Welcome Back to our Final Blog!

Hi Doug. We are glad you back. We had a good time doing this project with you. It was awesome when you came to visit. Thanks for the beautiful pictures. Speaking of beautiful, we also saw the eclipse. Jonathan, Elisabeta, Alyana, Ingrid, Matthew, Paulina, Giovanni, Manuela, and MR. Phipps and Ms Randolph saw it and loved it. It looked like a blood moon, kinda brownish red. Mr PHipps decided that the lunar eclipse was causing people to drive real weirdly!!! I agree. Of course, not me.
Last Wednesday night, Ms R and Paulina, Ingrid, and Manuela, Mr Phipps, Ms. Kopta and parents were invited to the board meeting. The principals of the schools told us about the fieldtrips, and activities that we would have because our referendum passed. People got gifts if they helped out with the referendum. Then we had CAKE… suprise! Then we got to present our movies.
We were kinda nervous. Ms R blabbed some first, then the girls presented speeches. We got up in front of the board and told them what we did in class and all about you, Doug. Then we showed our movies. Some of the people that were watching giggled over our movies because they loved it so much. Matthew says they loved it so much, they started to giggle! Hee hee…. Then we got applause which was very well deserved.

Doug Shares Language with Us from a 5th Grade Teacher

Hi Everyone. Chopper Chuck sends a special HOWDY to Charlie and the rest of the 109′ers! He was excited to hear all about our project. He was glad you liked his hat. A woman made it for him and he liked it so much he had her make a bunch of them in case he ever looses them.

Also, I asked Maureen your excellent question regarding the Inuit language. Actually, I learned that the people around here are called Inuvialuit. I think this might be because there are both Inuit and Gwichin ancestry. I’ll have to find out more about that. Anyway, Maureen is a teacher so I figured if anyone could give us the scoop she could- and she delivered!

The language is called Inuvialuktun and, as you implied with your follow up question, it is an oral language.

In the 1800’s the priests and missionaries who came here introduced a written version of the language. Actually two written versions were created; in this area they used the same alphabet that we use. In the Eastern Arctic they created a new alphabet called syllabics, which apparently looks like shapes and symbols. I’ll try to find a sign and take a picture for you.

Here are a few Inuvialuktun words:

ookpik (snowy owl)
quanani (thank you)
tuktu (caribou)
tuk (place where the caribou cross)

…and, speaking of priests and missions- check out one of the local churches from Tuktoyaktuk!


Here is a picture of Maureen’s Bed and Breakfast, where we stayed on this last trip to Tuk.

Doug's Friend Terry as Dog Sledder!

Hello 109ers.

My name is Terry Woolf and I have been working with Doug on his northern Canada video job. We have had lots of fun together but it has been very hard working in the extreme cold.

I run a team of sled dogs and it is one of my favorite things to do in the winter. Dog teams were very important to the north of Canada and America (mostly Alaska ) Until the introduction of the snow machine about 40 years ago almost all winter travel was by dog sled. The mail. lots of freight (packages) , food, policemen, people from the churches, trappers on their trap lines all traveled by dogs teams. I started doing it for fun.

When the European people first came to North America over 500 years ago there were only few types of dogs here. One of these was the Canadian Inuit Dog. They were used as sled dogs and the type that I use mostly.

I have 6 dogs in my team. Django the leader, Mojo, who sometimes leads,

Flash, and Foxy who are usually in the middle and Reggae and Shaky who are the “wheel” dogs or the dogs closest to the sled or toboggan.

The heart of a dog team is the lead dog. If you have a good lead dog then you can put other untrained dogs behind and they will learn from the lead dog.

A lead dog has to know certain things. They have to stay straight out front and keep the lines tight so the rest of the team doesn’t get tangled up. The leader should know some basic commands. “Gee” means go right, “Haw” means go left.

“Haw come” means turn all the way around and go back the way we have come.

The other command they should know is “Whoa” I “ll let you figure out what that means. Different people have different commands but these are the ones I use.

My main lead Django is very good. He listens to commands. He can find old trails when they are buried in snow. He’s very friendly.

The dogs live out side all through the winter. They have good fur coats and if they are fed well they can live well out side. At home I put straw in their houses for the cold in winter. If I am on the trail camping I will put fresh spruce boughs down for dogs to sleep on. Some times I have been camping and it has snowed at night. In the morning I look out side the tent and can’t see the dogs but when I whistle all their heads pop up out of the snow where they have been buried.

