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The Catholic Mission Church and the Schooner "Lady of Lourdes" Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada |
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Tuktoyaktuk is an Inuit word meaning "reindeer that looks like caribou"; the town's former name was Port Brabant. It was founded in 1936 by the Hudson Bay Company, largely as a transshipment depot from Mackenzie River barges to larger vessels on the Arctic Ocean. The Inuit of Tuk were "adopted" by the Catholic Church, who used the schooner "Lady of Lourdes" to run vital supplies (and religious personnel) between the widely scattered Inuit villages and camps. Tuk now has a gravel airstrip with regular service to Inuvik, which has jet service year 'round to the rest of the world. Nowhere is very isolated any more. If you were in, let's say, Timbuktu, that famously isolated oasis on the bend of the Niger in the southern Sahara (now in Mali), and you had a burning need to be in Tuktoyaktuk, you could probably make it in a couple of days, even in the dead of winter. All it would take would be money.
Next: Cemetery at Tuktoyaktuk |