In August, 2000, Carol and I left for Clyde River, Baffin Island. It was the beginning of an adventure that was not always good. It’s getting better with age though. The details of that adventure are covered elsewhere. We brought a lot back with us in the way of intangibles. If that that does not kill you makes you stronger, we are indeed stronger people.

These few notes, however, deal with the tangibles, the few “objets d’art” that we acquired in Clyde River. “Objets d’art” obviously isn’t the correct terminology. We’re talking about native art. But this is native art, Inuit carvings, that can stand on its own merits; it’s art that can be appreciated for its intrinsic beauty, and not just because it’s primitive, made by primitive people, and made from crude raw materials.

Each of the objects we acquired has its own story.

The first object, the most expensive for us, is also the largest. It’s a dancing walrus, carved from soapstone. Pauloosie Pannilou came to our staffroom one afternoon.  He placed his walrus on the table and told us he was asking $400.00 for it.  He stated that if he didn’t get the $400.00 here, he’d take it to the Northern Store and get more for it. This was probably just a sales pitch. Don’t assume that the “simple” folk of Clyde River weren’t capable of their own particular style of “craftiness.”  Why wouldn’t he go to the Northern Store immediately?  Was it because he liked us?  Probably not.  Maybe the Northern Store would make him wait for his money. We never did find out why the carvers preferred to sell in the staffroom. Some, we know, weren’t on the list of carvers the Northern Store manager could buy from.  As he waited patiently for our appraisal, he spoke in Inuktitut to the Inuit staff members; they laughed.  Apparently he told them (according to Jukeepa, the vice-principal) that the walrus was dancing because it was “hermaphroditic.”  I doubt if that was the term he used, but the walrus quite obviously had both male and female genitalia.  After about 15 or 20 minutes he left with the walrus under his arm.  Up to this point Carol and I hadn’t bought a carving.  I guess we were a little afraid, because we really didn’t know what was good and what was bad.  But we both liked this, and we decided rather quickly that we’d buy it.  Carol ran after Pauloosie.  She caught him in the Northern Store.  She didn’t have cash (which was the only acceptable means of payment) so she told him she’d run home, and come back up on the skidoo with her debit card so she could get cash from the store manager.  The store performed this function for a small fee.  She did. She came home with our first Inuit carving.

We loved our first carving.  It sat proudly next to our TV, and since we had only one channel, it was watched just as much or perhaps more than CBC North. 

That was the beginning.

Our next carving came to the door.  Carvers came to the doors of the fiveplex quite regularly, especially those carvers who weren’t on the buy list. Tommy Palliser was such a carver; he’s quite good.  He lived directly behind us, but we didn’t know this.  We also didn’t know that it was he we could hear at 1:00 in the morning, out behind his house, with the grinders going until the wee hours. It was the only time he could carve. All the carvers worked outdoors, preferably in the wind as the wind would carry the dust away from them.  Most also smoked as they carved. This second carving was also a walrus, but a more traditional one. It is beautifully done in soapstone, with the rolls of fat so real (and so smooth), you could almost see them jiggling if you moved the carving. As with Pauloosie’s walrus, the tusks were made from real walrus ivory. 

Three generations of Kuniloosies carve the tiny walruses.  In reading about the Clyde River carvers before we went to Baffin Island, I read that they were noted for a sense of whimsy.  Maybe it is these tiny walruses that inspired that remark, or maybe it was the hermaphroditic qualities of Pauloosie’s.  We saw the first collection of these little gems in the Southebys of Clyde River, the staffroom of course.  We fell in love with them, but they were bought out from under us by Nunu, the kindergarten teacher.  They must have been good if they were sought after by Clyde River residents.  We commissioned another set, set on a komatik. We purchased several additional tiny figures as Christmas presents. The family had made a whole raft of them to take to a craft exhibition, but they were unable to go so they brought them all to the school.  They were all snapped up, but we were the first to see the collection so we had our choice.  You had to be fast in Clyde River. We don’t have one of the stubbies. We gave them all away. Iola is considered one of the best carvers in the Hamlet.  His style is distinctly different from the women carvers.  He doesn’t polish; the stone is rough.  He carves in Clyde River marble, a much more difficult medium to work with than the soapstone. He arrived at the house one day with a bear. I loved it. I bought it.  I asked him if he could make two more, cubs, to go along with mommy bear.  He arrived with them a few weeks later and charged me more than we had agreed on.  I didn’t quibble.  The main reason I didn’t quibble was because of a comment made by Beverley Illauq (a southerner married to an Inuk and a wonderful source of information), that the money the carvers got from a carving could feed their families for a month, and that they usually asked fair prices, and that the same carvings would command at least 10 times as much down south. Whether or not this was true, we don’t know, but we weren’t going to argue for the sake of a few dollars when it obviously meant so much to the carvers.  We never felt we were cheated.  Sometimes we felt we were taken advantage of because they knew our weaknesses, but we were never cheated. Iola came back on several occasions. I bought everything he offered.  Some was good, some was indifferent, some was obviously dashed off pretty quickly.  The prices he asked reflected the quality.

Then there was Lydia. Lydia Qayak.  She carved only one bear the entire year.  We got it. Carol had struck up a kind of friendship with her.  She loved tea; Carol brought her several cans of herbal tea. When visiting her one day Carol saw her working on a bear. It was a beautiful bear. Carol took pictures of it and of her working on it. When Carol showed me the pictures I asked her if it was for sale. Carol went back and found out she was making it for Peter and Tracey (the mountie and his wife, the Phys. Ed. Teacher).  Lydia said she’d make another one for them as they were away at the time.  We bought the bear.  We don’t know if she ever made another one. This bear is finely polished, made of beautiful white marble with pink flecks.  It’s a little stylistic.  We’re quite proud of it.  I had a base made for it.  The base is acid washed grey granite. It’s on a swivel so the bear can be rotated 360.  It sits on our coffee table. 