Doug said I should tell you the story of Homer, one of my old sled dogs. I first got Home as a puppy. The day I got him my wife Aggie was taking him for a walk to get to know him. In the woods near our house a big dog came along and scared him so he ran away in the trees. We got some friends and we searched all after noon but could find him. When we got back to our house there he was sitting out side the dog yard gate. This little puppy only 7 weeks old had only been to our house for one day yet he managed to find his way home so we called him Homer. Two years later I found I had too many dogs so I gave Homer to a friend for his team. Later this man had to move from Yellowknife , to Vancouver Island , way down south. He found he couldn’t keep a dog team there. So he sent them back to Yellowknife . From Yellowknife , some dogs were now sent to Tuktoyaktuk were they joined a different team. Homer was one of these dogs.

I didn’t know all of this story until last week

Doug and the crew were filming with a dog team owned by James Pokiak. Doug was right in the middle of all the dogs filming and I was doing the sound and watching to see that the dogs didn’t tangle up with Doug. One dog kept coming over to me and pushing against me wanting to be petted. He was very friendly to me. When we finished filming we were in James Pokiak’s house talking and I asked him about this big friendly dog. James said had come from Yellowknife and before that Vancouver Island . That’s when I realized that this was Homer. When I went back over to him and called his name his ears popped right up and he looked right at me. So I went over to pet and play with him. This dog had recognized me after 5 years and 2 different owners.

Well I guess that’s’ all my dog team stories for now. You can look on a map and find the different places that Homer traveled to. If you have any questions I will try to answer them.

Here are a couple of pictures of my dogs.

Thanks for being interested.

Terry Woolf

February 18- Arctic Doug Answers Many Questions

Hi Everyone! We are back in Tuktoyaktuk for a bit more filming. We are staying and James and Maureen’s B&B. I just stepped outside and saw a nice display of the Northern Lights! They were gone before I could grab a camera, but with any luck I will send you some pics before we leave. In the meantime here are some other images of some of the beautiful sites we’ve seen. The sun never gets much above three or four fingers above the horizon, and moonrises are also nice and slow!

Here are some answers to your questions from our visit a few weeks back!
Question: Are sundogs dangerous? Nope, but they can be very pretty. When ice crystals appear they create what appears to be a rainbow around the sun. Here is a little one. If you could see the whole sky you could tell this tiny rainbow is part of a sundog!
Here is another dog that is not at all dangerous:) He’s one of Judy’s leaders, but I don’t remember his name.

Today we filmed as we drove up the ice road. The ice varies in appearance. Sometimes it is covered by snow, but in my opinion once you get onto the Beaufort Sea you find the most beautiful ice.
Oh, and regaring Muskees under the ice- here’s what I learned: I guess we are too far north for Muskees, nobody has seen them up here. There are other fish, like Northern Pike, and I’m told they feed all winter rather than hybernate. They likely slow down much, but remember it is much warmer in the water than on land! It’s a bit odd to be driving down the road and pass by frozen boats, but after all the ice road is just a frozen river.
I also wanted to show you that even your eyelashes end up frozen around here.

Someone asked whether people own cars or snowmobiles. I’ve seen both but what I see most often are GIANT trucks-you’d think you were in Texas or something. They are often diesel powered, like this one that we are driving. Diesel does better in extreme cold weather, although you still have to plug your truck in at night or the engine will freeze. There are quite a few places you can’t go with these big trucks, so many families also have snowmobiles-especially up here in Tuk.
Question: Why do ice storms fly? I think this was your question, Charlie. What I’ve learned is that it is very dry here- the snow is too dry for building snowmen, or making good snowballs. So this lack of moisture makes the ice crystals very light. When it is windy, and it often is windy here, the snow and ice sail right through the air! Here’s a picture of the snow blowing and forming these little mounds.

Feburary 17- Arctic Doug Writes with New Friends and Answers

Hi Everyone! We will be leaving Tuktoyaktuk today, although we’ve met some nice people up here. Yesterday we met some kids-a few of them are 5th graders. Here they are in action!

