Original subtitles

GORDON PINSET: Last time on The Polar Sea.

The passage explorers are in the kingdom of the polar bear,

where the mythic beast is a source of fear and concern.

MAN: We have to be able to track

the condition of polar bears

and determine what's happening.

PINSET: On the rugged coasts of Baffin Island,

scientists are racing to fill knowledge gaps

in Arctic biology,

as it changes before their eyes.

You're starting to get robins up here,

I mean, think about it. Robins up in the Arctic?

PINSET: Yet ancient traditions remain,

like the hunting of narwhals.

Now, as some sailors make a dash deeper into the passage,

the crew of Dax find themselves broken down

in the wilderness.

PINSET: Dax has traveled almost 4,000 kilometers

on its quest,

and it's worn out.

RICHARD TEGNER: We didn't have much wind so we motored a lot.

Maybe up to 90% of our time

on the boat we spent motoring

and which would show later on that was not very

good thing to do with this boat.

MAN: Here you are. Thanks.

(BOY SPEAKING)

Hello.

You are fine? Yeah.

MARTIN SIGGE: We have a leakage from the water pump.

We need to bilge every hour. It's just, we...

You know, what can we do? We can't just continue,

so we're back here.

So we'll see what we have.

We don't know how long it's going to last.

I'm going to get a hold of our mechanic tomorrow

in Sweden and talk to them and see if it can be mended.

Yeah, it's...

We are safe. We are alive.

That's number one.

These problems put a kind of...

Cloud over...

The...

The nice views.

PINSET: They hang on to hope that Dax can be fixed.

But they're too far from home to get the parts it needs.

SIGGE: We realize that this

engine cannot be trusted.

It would be stupid to go on.

I am, of course, very sad for this.

That's all I've been planning, really, for 18 months or so,

so it's a hard blow.

But,

what should I tell their wives

if I survive and they don't?

(CHUCKLING)

There's a loss to not see the rest of the passage

but we have seen Greenland

and we have seen part of Canada and...

One should be satisfied for that.

There were some good moments in Greenland,

but I don't remember them exactly.

I spent most of the time in the engine room,

with my feet up and my head down,

trying to fix various technical issues.

It feels like...

A bit like an amputated adventure.

I agree with Bengt who described...

Our experiences so far,

which has been wonderful, but

I really

would have liked to complete this journey

and sort of cope with all the difficulties

that would have occurred during the rest of it.

TEGNER: I didn't feel like going home really.

I was at the beginning of the Canadian Arctic

and I saw all of this beautiful mountains

and glaciers and wow.

I don't want to go home.

I talked to Martin and Bengt

if it was okay with them

that I would continue on my own.

I really asked them

more than once if they agree

on me leaving the boat and

causing them more work.

Sure. Yeah. We are all for it.

It's...

Good for him.

I will go out to the boat, get my stuff...

This is what I dreamed of.

And the way to get here was this boat.

DAX.

And my friend, Martin who gave me the opportunity.

I love this place and I'll see what I can

get out of it.

WOMAN: (ON SPEAKERS) Ladies and gentlemen,

the first airplane for Iqaluit is now boarding.

(ALL SPEAKING SWEDISH)

Take care.

PINSET: Dax will go by barge

to be stored in Montreal.

BENGT: We only got halfway this time.

We may...

Complete the other half another time,

maybe from the other end, I don't know.

I'm not giving up.

Just making a stop now for a year or so.

PINSET: Martin and Bengt will fly home to Sweden.

TEGNER: When we made the decision,

I felt sad

because we couldn't complete the Northwest Passage

with this boat.

It's no principle to complete

the passage in the traditional way.

I'm an Arctic hitchhiker now.

PINSET: Richard is alone in Pond Inlet,

at the entrance to the Northwest Passage,

6,000 kilometers from its end in Alaska.

TEGNER: Being onboard the Dax,

I must say it has been an experience for me,

very useful.

It made me

look at myself in a more clear way.

