AKLAVIK - The last time Sgt. Don McLauchlan was here, Inuvik didn't exist. But after 60 years, the retired RCMP officer had to come back to help celebrate the birthday of a town not much older than him.

Retired RCMP Sgt. Don McLauchlan and his wife Katy Lou McLauchlan were in Inuvik last week for the first time in 60 years. Don policed the Delta in the 1950s. - Katie May/NNSL photo

In the past week, the 98-year-old, his wife Katy Lou, and the couple's two daughters have visited Tuk's coast, rode a float plane to Herschel Island and witnessed the swearing-in of Aklavik's new chief in time for the hamlet's Pokiak festival and canoe races, part of Aklavik's ongoing 100th anniversary celebration. The RCMP put them up, still loyal to a former member of the force after all those years. They were all places McLauchlan had been before, many times, but none were how he remembered them - faces, buildings, and in some spots even the landscape had all changed.

"We were surprised at what a warm welcome we received," said Don. "I was surprised at how small Aklavik is compared to what we remembered because it was the capital, a thriving spot."

The adventure started some months back, when the McLauchlans' eldest daughter, Margaret, was browsing the web at home in Kingston, Ont. and noticed a contest listing that said someone from Aklavik had won an iPad computer.

Margaret was six when the family left Aklavik in 1953, and the fact that current residents had Internet access didn't jive with her childhood memories of travelling by dogsled and receiving shipments of mail once a year. She did some research, found out about Aklavik's centennial, and convinced her sister Louise, who now lives in California's central valley, that they should bring their parents back up North for a week.

It's a long trip from the McLauchlan's home in Qualicum Beach, B.C., but Don's mind flashed back to his years of service in the North - the rationed food, the dog teams, the families living in igloos - and he knew he had to come back.

Born in Whitehorse to a Mountie father, Don learned early the challenges that come with Northern policing. The family moved around as his father was transferred from detachment to detachment, and in the late 1930s young Don began his own policing career. In 1937, he was working for the RCMP musical ride in Ottawa when one morning his superior came around asking for volunteers.

"The musical ride is fine - everybody likes the horses - but nobody likes going to the stables at six in the morning," McLauchlan recalled dryly.

To get out of stable duty, he stuck out his hand to signal the passing sergeant without realizing he was volunteering for Northern service.

"I didn't really want to go North in the first place," he said, knowing the challenges his father had faced, not least of all a lack of police housing and little to no communication with southern detachments. "But after you get started, you get used to it."

He spent a year in Chesterfield Inlet and eight more in Lake Harbour before getting transferred to New Brunswick, where he met a teacher named Katy Lou. They got married - with the necessary permission from the RCMP - the same year and moved to the detachment in Baker Lake for the next three years.

By 1950, he'd been working at G Division headquarters in Ottawa for less than a year when he was told he had a week to pack up with his family, now including baby Louise, and move to Aklavik because "another fellow there wanted out."

When he got there, everything changed. The officer in charge died suddenly and Don was thrown into the role of sergeant, responsible for the six or seven other officers in the detachment.

The work was hard, living quarters were cramped, and Don was responsible for policing the entire Delta and parts of the Sahtu region. He travelled regularly to Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson, and Fort Good Hope, to name a few, staying with generous families along the way. He forgets their faces, but remembers their names, especially in Aklavik, where he still finds good memories in old photos hanging on the wall of the police station.

The family lived there for three years and it's where their son George was born, in a "clean room" during a tuberculosis outbreak at the Anglican hospital.

Before the McLauchlans moved south in 1953, Aklavik was flooding heavily each spring and the government was beginning to talk about relocating the town. Though he now recognizes remnants of Aklavik's capital glory in Inuvik - including the town's large RCMP detachment and regional hospital - Don said he always knew Aklavik would survive.

"It's still there, 60 years later," he said.

Though he jokes that the main thing he learned during his years of police service was "never to volunteer for anything," Don still looks back fondly on his time in the Delta.

"I don't regret one minute of the time I was there."

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