Sweet memories of Pond Inlet

MIRIAM HILL

IQALUIT — Mitch Owens had nothing to read in his hotel room last night, so he read the phone book.

He admits he recognized some of the names listed, but not all. That’s understandable, since it’s been decades since he’s been in the North.

Owens, now in his 80th year, spent 1944 -1947 in Pond Inlet as an RCMP officer.
In the RCMP detachment in Iqaluit he appears relaxed, sitting on a stool, one elbow perched on the counter beside him. He’s spending some time in the city before heading back to Pond Inlet for the first time in 54 years.

“It’s a nostalgic binge, I guess, nothing more. Years have gone by and I still feel healthy and I wanted to do this, so I’m doing it,” he says.

The Gloucester, Ont., resident doesn’t look his age. His eyes are clear and his head is still covered with thick white hair. He’s quick with a joke.

“It’s the cold here, it’s like a deep freeze,” he says, laughing, after someone suggests that his time in the frigid Arctic helped preserve his youthful appearance.

Owens spent time in the cold back in the 1940s. One trip stands out.

“The first trip I made was 1,400 miles from Pond to a place called Mary Jones Bay,” he says, settling in to tell a story from 1945. Owens says he was informed a woman had killed her husband, and his job was to round up her and the witnesses for “ship-time” in August, when a trial would take place.

“Of course I was green as grass, knew from nothing, and of course I didn’t speak the language too well, but I had two native guides, both of them very, very capable people,” he says.

Owens, the guides, two dog-teams and about three-quarters of a ton of dog food left Pond Inlet at the beginning of March. They arrived at the end of May.

“You know, everything was so ordinary to me after I’d been here a while, I didn’t even think to take pictures, or keep a diary, which I regret today. So far, I can live through it here,” he says, tapping his head.

Owens’ memory is sharp. He speaks of people he remembers from his time in Pond Inlet, and the skills he learned from the Inuit — hunting, fishing and basic survival. Over time, he even became fluent in Inuktitut.

“I became completely native to the point where the outside didn’t bother me that much,” he says.

They had radios, but the receivers didn’t pick up much from the South, he says.

“You know, everything was so ordinary to me after I’d been here a while I didn’t even think to take pictures, or keep a diary,
which I regret today.”
— Mitch Owens, retired RCMP officer

“The CBC broadcast was not good at all. In the summer you couldn’t get any, but in the wintertime you could listen to CKY in Winnipeg. There was a program that came in on Friday and Saturday called “Northern Messenger” and people could send up messages. So we’d be all gathered around the little box waiting for a message.”

Often the broadcast would cut in and out, so listeners would miss pieces of it.
“It was often a little more exasperating than good,” he says, laughing.

Owens says it’s hard for him to relate to the North of today.

“Change is inevitable; it’s the way of the world,” he says. “The transition has obviously taken place faster than it should have, as far as I’m concerned.”

As he relaxes in Iqaluit, gearing up for his trip to Pond Inlet, he admits the adventure is a little less rugged than the last time he made the trek.

“Any time I go on a plane ride … say, if I go from Ottawa to Winnipeg, which is about 1,200 miles, it takes me a little over two hours and I figure that took me three months,” he laughs, remembering his marathon dog-sled trip.

“When I go from my place to Florida, which is about two and a half hours, I think, all right, this is luxury travel.”