excerpt
As they walked around the ramshackle town, whose only buildings of
note were the grand churches of competing denominations, he described
his first sight of the place and how he had come to buy food for the people
who were to become his family.
An Inuk man, named Amy Ahangona, asked them to have tea at his
home. As they walked toward his house, people smiled and nodded. Amy
explained that the people in the Arctic knew about Isumataq and about
the spotlight of attention Ken had been focussing on the story of the
Inuit. “What can we do to help?” he asked.
Ken made one request. Could Amy take them out on the Coppermine
River? They spent a day on Amy’s boat, motoring up the river to Copper
Mountain where the natives had mined the yellow mineral and beaten it
into knives, and had thus become known as the Yellow Knives. They went
to Bloody Falls where Ken stood on the same boulder he had straddled
when he first crossed from the western into the eastern Arctic. He saw
again the boulder where Samuel Hearne had carved his name in the sixteen
hundreds and felt the emotional rush of history overwhelm him.
From Coppermine, they flew to Rankin Inlet where they discovered
that Keith had asked Michael to spend the summer at his camp, working
as a guide. They flew across Hudson’s Bay, east to Iqaluit (Frobisher
Bay), another ramshackle settlement, except for the new high school in
the shape of a giant igloo.
They continued on to Pangirtung, an ancient settlement at the far end
of Cumberland Sound on Baffin Island, where the Inuit had made camps
for many centuries. But, it was also an old European whaling station and
remains of the industry and skeletons of giant blue whales were still scattered
on the shore.
They visited the local high school, where Ken gave a talk. When one
young student asked him what he would do with Isumataq when it was
finished, he said he wanted not one opening as was common with works
of art – he wanted many openings, all of them to take place across the
Arctic. Yes, the student persisted, but where would he show it first. “Well,
first I have to take it to Parliament,” he said.
Afterwards, Karen said. “I’ve never heard you say that before. What’s
this idea of going to Parliament?”
“It was just a joke,” he said. “It just came off the top of my head.”
“Some joke! It’s perfect.”
“Maybe.”
“Seriously – it’s perfect. That’s it!”
“First I want to bring it here.”
“Fine, but I tell you I love it – I love it a lot more than your crazy idea
of going to Rome and unveiling it in the Colosseum with a pair of lions.
Manolis Aligizakis 