Kuujjuaq cadets craft traditional Inuit boats

Iqaluit-based Team Pittarak worked with KRPF cadets in Kuujjuaq last month to help them craft four traditional kayaks. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KRG)

Every summer in Nunavik, you’ll find Kativik Regional Police Force cadets out in force, paddling across a local lake or river.

The cadet program has a strong kayaking program; each year, members in Kuujjuaq take part in an end-of summer kayaking trip someone in the region.

This year, a group paddled from Kuujjuaq through a chain of lakes that lead to the coast of Ungava Bay.

But this year, Nunavik’s cadets are getting ready to trade in their plastic, commercial-style kayaks for something more traditional.

A group of six KRPF cadets are learning how to make a traditional Inuit qajaq, using only pegs and lashing — no glue, nails or screws.

To guide them through the process, the KRPF invited Team Pittarak, a group of Iqaluit-based kayak instructors that includes siblings Sarah and Eric McNair-Landry to show them how.

Along with fellow kayakers Eric Boomer and Katherine Breen, the group has travelled around Baffin Island by kayak, both modern and traditional.

The team also leads kayak-building and training sessions, like the recent one in Kuujjuaq, to get northerners “excited about traditional kayaking.”

Although the qajaq was typical source of water transport for his ancestors, local cadet Davidee Munick had never seen a traditional boat like it before.

With the help of Team Pittarak, Munick helped fashion the wooden frames on one of four kayaks the group made last month.

It involved a lot of sanding, sawing and drilling, he said.

“It was hard and challenging, but fun,” Munick said. “I learned a lot, and I hope we can do it again next year.”

The style of these particular boats reflects the Hudson Strait designs of the 1950s.

There are some modern additions to the qajaq’s construction: what would traditionally have been covered with seal skin is now fitted with ballistic nylon, as it provides better long-term durability.

The Kuujjuaq-based cadets are still waiting on the nylon to arrive in town, at which point they’ll cover their boats and add a polyurethane coating over top.

Cadet leader Conor Goddard said the cadets’ ongoing kayaking program made the boat-building workshop a natural fit.

While his fellow cadets worked closely with Team Pittarak, Goddard followed the team’s guidance and crafted a qajaq himself.

“The satisfaction of building it was almost outside of myself … in the end, people were making these same boats hundreds of years ago,” Goddard said.

“What blew my mind was the genius of the design, that not much has changed. It was really impressive.”

KRPF cadets expect to hit the water with their new, handmade boats next summer.