Ghosts of the past haunt Kekerten Island

MIRIAM HILL

KEKERTEN ISLAND — The water on the sound isn’t calm today. Rain threatens to fall and the boat bounces up and down on the choppy waves.

Joavee Alivaktuk brings his vessel in close to the shore. He’s brought his passengers about 50 kilometres south of Pangnirtung to Kekerten Island. Employees of Nunavut Tourism are taking Jim Watson, president and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Commission, to a site few visit.

The island houses Kekerten Territorial Historic Park, a reminder of years past when Scottish and American whaling ships invaded Cumberland Sound to hunt bowhead whales.

The island was first used as a whaling station sometime after Scottish whaler William Penny charted it in 1840. The site reached its heyday in the 1850s and 1860s.

Venturing from boat to land, two flags are visible, flying atop poles farther up the shore. The colours of a Scottish and old American flag, with extra stars, contrast against the nearly white sky.

Alivaktuk says people inhabited the island until 1915, when they moved to other camps.

“Please do not move any artifacts because the past belongs to everyone,” he says.

Goose droppings scatter the boardwalk built to keep tourists on the trail, which is marked with interpretive signs.

The guests crowd around a blubber-rendering pot, a huge black cauldron used to heat whale fat near the end of the season when the time was too short to leave it in the sun to separate.

A number of other artifacts remain on the island, including the foundation of three storehouses built by Scottish whalers and refurbished winter tent frames.

The qammaqs, traditionally built with whalebone, draw the visitors in and Alivaktuk shows how a tent would cover the frames now rebuilt with pieces of bone supplemented with wood.

Rusted pulleys for hauling the whale carcasses up the shore, as well as wire rings from the barrels used to store whale blubber, lie on the mossy ground next to pieces of whale and seal bone. The massive jawbone of a bowhead whale caught in 1999 still lies near the shore.

The whalers’ presence brought not only increased activity, but also disease to the Inuit people of the area. By 1870 only half of the 30 whaling ships that used to frequent the sound each autumn were still coming.

Today only artifacts remain.