POV outfitter branches into France

ODILE NELSON

Nunavik’s eco-tourism industry entered a new phase of international recognition last month when one of its leading operators opened a branch in France.

The Puvirnituq-based Nunavik Arctic Survival Training Centre (NASTC) quietly started business at the beginning of November in Limoges, France — four hours outside Paris.

The 100 per cent Inuit-owned outfitting company started up in 2000 with only one office in Nunavik. But foreign demand for the company’s Arctic adventures has prompted the business to expand overseas.

“We were supposed to just be a little survival centre. But we saw a lot of opportunity for what we do. There’s a lot of Nunavik tourism operators for hunters and fishers. But with eco-tourism there’s not a lot going on here. We’ll cover the French market for the whole Hudson Coast,” Mario Aubin, one of the centre’s coordinators, said in an interview.

The outfitter has made a name for itself offering dog team and snowmobile packages, helping smaller outfitters market their services and demonstrating Arctic survival skills to tourists, guides and Air Inuit pilots.

Its survival packages teach everything from basic first aid to identifying different snow textures, building igloos, recognizing the psychological effects of disorientation and foraging and hunting for food in the hostile Arctic environment.

Bernard Tricard, director of L’Association des Trois Castors, which is running the NASTC branch in Limoges, said business is brisk.

He has already confirmed eight packages for February and four for January. He is also working on sending a group of 30 from the city of La Rochelle sometime in the spring.

Tricard, who has lived in the North and owns a restaurant and outfitting business in Abitibi, has offered tours of Cree territory and culture to Europeans for years. He said the European interest in Inuit culture is not surprising.

“It’s a universal dream,” he said. “Who doesn’t dream of a Northern expedition, sleeping a night under the stars, fishing through ice, learning how to sculpt?”

The French branch will not limit itself to offering survival adventures, Tricard said. Instead, it will recruit Nunavimmiut performers to tour France and promote cultural exchanges between artists in Nunavik and France.

The Nunavik Arctic Survival Centre was founded by Air Inuit, the Puvirnituq Co-op and the village of Puvirnituq. Each made an initial investment of $5,000 for the outfitter’s development.

In late November, the centre received its first government grant from Economic Development Canada. The funding is designed to help the centre develop an expanded business plan and increase its marketing abroad.

Aubin said the centre remains a non-profit organization for now. The tourism packages it offers are good value but costly. Six-day basic training courses are $3,900 for the flight, food, board and guide. Any profit it currently makes is used to pay the centre’s 15 part-time Inuit guides, operating and marketing costs.

“Our goal is to create jobs. Not to create profit. We don’t want to be in the red but if we have one dollar at the end of the year that’s good,” Aubin said.

Robert Mackey, a coordinator for the Nunavik Tourism Association, said he is not aware of other Nunavik eco-tourism businesses with branches in France. The adventure training centre’s presence in L’Imoges, he said, should increase Nunavik tourism’s general visibility in Europe.

In a way, he said, NASTC may be a short step ahead of other similar Nunavik organizations because it has not only recognized the value of eco-tourism, it is actively promoting its business abroad.

“Hopefully this [NASTC’s success] will show the rest of Nunavik this kind of tourism can be a tool for the region’s economic development,” Mackey said.

The centre is also planning to open a branch in Korea by the end of 2003.