Tuktoyaktuk is a small town by the Arctic Ocean in Canada. It’s the only Arctic community that can be reached by roads. The highway – all gravel – took 7 years to plan and work on, and finally was officially open in November, 2017. Fun Fact: the rock band Metallica performed here before!
There are only around 900 people in this town. They are mostly Inuit people. We met a local named Moreen who told us that his brother didn’t want to leave Tuktoyaktuk when she was moving to Victoria. He wanted to stay on this land so he can hunt whales and caribous. Many people still hunt here, and they mostly hunt Belugas and caribous.
We were curious if some locals still speak Inuvialuktun, but Moreen told us that no one speak it anymore. Her dad’s generation was forced to go to residential schools to learn English and integrate into mainstream Canadian culture, so lots have been lost since then. Someone told us that these kids could only come back home once or twice a year. We didn’t hear anyone speaking Inuvialukton in town, not even the elders. They all speak fluent English with an accent that I’m not familiar with. I have heard so many stories like this during my 10 years of travelling in the world. It happens in Taiwan too.
Usually tourists come to this town for a day trip. It’s really expensive to stay here fore more nights. A simple B&B is around US$200 per person per night, and a meal in a restaurant is at least $12 but usually more. If you want to stay for more night but don’t have the money, you can camp or ask for work exchange like we do.
It’s hard to get a work exchange here though. We didn’t find any listings on Workaway or HelpX for this town. We still really wanted to check out this town so we hitchhiked here anyway. We got lucky and the first B&B we asked agreed to let us camp in their basement for free and use their bathroom and kitchen. Nothing fancy but at least we can stay kind of warm.
We stayed in this tent in the basement for 3 nights. We asked the B&B everyday if we could help with anything while we were here. They only asked us to scrape the paint of the outer wall one day, which took us about 4 hours, and they didn’t ask us to do anymore things. The rest of the time, we worked on our computer, explored the town, tried to find cheap things to eat, and hung out a bit with our B&B hosts.
Those three little hills in the background of the picture are called Pingos (ice hills). It’s one of the main things that Tuktoyaktuk is famous for. When I hiked up one of the pingos in town, I could feel that the ground is super spongy. When I picked up some dirt from the ground, I could pick up a whole piece of it. It felt really spongy! I heard that this is used to build their traditional houses as insulation.
We are going to leave this town tomorrow. If this place still hasn’t submerged in the future after the sea level rises, I for sure will come visit again!
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