Can you guess what their favorite thing to do is? That’s right-Hockey, Hockey, Hockey! There other favorite things to do are gym, science, and math! They do have recess at school, and they have both indoor and outdoor recess. When I asked if it was too cold to go outside for recess they looked at me like I had 3 eyes. For them 40 below zero is perfectly normal so it would be weird not to go outside for recess!

They loved the camera and I told them about Charlie and the 109′ers down in Chicago. They thought that was cool and send a big HELLO!
On the way up here we saw two fox. They were pretty far away, they like to avoid trudging through the deep snow and walk on the frozen river, but tend to stay toward the treeline so they can scram if they sense danger. We saw one of them almost get a ptarmigan, which is a type of bird found around here.
Last night was Saturday night. We decided to celebrate by getting our truck stuck in the snow!

We’ve heard of a local legend that tells of a group of people called the “little people”. Remember that Inuit means simply “the people”. Well, the little people used to live among the Inuit until they became embroiled in a bitter arguement-at which the “little people” took leave and have never come back. Most everyone around here claims to have caught a glimpse of the little people, so we decided to check in on our igloo. It sounded like a party was going on (it was Saturday night) so we decided not to disturb whatever was in there!??!

Febuary 13th Arctic Doug Tells More!

Hi Everyone!

Today part of our crew departed-the producer Rob and I will be staying to continue filming b-roll, etc. We will be based out of Inuvic for the rest of the trip, although we may overnite in Tuk one or two nights.

Excellent question Manuela! If you forget to cut an airhole you would likely suffocate, as snow is an excellent insulator. As for forgetting your knife outside, you would be able to kick through the wall and escape. I’m told that it takes 1 hour to build a “camping” igloo, like the one James built. It will last all winter but in those first few hours the snow is soft enough to break through.

We were able to get James’ dogs out for a run. Here they are.


We have had the opportunity to try some interesting foods, including Musk-Ox soup, Caribou soup, Cloud berries(also known as salmon berries for their color), dried whitefish, and muktuk. The Muktuk is the outer skin and blubber from a beluga whale and is highly prized by the Inuit. I’m told a beluga whale will feed a family through the winter (in addition to their other harvests, including Caribou, geese, and fish). It is extremely high in fat, which the people need to stay warm, and is supposedly loaded with vitamins that can be difficult to attain in the winter months. The skin has lots of vitamin D for example. Eighty percent of the food James and his family eat comes from the land. This is not so with the younger generations and many problems have been noticed, including a severe spike in diabetes.


Yesterday we met Sam Leddie, another Inuit Elder. Like many Elders, he is a wealth of information about the old days. If you are lucky enough to have grandparents make sure to show them good respect and learn as much as you can from them!


Sam and his wife Mary Anne spend much of their time living at their “camp”, which is a beautiful little cabin right along the Mackenzie River. They travel by snow machine, collect big chunks of ice which they melt down for drinking water, and live off the land. Sam also makes jiggling fishing poles. The wood is from the willow, and the lure is a carved tip of Musk-Ox horn. Here is one that he was working on:

After using his took to chop a hole through the 2 foot thick ice, we pulled up three large Pikes!

109'er Blog Arctic Doug, February 12th

Dear Arctic Doug,
Thanks for the cool pictures and the interesting information.
Manuela was wondering about igloo building. What if the snow is too hard when people are inside and you cannot cut a door out? We think that would mean trouble. We infer that the person might die and suffocate.... are we correct? Yikes.
We were wondering about your whale topic. Do people still eat whale and have you had some yet?
Instead of whales, have people ever been so desperate that they had to eat penguin?
When it was so cold, where did the dogs stay to remian healthy? Did you get to go dog sledding like you thought or was it too cold still?
What are you eating while in the Arctic?
Did you sleep in the igloo that James built?
Is it possible for the igloo to collapse?

Here in Chicago, it snowed for more than 24 hours straight and we have had about six more inches since our snow day last week. Today we are finishing our movies and we are getting ready to go to the Board of Education and show our stuff... we are so thrilled. Ms. Randolph is really proud!!!!

February 9- Doug Writes and Shares his Inuit Friends with Us

Hi Everyone,

So…we showed up to go dog sledding and found out that it was too cold for the dogs! It was actually only about -32 but it was windy. James said that with the windchill it was too risky as the dogs lungs could be damaged. We will now be doing that tomorrow. Instead, James showed us how the Inuits build an Igloo! It was quite amazing to watch them work. Unfortunately my still camera froze so I only have a few pictures of the beginning. I’ll see if someone else on our crew had better luck and will hopefully post those later.

