Nunavik, Quebec, is a “near and wild frontier,” said Costas Christ in National Geographic Traveler. The northern reaches of the French Canadian province remain a “landscape largely unmarked by man,” where people are outnumbered by natural wonders such as “deep-valley rivers, glacier-sculpted lakes, boreal forests, and tundra plains.” Nunavik, an Arctic area roughly the size of France, is home to fewer than 12,000 people, most native Inuit. It can be a “glorious yet challenging place to live—and visit.” Every year only a few “willing-to-rough-it” travelers find their way to this remote wonderland. I was determined to be one of them.
I started my two-week excursion in Kuujjuaq, the most populous of Nunavik’s 14 off-the-grid villages and a gateway to the vast north. Massive inuksuks—man-made rock formations said to guide Inuit travelers to fruitful hunting and fishing grounds—tower over the edge of the tiny town. I joined an indigenous guide in kayaking to Akpatok Island in the nearby Ungava Bay. Thousands of seabirds soared along the steep limestone cliffs as we paddled around the island’s “white-gravel” shores, which are the best place for sighting polar bears. The next day, a light aircraft dropped me at Puvirnituq in west Nunavik. My guide, armed with a rifle, pointed out some wolf tracks and telltale signs of black bears as we weaved through black spruce and “patches of lowbush blueberries.” Suddenly, we happened upon a camp of tepees where Cree Indians were busy catching wild trout; it was like stepping onto the set of Dances With Wolves.
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