Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 29/99) - Northern elders know weather better than any old-timers anywhere because, when they were younger, their lives and the lives of their families depended on that knowledge.

Lifetime Fort Resolution resident Angus Beaulieu used the arrival of the boats running supplies down the Slave River from Fort Smith as a measure of warming over the last 50 years.

"Sometimes by May 15 the boats had to push through the ice to get here. Now the ice in the bay is almost gone by April 15."

When winter fishing on Great Slave Lake, Beaulieu said he had to chisel through more than six feet of ice to set his nets. "For the last 20 years here, you're lucky if there's two feet of ice."

Charlie Barnaby spent his childhood in Norman Wells, but has lived in Fort Good Hope since 1948.

The 67-year-old spends much of his time out on the land trapping.

"Oh yeah, it's changed," he said.

"The weather started changing, to me, around 1970. It's getting mild in wintertime now, when it used to be 60 below."

Seventy-nine-year-old Isdore Yukon of Deline said the ice of Great Bear Lake usually goes out from mid to late June.

He remembers one year, about 40 years ago, when he and three others dragged a sled with a canoe, kicker and supplies on it along the ice to the mouth of the Great Bear River on July 4.

"The ice didn't go out until July 15 that year," said Yukon.

"Sometimes it used to get so cold the trees would crack, just like somebody shooting," he added.

Yukon said ice and temperature are not the only signs of weather changes he's noticed.

"I don't know why, it's so cloudy, you don't see the sun so much now. In the old days you saw a lot more sunshine."

Paulatuk's Moses Agnaoyok said elders in his community all agree the winters are much warmer than they used to be.

He said as the winters have warmed up the caribou have arrived in the area later and later.

"That's changed quite a bit. They would usually be around in March and April," said Agnaoyok. "Now they don't get here until the middle of May."

Though almost all elders agree the weather has been warming, scientists question the value of first-hand accounts of weather changes.

There is a tendency, they say, for winters to be remembered as colder and longer than they actually were.