Inuits nowdays live in houses much like ours, but in the past they did live in igloos during the winter months. Igloo actually means “house” in their language, so an igloo can be made of snow or animal skins or other materials.


Snow igloos were used more often along the coasts, where the Inuits commonly lived in igloos made of Carribou skin supported by wood posts in summer and snow igloos in the winter. Snow igloos can also provide temporary shelter on camping and hunting trips. In fact, I’m told they are still used in this way these days.


James began by having his son in law cut large blocks of snow with a saw, which traditionally would have been done with a bode tool from a whale. He then carefully placed them in a circle, and kept adding the blocks until he eventually formed a dome. We placed the last block on top with James inside. He then cut the doorway. Snow makes such an excellent insulator that if you forget to cut a small airhole you could sufficate.


Sometimes a single candle (whale blubber) would be used and actually heats the inside of the igloo significantly. They also build a “sleeping shelf” since cool air doesn’t rise.


When we filmed in helicopter we did not get frostbite, but several of us have since then. Nothing serious.

Since it is very cold in Chicago you should all be careful about that too!

Doug from the Arctic

Hi everyone-at last! Hi 109′ers and Charlie! The crazy weather you guys are now knee deep in delayed our departure just enough to keep us busier than usual the last few days. Hope you are all bundling up too! Everyone up here wishes it would snow like that up here, as they are apparently experiencing a drought cycle.

So the temperatures have been ranging from the about -32F to -44F. When Canadian’s that live up this way tell you the temperature, nobody even bothers to say minus. We’ve started using our “Polar Bear” camera coat because the camera has been getting so cold it’s quit working several times. We’ve also noticed that a battery that is rated to last 8 hours will quit in as little as 15 minutes! You can last for about 5 minutes without hat or gloves before you begin to loose feeling in your fingers and ears-and ouch, does it hurt!

We’ve made some new friends and now that we are getting used to the cold are beginning to have some fun! One of my favorite new friends is Chopper Chuck. He’s a terrific pilot and took us flying for about 3 hours in his helicoptor.


We followed the ice road all the way up to Tuktoyyaktuk. It was -40F that day, so everytime we opened the door to film the views we would all freeze. When we stopped for fuel Chopper Chuck had to dig out the fuel barrel. He brings his own gas pump with him so at least it wasn’t frozen.


We flew around some pingos, including this one that is the largest on our continent! It looked like a small volcano with a sunken top that contains the ice core.


Today we met with Steve, a scientist who specializes in permafrost and is an expert regarding Pingos. Here he is-those giant mittens he is wearing are made out of wolf fur. Many people up here learn how to stay warm from the Inuit people who have lived in this region for thousands of years-these giant mits are an Inuit invention.

Tomorrow we will be working with sled dogs! This will actually be our second time. The first time I was lucky enough to get to drive my own team!


The dogs belong to Judy and Oloff (sp?) and they were terrific!

Oloff is also a pilot and has been on expeditions all over the world, including the North Pole and I’m pretty sure Antarctica! He was once lost in an arctic storm alone for 18 days-this guy is amazing.

Terry our sound guy also has a dog team. He will tell you guys about it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here is a picture of his team he gave me. He is not Inuit, but has lived in Yellowknife for about 30 years and knows an awful lot of cool stuff!

The dog teams we will be working with tomorrow belong to a teacher. I’m going to bring all of the awsome projects you guys did and show her. I’m also going to try and see if she can help me locate a fifth grade class up here. I’m really excited to here you are doing a movie project, so I’m going to see about giving a disposable video camera to some kids up here so you can see how they live.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a picture of my friend Rob. He really likes comic books and likes to think about legions of radioactive polar bears combing the north country with a hungry twinkle in their bright red eyes!

Take care and stay warm. Almost forgot, we saw a beautiful fox the other day. It was red with a black and white tail!

Making Arctic Doug Movies

Hi Doug! Wus up?
We have decided to make movies of your visit instead of using the photos we took. We are using ULead software and Paint/Fireworks to draw pictures of you and your stuff.
Are you cold up there in the Arctic?
See you soon.
The 109'ers