Visual display of millennium trek to be shown at festivals
Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services
Inuvik (Feb 12/01) - Images of the historical 86-day trek across the Arctic coast last year will soon be placed in the archives at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife.
Julian Tomlinson, an Aurora College instructor in Inuvik who participated in the Millennium Trek across the Arctic coast, will present a slide show compiled during the voyage on Feb. 19 in celebration of Aurora College Week.
The slides will be preserved in the archives and presented at several Northern arts festivals this year.
"The concept was to create a visual snapshot of Canada's Arctic at the millennium ... the slide show tells a story of Northern culture," said Tomlinson.
The images were captured with digital cameras as the group travelled east from Tuktoyaktuk to Iqaluit.
They were marking the grand opening of the Trans Canada Trail, carrying a hand-made aluminum vessel, similar to an urn, containing water from the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic water was then mixed with water from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and placed on display at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.
The vessel was passed around to elders and children who lived in each of the 19 communities along the Arctic coast.
Along the way participants photographed anything and everything that they experienced and encountered, including wildlife, the arctic sky, frostbitten noses, traditional foods and clothing, drum dancing, snowmobile accidents, boiling water and the making of an iglu.
"We didn't edit out anything, we showed life like it is ... we weren't trying to paint a realistic image of what life is like up here," said Tomlinson.
"These slides really portray the unique knowledge that's held by Northerners about the land and different ways of viewing the world, so we're pretty happy to be able to share that with everyone," said Tomlinson.
The images can be viewed on the internet at www.frozentoes.com.