And

look at myself through, for example, Kerstin's eyes.

At home,

I am a bit critical about Kerstin,

how she does things

and being on board the Dax,

I experienced Martin behaving the same way

I think I do at home and

it was not at all pleasant.

Because of these experiences I have made,

I think I will come back as a better Richard.

No water.

No washing.

No toilet.

No tooth brushing.

Not today.

We'll see how it gets tomorrow.

I've gone for a walk along the beach

and now I am at Salmon Creek.

I borrowed a

polar bear deterrent at the Parks Canada,

and I'm going to try it now.

That's the gun

and bangers.

(LOUD SQUEAKING)

Well, that's quite frightening, isn't it?

I enjoyed working with the video camera.

I got the documentary mood

turned on.

(DOG YELPING)

TEGNER: The last week, it has been very comfortable weather,

sunny and warm.

It's like any Scandinavian summer's day.

But these last days,

you really feel that you're in the Arctic.

Very hard wind.

Traveling shouldn't be too comfortable all the time.

You need a little pain to understand

other people's pain, also.

I got to know a little of the soul of Pond Inlet.

WOMAN: Where do I start the story?

This is my house,

that's where I grew up and I was born in there.

PINSET: Zipporah Kalluk

grew up just outside Pond Inlet in the 1950s.

The community then was a tiny gathering of tents.

KALLUK: We didn't know anybody else living in the whole world.

We didn't hear nothing.

We didn't even know.

We thought we were all by ourselves

in the world, in that community.

We were a very peaceful living when we were children.

Seal skin tents.

My father had to catch about seven

for one tent.

There's no rooms for anybody.

It's just the flat bed for everybody.

It was more peaceful.

Families are together.

There is a lot to love in a little house like that.

We traveled by dog team.

We would have about 14, 15 dogs

to pull the whole families.

Very peaceful.

The dogs never tied up.

They live in peace too.

And then our lives start changing.

PINSET: In the 1950s, the Canadian government

feared that its claim of national sovereignty

over the Northwest Passage was weak.

The United States has always considered

the passage international waters.

Canada worried about the US and other countries

sending icebreakers or submarines through.

To claim sovereignty,

Canada needed people living in the high Arctic,

but no Canadian citizens lived North of Pond Inlet.

Higher in the passage, at Resolute Bay,

Canada had just built an air base.

Now, bureaucrats decided it needed civilians there

to bolster its sovereignty claim.

So, they hatched a plan to move Inuit North.

They convinced Inuit from Port Harrison,

on Hudson's Bay, to move north

with the promise of better hunting.

The officials did that knowing

that Port Harrison's Inuit had no experience hunting

the big game of the high Arctic.

So hunters from Pond Inlet

were also recruited to go north

and help those from Port Harrison.

That's where Zipporah's family came in.

Joseph Idlout was known in Pond Inlet

as a great hunter.

There had even been a documentary about him.

Now government officials convinced him

that the hunting would be even better further north.

So he agreed to move his family to Resolute Bay

and Zipporah's father felt compelled to follow.

KALLUK: The people who asked us to come here,

they're more powerful than my father.

He had to listen to him all the time,

whatever he says.

That's how...

That's how we're supposed to be.

That's life.

We had to follow.

Anybody who's older than you,

you have to follow, everything what they say.

PINSET: Zipporah left Pond Inlet for good.

Her group eventually labeled themselves

"Human Flagpoles."

Watching the Northwest Passage for foreigners,

who never did show up,

until climate change made the passage safe

for cruise ships.

(HORN BLOWING IN DISTANCE)

TEGNER: My plan is to jump

on a cruise ship that comes here

and leaves on Monday the 19th

and that will hopefully take me

all the way to Cambridge Bay.

This is where my adventure starts.

I was waiting for the passenger group,

and I saw them coming up the hill

like any tourists with their gear and their cameras

and I thought,

"Well, look at this boring group of elderly people."

