Rhythm of the Tides: my arctic experience

Country Food

They're not top sirloin quality, but they taste good. Steaks from animals raised in factories on hormones and antibiotics can't compare to the taste of those raised in the wild. This meat has real flavour and we mop up the plate clean with bread. It's a real treat and we finish our meal reminiscing about the days when beef used to taste this good. Then it dawns on us that many young people today may not have eaten beef raised on ranches.

How much our world has changed! Pretty much everything we eat and drink today is processed and has tons of salt and sugar because that's what gives it taste. We're living in a world of virtual reality and coming here has made this realization crystal clear. Country food is the only real food left and it's becoming a rarity.

When I bought the meat, the owner of the country food store told me that some fresh meat might be coming soon. As Don and I will spend the night at my friend's house in Ottawa on our way back, I let him know that we would have barbecued caribou for dinner. He couldn't wait for our return.

The problem is that after having raised his expectations I couldn't deliver on my promise. Day after day I went back to the Country Food store and each time I'm told maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow never came before our departure. I'm now in a bind. It's the morning before our noon flight and I have no caribou. Do you have any arctic char? I ask. "No," says the owner.

Now I'm panicking. It's at this point that Don takes charge of our search for arctic char. Always thinking outside the box, he says, let's go to the fishing and hunting supply store, they must know some fishermen; and so we did. Luckily, the store was on the same street so we didn't have far to walk. Making a long story short, within minutes we have three freshly frozen arctic char, one for each of us to share with our families in Toronto and one with my friend in Ottawa.

Problem solved? Maybe. My friend is still expecting wild caribou steaks, and as good as the arctic char turns out to be, it's no replacement for a good juicy steak. But, at least we have some country food to share, and a good bottle of wine to go with it.

So, where does the country store get its caribou? Presumably, they get it from families that sell their allotment, either the entire animal or parts of it, to earn some money.

While this sounds logical and reasonable, it is also against tradition, which requires that hunters share their catch with the community. Selling one's catch is relatively new and in response to the new realities of arctic life.

In the moneyless, traditional Inuit society, sharing came naturally, but in the modern world selling predominates. If the hunter shares his food then he has no money to pay the bills. Traditionally, hunting and fishing was the dominant economic activity. Today they're very low in the economic scale. Selling their catch is a relatively new phenomenon. It started as an experiment in 2010, with an open-air hunters market, bringing together Iqaluttium and hunters from all over Baffin Island.

The idea came from the farmers markets in the south and it was an instant success, indicating a lot of pent-up demand and an opportunity for hunters to make a more significant contribution to the economy because while there are limits on hunting caribou, there are none for seals, whales and other sea mammals. However, seven years later it doesn't seem that there has been a great response from the hunters. Something is holding them back.

The Country Food Store is an offshoot of that successful experiment, but the freezers are empty. The store buys from hunters and sells to the public. As a result, I'm able to buy caribou and cherish the experience. But that piece of meat is one less for the hunter's family to share and I feel the Inuit moral dilemma. The need for money in the modern society is so strong that it's having an effect on their sharing culture, and I have inadvertently contributed to it. On the other hand, the demand creates more opportunities for them to hunt and fish more and reduce expensive food imports from the south.

Maybe it was unrealistic of me to come here expecting to find country food everywhere. The situation is so bad that even Inuit who were raised on it now miss it because of the scarcity. Unfortunately, the number of hunters has been in steady decrease in proportion to the population, and even with modern hunting tools it would take a large number of them to feed a town of seven thousand people.

I know that some Inuit are against the selling of country food because it violates ancient tradition, but, in today's world, isn't it better for government to subsidize hunters so that there is more healthy country food for everyone?

The Inuit enjoy country food frozen and raw, dipped in a variety of sauces. Today, soy sauce is a favourite, but the traditional sauces made from caribou or seal are still used. They include: Aalu – made from choice parts of caribou or seal, chopped into tiny pieces and blended with melted fat and blood; Misiraq – made from seal or whale blubber aged to resemble an aromatic white wine; and Nirukkaq – made from the contents of a caribou's stomach, kneaded into a smooth pâté.

Seal is a staple during the winter and spring. It's still plentiful and is being harvested sustainably. Caribou is hunted during summer and fall; and fish, whales, birds and other sea mammals such as walrus, are available year round. Manniit is the inuktitut word for egg and also for the month of June because it is egg month. That's when people go out and collect eggs from bird nests; bird eggs are still part of the traditional Inuit diet, which is enjoyed by a decreasing fraction of the population. As more Inuit fill government and corporate jobs, fewer are able to participate in the old way of life.

Fishing on the Sylvia Grinnel River is still an important way of putting food on the tables of struggling Inuit families. Hiking in the Sylvia Grinnel Park we see people fishing by the waterfalls, doing it the traditional way with hand spears called kokiwogs. As it turns out, on this very day there's a workshop on how to make them, and Don and I spend the entire afternoon at the park's visitor centre learning how it's done.

If we were staying here a few more weeks, we could each make one and catch our own arctic char. As we're not, we leave with a bit of traditional knowledge, and we're happy with that.