A whirlwind tour of Inuvik in the Northwest Territories
Inuvik, the hub of the Western Arctic, is a northern town with strong community spirit. This journey includes a boat trip, church tour and greenhouse tour with a stop for a bite to eat
INUVIK, N.W.T. — Jimmy Kalinek is blasting down the East Channel, Gully Channel and assorted unmarked bypass channels in his 12-passenger Hewescraft Ocean Pro to get our party of two to the mouth of the Mackenzie River on a tight deadline.
We’ve flown over Canada’s largest and longest river system, and the gnarly Mackenzie Delta ecosystem with its myriad lakes and streams, and now want to experience it all up close before we have to be at the airport in less than two hours.
Kalinek’s tours are usually much more leisurely, and more crowded, but he’s game to make this happen on our way home from a guided Parks Canada trip to Ivvavik National Park. He just started Only Way Outfitting in June and is eager to show people the Delta and the hamlets of Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk, visiting pingos (dome-shaped mounds), sod houses and traditional Inuvialuit fishing and whaling camps.
What Kalinek likes best about guiding is “meeting people and hearing different stories and seeing different cultures.”
He’s still delighted by a Toronto lawyer who was scared of the choppy river, but exhilarated by the even rougher ocean crossing to Tuk, calling it “bloody marvellous” and asking to return to tag along on a hunt.
Kalinek describes his life, living in Inuvik but hunting moose and caribou, trapping mink and lynx and otters, fishing for whitefish, lake trout, herring and inconnu. He especially loves burbot (ling cod), “poor man’s lobster,” with melted garlic butter.