PINSET: Richard boards the Akademik Ioffe.

She's a Russian submarine hunter from the Cold War

that is now rented out for cruises.

The cruise will visit historical sites

on the Northwest Passage.

This leg is dedicated to the Franklin disaster.

John Franklin was a British naval officer

famous for exploring the passage.

All but 300 miles of it had been mapped

when he sailed in 1845

on what Victorians assumed would be the crowning mission.

His warships, Erebus and Terror,

carried 128 men

and everything they needed to maintain

proper British society.

All they lacked were the skills

to survive the Arctic.

The ships sailed into Lancaster Sound that July.

Ships had probed the sound for 20 years

but repeatedly been stopped by ice at its western end.

Franklin made it to Beechey Island and got stuck.

A century later, Zipporah Kalluk

and the Arctic exiles sailed the same route.

Their ship also met heavy ice in the western sound,

but managed to push past Beechey to reach Resolute Bay.

Neither the British explorers

nor Inuit exiles realized

they had sailed into a different climate.

At the western end of the sound,

the relative warmth of a maritime climate

gives way to a colder polar desert.

It was a difference Zipporah's family felt

as soon as they landed.

KALLUK: We come here by ship.

When we land here,

we couldn't walk on the rocks

because we were only wearing Inuk made kamiks.

They had to give us rubber boots to walk around.

It was very cold.

Colder than where we come from.

Yeah.

PINSET: Inuit had thrived here 500 years earlier.

Then came a cold period,

now known as the Little Ice Age.

Inuit abandoned their whale bone homes

and left the region.

None had tried to return

before the human flagpoles arrived.

There's these everywhere you look.

It wasn't that high, as you guys can see.

Just enough.

PINSET: Jeffrey Amaraulik's grandfather

came from Port Harrison.

He intended to return

if the hunting was not as promised.

My grandparents first came

and another group come over.

They came to these desolate shore

to pursue the government's promise

of a more prosperous life.

PINSET: But they weren't equipped to hunt the big game

that were the only food here.

AMARAULIK: They had to get a couple of families from Pond Inlet

to come up and help them

get familiarized with the hunting.

So the Kalluks,

the Kalluk family came up and

helped my family out.

Zipporah, I think she was just a little girl,

but her, her brothers and sisters,

parents came up here to

help us

know this land.

'Cause when you get out here, there's nothing, gravel.

KALLUK: But us, we never really complained to governments.

And it's the people from Port Harrison.

They moved them,

but they didn't know the land.

They didn't know what kind of animals it has.

They have no dogs,

and they have no sleds, nothing.

So they couldn't do nothing.

So they were...

They didn't like it.

PINSET: Jeffrey's grandfather

carved a monument to their experience.

AMARAULIK: This is one of the last carvings my grandpa ever did.

He was a good man.

Great hunter,

great grandpa.

We miss him.

The government promised my grandparents,

there would be a ship that would come,

and they would stand and wait for hours, even days.

That what's this means. They were waiting and waiting.

Looking that way where the ship would come,

but it never came.

Just a lot of promises that weren't kept, I guess.

(HORN BLOWING)

PINSET: Today, ships come through all the time

to see where Franklin's sailors began to die.

MAN: The sad story about Franklin.

It's such a tragedy.

We have visited the place where he first overwintered.

That's called Beechey Island.

It's a really rough place to stay in the winter.

It's all gray and no colors, no vegetation, no nothing.

PINSET: In the Royal Navy tradition, Franklin's men kept busy.

They built their ice fort. They played games.

But the Arctic pressed on them.

They froze in their woolen uniforms.

Without fresh meat, they got scurvy.

Three sailors died on Beechey Island.

Their bodies were exhumed in the 1980s,

perfectly preserved by the cold.

They showed signs of pneumonia,

scurvy and possible lead poisoning.

All were maladies they might have avoided

by following Inuit ways.

But they were far North of Inuit villages

and most game.

