by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

INUVIK (May 01/98) - On the shore of Grays Bay, some 200 kilometres east of Kugluktuk, sits the most northerly regulation pool table on the North American continent.

It belongs to David Bernhardt, who ordered it in the early '90s for his remote prospecting camp. It still sits at his camp today, leaning against a boulder in the packing crate in which it was shipped.

It was delivered by Larry Whittaker, skipper of the former RCMP patrol vessel Aklavik, now named Fort Hearne, which still plies the waters of the Northwest Passage. He believes the 45-foot schooner is the oldest resident vessel still working commercially in the Arctic and the pool table was definitely its strangest delivery ever.

Bernhardt, who was over 80 at the time, and Whittaker struggled to get the immense slate-topped table -- air-freighted to Kugluktuk by Sears -- ashore that summer and after hours of back-breaking effort, the skipper remarked to Bernhardt that he must really enjoy playing pool to go to the cost and trouble of moving such a huge table to an isolated camp.

"Never played before," Bernhardt replied. "But I enjoy watching others play and maybe this way I'll get a few visitors."

The original plan was to house the table in its own cabin but the cabin was never built. As Bernhardt notes, "I don't think he ever thought about how big a cabin a table like that would need."

The boat is familiar to those that travel past the mouth of the Mackenzie in the summer. It still travels around Coronation Gulf, Amudsen Gulf, Dease Strait and Bathurst Inlet every season, carrying fuel and supplies to outpost camps and being hired on by seismic and hydrological crews working in the area, as well as the occasional tourist or sportsman.

The boat has had five different names in its long Northern service. It was built for the RCMP in Lunenberg, N.S. in 1953, and arrived in Aklavik in 1954 where it underwent its first name change when the Mounties belatedly realized they already had a boat named Aklavik. It was hastily renamed Aklavik II, then an edict came down saying all RCMP ships had to be named after former commissioners and she was repainted as the Jennings.

Special Constable Otto Binder, now retired in Inuvik, was the engineer and Bill Storr was the captain of the boat and each summer they would travel from Hay River to the Beaufort Delta on patrol and to pick up fish to feed the force's dog teams in winter.

The boat was moved into the Kitikmeot in 1965 and four years later was a victim of budget cutbacks. It was sold to the Eskimo Co-op in Coopermine, which renamed it Amaulik and hauled fish, soapstone and building materials with it until 1982, when it was put up for sale.

Whittaker bought the boat, which was by then in pretty rough shape, moved it into his frontyard and refitted the entire boat over several years at a cost he estimates at about $100,000, figuring his labor at $10 an hour.

The vessel was registered as Fort Hearne, the original name of Kugluktuk, and relaunched in 1988. There were several tense days after she was put into the water and her dried-up planks let in floods of water until they swelled and became seaworthy.

"Every year we have that problem because it's so dry up here," he says. "Never as bad as that year, but we have to keep the pumps going for a couple of days when we put her into the water."

The boat doesn't go fast, but 1,300 litres of fuel can take her 1,600 kilometres and Whittaker and his sons spend three weeks each summer leisurely cruising the coast and fishing for char in rivers where no one may have fished in two decades.

"Slow has its advantages," said Bernhardt, who is always keen to hear from people who encountered the boat in its days as a police patrol vessel.

"Everyone up here is buying the fast boats and they're always disappointed when they find they can't get to the really interesting places, which are all about 100 miles from here, and they can't carry enough fuel and supplies and tools to get there in their boats."