Makivik’s Cruise North seals merger with Adventure Canada

Dave Forrest helps summer employee Darlene Partridge, a business student at John Abbott College, complete a sale at his Tivi Galleries in Kuujjuaq. Forrest will miss the record-breaking sales made by passengers with the Makivik-owned Cruise North Expeditions. In 2011, the first year of a new partnership with Adventure Canada, the cruise company will run only one cruise out of Kuujjuaq. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The most popular Arctic cruises bring passengers to the High Arctic. Here a polar bear prowls near the shore of Bellot Strait between the Boothia Peninsula and Somerset Island. (FILE PHOTO)

KUUJJUAQ — Dave Forrest, owner of Tivi Galleries in Kuujjuaq, says he’ll will miss the frequent stops that cruise ships made over the past five years to Kuujjuaq and the record sales days these produced at his art and gift shops in town and at the airport.

Since 2005, hundreds of passengers with the Cruise North Expeditions line, started by Makivik Corp. in 2005, have passed through Kuujjuaq and other communities in Nunavik.

But in 2011, Forrest will see passengers from only one Cruise North trip in Kuujjuaq: an 11-day Arctic Safari takes off from Kuujjuaq on Aug. 7, stopping by Kangiqsujuaq and Digges Island before heading to south Baffin and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

The reduction in the number of cruises using Kuujjuaq as a base follows the direction Cruise North is taking.

Makivik recently sealed a deal with Adventure Canada, on Ontario-based company, which has offered “comfortable and educational voyages to the Arctic, and the world,” since 1988.

The deal creates a new company, in which Adventure Canada is now the majority partner.

Makivik’s vice-president for economic development, Michael Gordon, said over the long term the deal will “provide more benefits for Nunavimmiut.”

As well, Makivik cuts its losses — which totaled more than $250,000, Gordon confirmed.

And Makivik keeps some of benefit of the time, energy, and money it invested in the cruise industry.

For Adventure Canada, the deal is a “win win,” according to company president Cedar Swan.

That’s because Adventure Canada can now draw on Cruise North’s data bank to attract new clients, hang on to the company’s loyal passengers and build on its good reputation and connections with travel agents around the world.

“Through this new company we’ll be able to maintain all the work that’s gone into it [Cruise North],” Swan told Nunatsiaq News.

However, for 2011, there’s only one cruise with the Cruise North “brand.”

Swan said the company wants to see two cruises in 2012 and, by 2013, there could be a separate ship for the Cruise North cruises.

“This is the hope. We’ll see,” she said.

As for the continued training of Inuit to work in cruise industry, which brought many young Nunavimmiut on to Cruise North cruises, that program won’t be renewed until 2012 at the earliest due to a lack of space on board the cruises.

For the moment, Adventure Canada wants to sell as many spaces on the ship to passengers willing to pay for the limited space on board the ship.

Due to the global recession and higher costs for fuel, making money in the cruise business continues to be a challenge.

Cruise North tried to soften a tough cruise season in 2009 with a “two-for-one” offer on all new bookings.

Cruise North needed 976 passengers to fill its cruises, which included itineraries in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavik, Nunavut, the High Arctic and the Northwest Passage.

But, as it became increasingly harder to woo passengers, prices for the various Cruise North trips kept rising from the bargain-basement $2,490 U.S. charged for the cruise company’s first seven-night air, land and sea packages in 2005.

Fuel remained the largest cost item for Cruise North, and, at the same time, the stronger Canadian dollar meant U.S. sales brought Cruise North less profit.

In this tight market, it’s taken Adventure Canada 23 years to build up to offering six Arctic cruises, said Swan — in comparison, Cruise North jumped into the market with 10 trips and quickly scaled back.

The move by the two cruise companies to join forces came after both suffered unexpected crises last year.

The Clipper Adventurer, operated by Adventure Canada, ran aground Aug. 27 east of Kugluktuk, after running into an underwater cliff.

A sightseeing detour in the Coronation Gulf left it marooned Aug. 27 on a shoal 90 kilometres away from Kugluktuk, and led to an emergency evacuation of its 100-plus passengers and crew by the Coast Guard research icebreaker, the Amundsen.

The Clipper Adventurer, which had at least a dozen watertight compartments breached after hit the shoal, came perilously close to sinking even as it was towed away Sept. 14 with the help of four commercial tugs.

But, after a complete overhaul, the Clipper Adventurer is ready to go, said Swan — and 85 per cent of the passengers who didn’t make the trip last year through the Northwest Passage will be on this year’s sold-out voyage.

Cruise North’s woes in 2010 included mechanical and operational issues with its chartered ship, the Lyubov Orvlova.

First the ship was waylaid in St. John’s in June after inspectors found problems with a mechanical piping system. The Lyubov Orlova remained in port for 15 days, before being cleared by inspectors last July 9.

But that was too late for Cruise North’s first trip of the season, an 11-night voyage from St. John’s to Kuujjuaq, via the Labrador coast.

Canadian officials then seized the Lyubov Orlova at the end of the season last September, because its Russian owner was alleged to owe more than $250,000 to Cruise North.

More than 50 Russian and Ukrainian crew members were also owed more than $350,000 in wages. After being stranded in St. John’s for more two months, they finally left in December.

The ship is still in St. John’s.