Moreover, Royal Navy personnel did not deign to hunt

or wear fur and they dismissed Inuit ways as savage.

They were stuck inside their ship

and their Victorian attitudes.

Only when Inuit became Canadian

did attitudes seem to change.

By the 1970s, Canada even had a picture of Joseph Idlout

and Zipporah's father on its currency

to proudly show Canadians

living on the Northwest Passage.

But the respect was just symbolic.

Oh, we just do everything, what the white man says.

Anything. Everything. Little things. Big things.

We couldn't say no because they were white

and way up there.

We were just the little people down there.

That's how we see the white people that time.

PINSET: The new arrivals had been dropped

near the Canadian air force base.

They were not allowed into the base, but

used its cast-offs to survive.

KALLUK: There was no woods around here, so

the air force people

bring some woods,

so my father built that house.

So, we had a house.

One year, we didn't.

We had to borrow other people's houses and

live in the tent first

and then have somebody else's house

until my father finished the house that he made,

our own house.

PINSET: The famous Joseph Idlout

was allowed into the base

and he began to frequent its bar.

One night, he left the bar,

drove his snowmobile off a cliff and died.

His family believed he killed himself.

His was one of many drunken suicides

linked to the despair of the Arctic exiles.

Those who survived the dark times

did it by clinging to their culture,

especially their music.

KALLUK: When we got here...

People,

they throat singing a lot.

When they have everything they need,

like food,

animal skin for clothing,

they celebrate and

they get together and they do that

throat singing and

it reminds you of

families were around you and

it makes us feel better and remember all that.

Proud of my daughter Celina

for that she could do that

and she's doing very well.

I started practicing

when she was still a little girl.

And then when she was coming bigger and bigger

as she starts interested how we do it a little bit,

teaching her how to do it a little bit and

she's get into that with other people

who could throat singing and

that she is. She is...

That she's very good now.

CELINA: Being sung to by my mother

most of my childhood, all my childhood.

We would... I would hear all kinds of

different kinds of throat singing,

hymns,

traditional Inuk music, even...

I kind of grew a love for Inuit songs

very early on and I realized throat singing

by Inuit is very unique

to Inuit but we didn't hear it very often.

The traditional style of throat singing.

I cherish that forever

and I respect that

and I'm able to teach it to my daughters.

Now we've been able to teach younger girls

throat singing and I can throat sing with

almost anyone now.

I think the best way I've seen it,

comparing it to an English style of singing,

is when you sing

in a canon,

or like a zipper.

You can't zipper a zipper with

the little teeth hitting each other like this,

they have to

alternate and overlap a little bit

and hook to each other like that.

When one girl will breathe in,

the other girl or boy will breathe out.

So it becomes a circular breathing.

And in that, it becomes a game

because you have to be very quick,

and you have to last pretty good,

and your breath... You have to be able to

control your breath very well, so that you don't pass out.

(LAUGHS)

(LAUGHING)

(THROAT SINGING)

PINSET: The exiles even had a special song

to banish the darkness

by celebrating the midnight sun.

(CELINA SINGING)

PINSET: It was their attitude that enabled the exiles to survive.

Just as it was attitude that condemned Franklin's sailors.

Franklin's ships fled Beechey in 1846,

but were soon trapped in pack ice.

Eventually the sailors left to walk out of the Arctic,

hauling heavy sleds and lifeboats.

And then true darkness descended.

Over the next 30 years,

Britain sent dozens of parties

to look for her lost warships.

One was finally found 170 years later

on the ocean floor.

The sailors' remains were found in 1857.

They fell beside life boats that contained silver cutlery,

silk scarves and chocolate.

They had died hauling vestiges of Victorian civilization.

Even as they became cannibals.

TEGNER: Franklin died officially in 1847

and all of his crew members died on

Victoria Island.

They found pieces of human body parts in pots and

this news came back to England

with the research expeditions and they were terrified

and they couldn't believe that noble English gentlemen

ate each other,

but nevertheless,

I think they did.

