Students on Ice: Torngat National Park
It was a huge thrill and honour to visit the Torngats and to see that the dream of a national park has at long last become a reality. And what a reality! We explored the full length of Saglek Bay and Nachvak Fjord further to the north; a deep incision cut into the rugged mountains rising 1700 metres above the icy waters. These are the landscapes that are the defining “image” of the Torngats, but spending a few days in the area helped to enrich that image immensely.
Clipper Adventurer in Nakvak Fjord (c) Martin von Mirbach/WWF-Canada
At the Torngat Base Camp, we were given a warm welcome as though we were family (which, in the case of one of the students, Samantha Lyall from Nain, was literally true). The camp had a number of researchers, as well as Park managers and elders, some of whom had just wrapped up a meeting of the Cooperative Management Board. As well, there was an entire youth component in the camp, so there were tremendous opportunities for the “on-board” youth to mingle with the “on-shore” ones, allowing for a dynamic exchange of ideas.
Torngat National Park is governed by a Cooperative Management Board, with representation drawn from Parks Canada, the Government of Nunatsiavut (the Inuit governance body resulting from the Comprehensive Land Claim settlement in Labrador) and the Makivik Corporation, the Inuit governance body from Nunavik in Quebec (whose traditional use area extends into Torngat Park). This kind of cooperative management arrangement is a model of the new governance structures needed to bring about effective conservation and stewardship in the Arctic.
When the entire delegation of roughly 120 Students On Ice students and staff descended on the Torngats Base Camp it was the biggest event the camp had seen in its short life, and our hosts pulled out all the stops to make us feel welcome. We had a tour of the facility (including the impressive solar panel array that supplies power to their new research lab), as well as an assortment of hikes and walks in the area. The day culminated in a spectacular community feast, with country food being served, including arctic char, caribou, seal and muktuk (raw narwhal skin). Story-telling, songs, dances and games followed in the long summer twilight, while the local elders looked on in evident delight.
This was a particularly resonant day for me, since I’d lived in Newfoundland and Labrador throughout the 1990s, when this park was in the lengthy process of being born. In 1995 I visited northern Labrador, hosted by the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA), where we heard about the pressing need to conclude a comprehensive land claim, paving the way for the Park to be established. That 1995 trip had been initiated by Judy Rowell, who was Environmental Advisor to the LIA and also chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (of which I was a member). What a delight it was to see Judy there at the Base Camp, in her relatively new role as Superintendent of Torngat National Park. It was gratifying to see this concrete evidence of the progress that can be achieved with gentle but unrelenting persistence.
