Cheri Wilson’s hands are in constant motion, covered in clay, as she sculpts, pounds and shapes the material. Wearing a black apron, the 67-year-old makes a bowl to add to the more than 100 pieces she’s created since she took up pottery two years ago. Her collection rests on the table in front of her, undergoing inventory for something she’s excited about: a show at Dawson’s ODD Gallery in the next year or two. Many of Wilson’s sculptures are babies that fit in the palm of a hand.

IQALUIT’S AIRPORT is a boring place. There are none of the restaurants, bars or purveyors of foot massage you might find at YVR or YYZ. Instead, Iqaluit International Airport is a place that fun has forgotten. There is one takeout joint and one gift shop with Made-in-China T-shirts bearing “I love Iqaluit” slogans. Both close around 6 p.m., leaving those on evening flights with no food or last-minute souvenirs.

People have lived in what we call the Canadian Arctic for about 4,000 years. The area around Hudson Bay and across the northern coast has been ice-free for only about 8,000 years, and some areas in the High Arctic and on Baffin Island for much less time than that. After the retreat of the great continental ice sheets, it took about 2,000 years for a wet, gravel-strewn landscape to become covered with low tundra vegetation.

The Toronto Maple Leafs picked him first overall in June’s entry draft and the team’s championship-starved fans dream the Whitehorse born-and-bred star will be their saviour. So, we expect Gavin McKenna to play his first National Hockey League game on September 29, when the Leafs host the Montreal Canadiens. But he isn’t the first Northerner to hit the big league. True, many of those who went before him didn’t last long—just a proverbial cup of coffee—but not all. Here’s a look at their careers. 1.

IF YOU SPENT an afternoon counting cars on the streets of Yellowknife, you’d find local drivers like their pickup trucks. Or, if not trucks, then SUVs. Vehicles like Wayne Guy’s silver Porsche 911 stand out on northern roads. Guy, the founder of Guy Architects Ltd., has been shaping the signature look of the NWT and Nunavut since 1990.

In the late summer and fall of 2018, Mark Kelly took part in an International League of Conservation Photographers project. The idea was to draw attention to what oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would mean for the Porcupine caribou calving grounds and the Gwich’in people on both sides of the border. Kelly’s assignment was to show people’s connection to the land, water and caribou.