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BAKER LAKE
Emma Kreuger is on an expedition that would make early explorers drool.

The 21-year-old from Baker Lake is one of two Nunavut students chosen to join a Northwest Passage expedition as part of the on board resource team.

Kreuger and Elizabeth Ryan of Iqaluit are the first recipients of Worldwide Quest's Nunavut Scholar Internship Program. They boarded the ship in Resolute Bay Aug. 15 and will spend two weeks travelling west to Kugluktuk. They will then make the two-week return trip to Iqaluit, ending their journey Sept. 10.

The expedition is an educational travel program open to Canadian university alumni.

The idea is to take a vacation where you actually learn about your destination.

As part of the resource team, Kreuger, an art history and film student at Concordia University in Montreal, will be responsible for giving a presentation on Inuit art.

She will also be on hand to speak to people about her experience growing up in Nunavut.

"I can't speak for everyone and of each individual experience of Nunavut, but I can talk from my own, why I am passionate about studying art and why I feel so drawn to the environment and being outdoors and I hope I can share that passion with the other passengers," she said.

Kreuger said she believes Inuit life and Inuit art go hand-in-hand.

"The art is very much about life and it's not hung up on following a very specific aesthetic," she said. "It's not following certain classical rules of having to be a certain aesthetic look or purpose. It's individual to each person and their own way of looking at the world.

"It's unique to each person. I think that it has a lot more power, at least for me. That is something that I've enjoyed personally and it's something that maybe doesn't speak to everyone, but it is something I see in the artwork."

Kreuger said she finds it really encouraging that so many people - 160, to be exact - are interested in the North and are even willing to spend their money to take part in the expedition.

"Sometimes it feels like the North is forgotten and many people don't even think about it as being part of Canada, so it is good to know that people are willing to spend a couple weeks of their summer to go up North and live on a boat and check it out and see what it's like first-hand."

Laurielle Penny of Worldwide Quest said the Toronto-based travel agency felt now was the right time to bring people to Nunavut.

"What more pertinent and interesting issue is there in Canada than the Northwest Passage and all of the issues that are around that - around climate change, around maritime transit, around Arctic sovereignty.

"And we've had a really strong response to it. In fact, we're doing two back-to-back voyages with 80 participants on each, so we're really gratified to see it's an issue that has a lot of resonance with people in the south because it's certainly an issue people need to know a little bit more about."

On board to talk about some of the issues facing the Arctic will be experts from across the country, including Peter Irniq, the former commissioner of Nunavut, and Shelagh Grant, the recent Lionel Gelber Award recipient for her book Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America.

Kreuger said she very grateful that she was chosen to be part of the team.

"I feel very lucky that I get to go.

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