From Arctic days to heatwaves
Paul Woodward in front of indigenous artwork. Photo: Supplied.
Nestled between the endless tundra and the MacKenzie Delta on Canada’s northern coast, 200km into the Arctic Circle, the small township of Inuvik is so out of the way that it makes even Golden Bay look accessible.
For Takaka business owner Paul Woodward, however, it is a place where work as a locum pharmacist awaits him every year. For part of each year he covers for maternity leave or staff holidays in isolated places dotted all around the vast wilderness that comprises Canada’s Northern Territories. There, the Dempster Highway, which traverses the huge expanse from its beginning on the North Klondike River, is the only year-round accessible highway crossing the Arctic Circle.
Paul has just returned to his Gazebo backpackers to enjoy the sun and his garden. He has worked two Arctic winters in a row.
“The coldest it gets there is minus 40, but it is nice and dry and it does not feel cold. The coldest I have ever been is here.”
Paul came to Golden Bay in the late nineties and immediately felt at home. He is originally from the States, where he grew up on Long Island, but later moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen. A trained pharmacist, he also has a professional background in theatre, aerobic instruction, fixing computers, running the Pohara.com. website and now a backpackers.
“Being a pharmacist has never been my career. My career is life I suppose. Every seven years I like to change lifestyles and themes,” he muses.
It was one of these changes that originally took him to the Arctic. “In 1990 I first put the word out—’I am moving to the Arctic next’—and that is how it happened,” said Paul. For a while he worked in Churchill, on the edge of the Hudson Bay, famous as a place where polar bears feed on seals.
Inuvik has a similar population to Golden Bay’s, but has a high turnover of people seeking short-term employment, and Paul says it is not always easy to feel part of its ever-changing community.
Inuvik’s health and social issues also differ from the Bay’s. The lack of winter light creates specific health problems, and SAD disorder and depression is widespread.
“They had five hours of light when I left [in December], and from later in December the sun does not rise for a month, and it’s another month before the days begin to lengthen, and everybody needs doses of vitamin D,” says Paul. “Without light the community as a whole gets depressed…after Christmas for about two months nobody is nice to each other. As a group they become borderline rude and on edge, and I always knew when the first day of spring was there because people would walk into the pharmacy and said ‘how are you’ and ‘good morning’.”
Alongside diabetes, obesity and asthma top Inuvik’s health issues, while alcoholism and TB are still problems to varying degrees. Alcoholism is widespread among non-native and native people alike, says Paul. Cocaine use is also reported to be on the increase.
The teenage pregnancy rate among the indigenous Inuit is extremely high. In 2000, the rate was up to four times higher than in the rest of Canada for 16 year olds, and 18 times higher for under-15-year-old girls, with a quarter of births reported to be to mothers of under 20 years of age.
“The concept of marriage is not practised to a great extent, and under common law the baby is brought up by the girl’s mums, who are in their early thirties, and by their extended family,” said Paul. “The Inuit came from Northern Alaska originally and their culture has changed drastically in the last three generations. The elders all knew and have seen the old culture and traditions, and then the next generation in the ‘50s and ‘60s were taken to residency schools, and many were beaten and sexually abused and were not allowed to speak their language, and they are still very resentful.”
Black bear, bison, wolverine and fox live in the forest, and grizzly bears, wolves and caribou (now declining) roam the mountain valleys and plains.
For Paul, whose Arctic days consist of getting up early, working out at the gym, going to work, coming home and watching lots of TV, life here is very different.
“This is like the area I grew up in, when it had places to play as kid and you could go down to the beach. Now it has large motorways, houses everywhere and the beaches have eroded away. Here, in Golden Bay I have always felt part of the community and I have been involved as a volunteer. I was a producer for Show of Hands for the local radio show, although I had no radio experience and I provide free webspace for non-profit organisations in the Golden Bay area.”
He says “money is a resource, time is a resource, and so is your health”, and he manages to find the right balance between earning enough to have a comfortable lifestyle and adventures, and maintaining his wellbeing and living life as it comes.
“It requires quite a mental switch from being a professional in my job in the Arctic to going back to Golden Bay becoming a hippie. But I don’t think about pharmacies when I get back, and now I work in my garden, train my puppy and run my backpackers.”
Ina Holst
