Toronto woman scatters friend’s ashes across High Arctic

Liz Eddy shares an old National Graphic article about her late friend Larry Blaine-Solar from when he was stationed at various weather stations in the Arctic. She stands in front of the same Resolute weather station where she later scattered his ashes. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

RESOLUTE — The unexpected final gift of a old friend brought Liz Eddy to the High Arctic.

Like most Canadians from the South, the Toronto woman never thought she would ever spend the time and money to visit the North, let alone the remote High Arctic.

But when Larry Blaine-Solar died of complications from diabetes Aug. 5, his last wishes sent Eddy on a mission she would never forget.

Blaine-Solar frequented Canada’s North for 27 years, travelling among Environment Canada’s network of isolated weather stations.

Years before, Blaine-Solar had been the boyfriend of Eddy’s mother, and when she grew up they met again and developed a close friendship.

Blaine-Solar’s will asked that part of his ashes be scattered among the same stations where he had spent much of his life.

“It was like a gift to me,” Eddy said while she in Resolute.

Eddy scattered a portion of Blaine-Solar’s ashes near both the old and the new weather stations in Resolute in early September. She also said she wanted to build a small cairn near the new weather station in Blaine-Solar’s memory.

While in Resolute, Eddy witnessed a beluga migration, and then the hunt and harvest of three whales, much to her delight.

A hefty fellow sporting a bushy brown beard, Blaine-Solar earned the nickname “Umimmak” – musk-ox – from his Inuit neighbours, Eddy said.

Blaine-Solar worked in Pond Inlet, Grise Fiord, Cape Dorset, Mould Bay, Alert and other locations in what is now Nunavut.

Eddy couldn’t afford to travel widely around Nunavut, so she lined up help getting Blaine-Solar’s ashes to their final resting places.

Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliott acted on Eddy’s behalf in Grise Fiord, during his visit for the unveiling of a monument to the High Arctic exiles there on Sept. 10.

An Environment Canada employee said he would bring some of the ashes to the automated weather station at Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island.

When Eddy first approached Environment Canada’s Toronto office for help a staffer informed her that it would be “above and beyond the call of duty” for the government to ask its personnel to carry out the final wishes of a former employee.

The staffer suggested Eddy contact someone in Nunavut to help, and mail the ashes to them, much to Eddy’s horror.

“Would you send your loved-one’s ashes through Canada Post?” Eddy asked.

Then she went to Air Canada for help on the cost of airfare, but the company refused to grant her a bereavement fare because she was not related to Blaine-Solar.

First Air felt differently, and their bereavement rate made the trip to Resolute affordable, Eddy said.

In Resolute, South Camp Inn owner Aziz Kheraj refused to accept payment for her stay at his hotel.

“There’s a lot of people who really embraced me and came together in the end,” she said.