Discovering new worlds in our remote parks
BAKER LAKE, NUNAVUT— Altogether it was almost too much to fathom.
Flying over the mammoth delta of the Athabasca and Peace rivers in northeast Alberta. Then seeing hundreds of American white pelicans nesting on the rapids off Fort Smith, N.W.T. Then following up the mighty Mackenzie River with Rob Norwegian to visit the ancestral home of his Rabbitskin tribe. Then flying up the dramatic South Nahanni River, perhaps Canada’s most fabled whitewater canoe route. Then flying over the world’s largest concentration of ice fields and glaciers in the Yukon, with Canada’s tallest mountain, Mount Logan, towering on the horizon.
Then visiting ancient Haida villages, dating back thousands of years, with weather-beaten totems in front. Then walking the expansive beaches of the Pacific Trail on Vancouver Island. Then winding up by tracking down a herd of muskox, with a few Sandhill cranes along the way, on the stubbly tundra west of Hudson Bay.
All this, and so much more, as I continued my 2017 odyssey to visit as many national parks as possible. To date, I have been to 27 in seven provinces and all three territories.
The latest journey began in Wood Buffalo National Park — at roughly the size of Switzerland, it is the largest national park in all of Canada. Straddling the border between Alberta and the Northwest Territories, it was created in 1922, to protect the continent’s last surviving herd of wood bison.
In the flight over this immense wooded terrain, piloted by a transplanted Tamil from Scarborough, we saw two small herds of buffalo and a few caribou.
The salt flats, where salt can “grow” to two metres in height, jumped out of the expansive greenery. The park is also known as the last natural nesting site for whooping cranes, but as it was nesting time, we kept an appropriate distance.
The Nahanni. The very name evokes reverence among canoeists who crave a wild, exotic trek through unparalleled northern majesty.
Two adjoining parks, Nahanni and Naats’ihch’oh, encompass the entire Nahanni drainage system. And a 10-hour charter flight highlighted the seven different landforms that make these parks the most geologically diverse in Canada. We landed three times — once right on the river to get a close-up of legendary Virginia Falls; once on the highly elevated Glacier Lake, flanked by the astonishing Cirque of the Unclimbables, whose cluster of peaks and sheer walls account for its name; and once on the picturesque Little Doctor Lake.
Particularly breathtaking were the three canyons, each more than 1,000 metres in depth, through which the Nahanni snaked.
The total splendour was nothing short of spectacular.
Over the border in the Yukon lies Kluane National Park, home to the world’s largest nonpolar ice fields. Up to a kilometre thick, they snake their way around the imposing Saint Elias Mountains, as if pushing them even higher. Seventeen of Canada’s 20 highest mountains are in Kluane.
Mount Logan — Canada’s highest peak at 5,959 metres — is there, and at 70 kilometres in length, it is also the world’s largest mountain mass.
It is home to a large glacier lake, with “freshwater icebergs,” said our pilot, a transplant from Thornhill, who added, “You don’t see that very often.”
The next stop was Haida Gwaii, often called the Galapagos of Canada. Formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands, Haida Gwaii is home to the Haida First Nation, renowned for their phenomenal totem poles.
The national park, Gwaii Haanas, is co-managed by Parks Canada and the Haida First Nation with each side having equal power. At a mandatory orientation session, the Haida guides raved about this arrangement. It may well be the future model for other parks.
Serendipitously, I hooked up with friends on their converted lobster boat for a four-day cruise through the southern archipelago of the park.
Passing clusters of sea lions, occasional seals and countless eagles, we were mesmerized by our visits to ancient Haida villages where Haida guides sang and related the hidden meaning of the totems.
Haida Gwaii is famous for this wildness and sense of mystery. It lived up to every inch of its reputation.
The next stop was Vancouver Island’s gorgeous national parks — on the Gulf Islands off the shores of Victoria and then along the western beaches around Tofino.
But I decided one more remote northern park was in order. So I headed for Baker Lake, the geographic centre of Canada, to visit the tundra and wild flowers of Ukkusiksalik National Park.
Wager Bay, a large inlet off northern Hudson Bay, is at the centre of this park, and its tide is one of the highest in Canada. The purple saxifrage was blooming in abundance and the rust orange lichen, which takes tens of thousands of years to form, was everywhere.
It has been an amazingly diverse odyssey so far. But memories of this latest northern journey will be embedded forever. This is one in a series of columns by John Honderich, chairman of the board of Torstar, as he attempts to visit all of Canada’s national parks during the country’s 150th birthday year.