Westworld Saskatchewan

34 w E S t w o R l D | s u m m e r 2 0 1 5 (top) liz bryan, (sidebar) adventUre canada look . . . and look, and walk around and look again. I think of their mothers, who never knew what hap- pened to them and who I'm sure had longed to hug their sons just one more time. That night in the lounge, Susie enacts the traditional Inuit ceremony of welcome: the lighting of a stone oil lamp with arc- tic cotton grass to welcome everyone to Nunavut. Is anyone else still thinking of those lonely graves? Crossing Baffi n Bay to Greenland takes a day and a half of hard sailing into a storm front, with a 30-knot wind. e birthplace of most of the icebergs that meander down into the Atlantic, Greenland is still 90 per cent solid ice sheet, with only the coastline fringes ice-free and habitable, settled very early by Vikings from Iceland. It is now a few degrees above freezing, the eff ect of the Gulf Stream, and the sun beams warm. We spend the day gazing dreamily, some of us on deck, others in the observation lounge, at the slow-motion scene of drifting icebergs, which take on diff erent shapes and shades as the ship traces a zigzag course through them. e bergs are ancient ice, split off (in increasing numbers today) from the glaciers that drain the mountainous coast. On the Greenland shore, we hike to the ruins of a ule village, then along to cliff s where in 1972 hunters found a 500-year-old burial site with six women and two children, their bodies stacked and placed in a cave, incredibly well preserved in the dry cold air. ese Qilakitsoq mummies are famous the world over. Some of them are on display in the Greenland capital of Nuuk. The small Greenland towns of Uummannaq and Ilulissat look smarter than those in Nunavut. e houses here are painted in bright colours and perched on the rocks, like those in a Newfoundland outport. Sleds, dogs and kayaks are everywhere, for hunting and fishing are still the main support. Uummannaq, which means "Heart Mountain," takes its name from the shape of a huge red south- facing rock that towers behind the town, while the fi shing port of Ilulissat is the tourist centre of the area with gift shops, boutiques, cafés and enormous multi-storey apartment blocks between the older houses. It was built at the edge of a ord choked with icebergs calved from the Jakobshavn Glacier, among the world's largest and fastest moving, which fl ows from the ice cap. A World Heritage Site, this glacier produces more than 10 per cent of all Greenland's icebergs and is believed to be the source of the monster that sank the Titanic. A four-kilometre boardwalk takes us across the tundra, past several ule house sites and to the edge of the ice ord, a "river" of tumbled ice chunks, grinding down from the fast-melting ice cap 40 km in the distance. It is hard to believe this frozen mass is on the move, advancing 19 metres a day towards the sea, and that we are looking at hard proof of climate change. The ice cap is melting, fast and furious, and sea levels are rising world wide. The ship waiting for us beyond the ice-choked harbour below seems a welcome refuge from this cold reality. I turn up my collar against a sudden chill. We catch another glimpse of the ice cap at Kangerlussuaq, an old U.S. Airforce base where we leave the ship to fly home. Taken by bus up to a mountain viewpoint studded with research domes, towers and transmitters, we take a last long look at the disappearing ice. I feel a bit ashamed to be returning to the warm and cosy south, burning fossil fuels all the way. adventurecanada.com W Call of the North Join Great Excursions for your own journey through the North- ern Passage. The pinnacle of arctic exploration, this route pro- vides passengers with a front- row-seat to dramatic fjords, the calving glaciers of Greenland, bird cliffs of Coburg Island and narrow passageways of Prince of Wales Strait. Explore Beechey Island, where the graves of Frank- lin's expedition keep watch while you look out for whales, walruses, polar bears and caribou. Great Excursions 2015 trips include Heart of the Arctic, Into the Northwest Passage and Out of the Northwest Passage; 2016 trips include the Northwest Pas- sage ones, plus Arctic Safari and Arctic Explorer. 306-751-9519; greatexcursions.com Iceberg view from rock-top homes in the Greenland hamlet of Uummannaq. The Great Excursions Company

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