So, what do you do?

When you're starving

and your company sailor is dead?

Could I have another bottle? Thank you.

Thank you.

Just a drop. You got it. Just a drop.

Look at the geese!

Beechey Island is the island where heroes rest.

In 1845, John Franklin and his crews

bade their farewells as their ships, Erebus and Terror,

came down the Thames,

heading out on their expedition

into the Arctic and the unknown.

They were last seen that summer, moored to an iceberg

high in Lancaster Sound, taking on ice.

They were never seen again.

Franklin and all 128 of his men never returned.

Drink to their health and their memory.

To Franklin and the Northwest Passage.

Hip hip hooray. Three cheers!

Hip hip ALL: Hooray!

Hip hip! ALL: Hooray!

Hip hip! ALL: Hooray!

And if you don't want to drink it,

share it with these thirsty sailors.

It's walrus,

narwhal, seals, narwhals and fishes.

PINSET: In 2010, the Canadian government

formally apologized to the Inuit exiles.

Their survival story

has become an inspirational example for young Inuit.

Zipporah and Celina work together now

to pass their culture to the next generation.

CELINA: We're having this bonfire today

to gain interest for a youth committee.

So, we've invited everyone in the town.

We don't know who's coming.

Right now there's a few children.

I know it's cold, but

we don't let cold stop us usually, here, so.

Pick two rocks equal in size

that will fit comfortably in your hands.

Does everybody have two rocks?

Yeah.

Everybody ready?

CELINA: Okay, go! KALLUK: Okay.

(ALL SINGING)

(LAUGHING AND SINGING)

(APPLAUDING)

You better... You guys better learn good to do.

This is what you're gonna get!

PINSET: One irony of the exiles story

is that global warming has now shifted the climate north.

The exiles have gotten got back the climate

that they left behind 50 years ago.

KALLUK: When we just got here, it was different.

Colder.

You had to wear big jackets all the time.

Right now, it's changed.

Flowers are growing.

There's even green grass now.

There was nothing, nothing! No moss, nothing

when we just got here. Just all gravel.

Today, there's lots of things growing and

all kinds of bugs,

even bees and all that that never used to be here, nothing.

But we can't change that so we just live in it.

It didn't change us. We still accept whatever

comes.

(LAUGHS)

PINSET: Another irony is that the exiles today promote

Canadian sovereignty more strongly

than does the government.

AMARAULIK: They used Inuit as human flagpoles

or whatever they call it,

but they're still fighting over this high Arctic

like we were moved here for nothing.

We're here, we're Canadians. This is our land right here.

This doesn't belong to nobody else but Canada.

I'm proud to be a Canadian, even after all this.

PINSET: The greatest irony is that Canada's government today

encourages foreign ships in the Northwest Passage

and hopes global warming will open a trade route.

Its biggest opponents are the exiles,

who hunt on the sea ice.

They want to put this Northwest Passage as

as an international strait, but

we're trying to put a stop to that,

because they're gonna have ice breakers breaking up

all of the ice all the time

and we'll have trouble traveling down

to the next island.

Every year, there's more and more ships.

PINSET: That traffic will only grow.

To shiver on the shores that murdered Franklin's crew but

retreat to a warm cabin

is tourism at its most sublime.

MAN: Our bartender, Gus, told me we'd run out of ice.

The freshest ice for miles around is often to oldest.

This is millions of years old, this stuff

that fell as rain as mammoths walked the Earth

and we're going to do it justice

by having it in our gin and tonics.

TEGNER: All these amenities.

The comfort

and the warmth and the food.

It was like heaven compared to the Dax.

Very soon, I felt totally relaxed.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

So, limericks, it's very simple.

Or I thought it was very simple.

Franklin's sailors were not superstitious

though some started to get quite suspicious.

After months, they were famished

then the first mate just vanished.

Some say that he was quite delicious.

(PEOPLE CHEERING)