North to Nunavut An Arctic Love Affair by Fred and Joyce Sparling (recorded 4-17-2013) This book generously offers to the reader the beauty, mystery and challenge of living in the Arctic in photographs and personalized storytelling about the Inuit people, their art, their land and the cultural history that gives them birth.
Fred and Joyce Sparling claim their love affair with the Arctic started with Fred falling in love with a bear, a two foot long, 80 pound “dark green,, black speckled, long-necked bear with a pendulous belly” made of stone. Fred’s bear encounter in a Toronto gallery of Inuit art that he stooped into while on his way to give a scientific talk and Joyce (who already had a liking for Inuit art) responding that he should “follow his heart” started them, while in their late 60’s and early 70’s, on ten years of travelling in the Canadian Arctic.
The 2001 innocent seeming Adventure Canada cruise, scheduled to travel from Greenland to Hudson bay with stops at important Inuit art communities along the way, was the first step to their becoming totally captured by all they saw. What followed across the years were canoe trips along the great rivers that define much of the territory of the Barren Grounds Inuit, stalking bull musk-oxen, watching a caribou caravan that stretched for miles on a southern migration that lasted all night, wearing five to six layers of clothing while being wind-bound in tents for five days, living with an Inuit family at their camp on the tundra and so much more as well as learning about the problems of change and the threat to communities from global warming.
Beyond the adventure is also the story of fulfilling a spiritual need through living on the land in one of the last great wild places on earth and feeling the essence of a special people and place. Find out more at Chapel Hill Press.
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