Bobby Jonas is the Inuktitut and Northern Studies teacher in the high school.  He’s a young man, very committed to his work and his students.  He’s very demanding on them; he’s the only teacher in the high school who demands and gets a high level of work. Bobby was a tremendous source of information for me. He was the most open and cooperative of all the Inuit teachers. We had him to dinner, he and his girlfriend. He was the only Inuk we had to dinner.  Just before we left, Bobby came to the house.  He had a present for us.  This present was a carving, a very special carving.  His father had carved it for him. I  guess I’d have to call it a collage, a collage of Northern wildlife carved on a caribou antler.  It was absolutely beautiful. Bobby’s father is not a recognized carver, at least not as far was we knew.  But this was as good as or better than anything else we had.  And it was a gift.  We were honoured. We would never part with this carving. It may in fact be more traditional than any of the other carvings in that it wasn’t made for commercial reasons, nor did we buy it. Carvers originally made their carvings and their dolls for their own children.  This was made by Bobby’s father for Bobby.

Regalee Piungituk  makes the best bears. So we were told.  Our first experience with Regalee’s work was a drum dancer. Two actually. Regalee knows how to take advantage of us. God bless her.  She came to know Carol quite well when Carol went to the traditional sewing classes with her grade five class.  Regalee doesn’t speak English; she always uses a translator.  We suspect she understands English quite well, but she won’t speak it.  Carol asked her to do two drum dancers, one for us and one for Ruby. Regalee asked Carol if she wanted the bum stuck out. Regalee’s drum dancers usually have a huge rear end, kind of stuck out to the rear, very stylistic. Carol asked her for one of each.  We gave Ruby a choice of either of two drum dancers when we got home. One was Iola’s, the other was Regalee’s. She chose Regalee’s.  That was a good choice. Regalee’s drum dancers are very detailed, with the braids of their hair done in some detail.  We think Regalee is the best carver in Clyde River and one of the best in Nunavut. We didn’t have a Regalee bear before we came home, but Carol, through several contacts and negotiations, asked her to make a bear for us and deliver it to Lynda Sweetapple. She did, but she delivered two; she seemed to know we’d buy both of them.  Now, when I say we didn’t have a Regalee bear, that’s not entirely true. Carol had made an open offer to our friends down south to purchase carvings for them if they were interested.  Carol’s friend Eileen (Florida) sent Carol $100.00 US to buy a bear.  Carol asked Regalee to make her a $150.00 bear.  She did.  It was small, but quite lovely. Now the next part of this story is remarkable, very wonderful, but it presented us with a continuing quandary. Carol had Regalee’s granddaughter in her Grade Five class.  Just before we left, the granddaughter showed up at our door with a present for Carol. The present was two very small bears (cubs) that went along with the small bear Regalee had already made for Carol. These small bears have some flaws in them, but the flaws are hardly noticeable. So now Carol had a set of three, all from the same marble, but one of them doesn’t belong to us. That’s why she asked Regalee to make the additional bear (that turned out to be two).  The two new bears are a different marble, and are larger.  Neither of them really matches the two cubs, and they were more expensive.  So what do we do?  We don’t know how this is going to be resolved yet.  I expect we’ll just give Eileen her choice of either of the three bears.  (The quandary got resolved much later; I’ll explain it later.)

Then there’s the dolls.  Mark, our Australian friend, showed us two dolls that he’d purchased from K.D.’s grandmother. They were real collector’s items and have been featured in art journals on Inuit art. We approached her through Igah to make us two dolls; she did. They’re exquisite. Subsequently I had a base and a background make for the dolls.  The base is a white Newfoundland stone, and the background is peridodite made from the mantle rock of the tablelands of Gros Morne.  That’s most appropriate, the mantle rock being some of the oldest rock on the planet.

The year after we returned we decided we wanted a full sized Regalee bear.  We contacted Lynda Sweetapple and Jukeepa to see if they could set it up for us.  It was arranged (so we thought) that Regalee would do a bear for us for $250.00. We kept checking and checking and kept being reassured that the bear would be ready on time.  (It had to be ready before the teachers came home for the summer.)  It was ready, barely on time, but there was a catch.  Lynda phoned us and told us that Regalee had delivered TWO bears. (Now this was the same Regalee who had delivered TWO drum dancers.)  We asked Lynda about the bears and she said they were both nice. We said buy them both.  (She had originally given Regalee the $250.00 we had agreed on, but Regalee came back to the door saying we owed her another $250.00, which of course we did.)  Lynda brought the bears out.  They were indeed nice; one has its head up, the other was the trademark Regalee bear with the head down.

The FOLLOWING year, Carol met someone online who was interested in Inuit carvings. She trusted him and he trusted her, so he sent a cheque for three carvings, two drum dancers and a bear. When they arrived (carried out by Graham Field), one of the drum dancers had his foot broken, but Carol fixed it herself and did a much better job than the “professionals” had done on our broken bear foot.  The drum dancers were wonderful, but we were a little disappointed in the size of the bear.  So, what we did was substitute one of our larger bears for Bob’s small bear. Bob’s small bear was still a little larger (and nicer) than the tiny bear (with the two cubs) that Regalee had made for Carol’s friend in Florida.  So we’ve put aside that bear for Eileen.  Now everyone should be happy.  Bob got a better bear, Eileen got a better bear, and Carol got the one that belongs to the set which she otherwise would have had to break up.   

That’s not the end of our collection or our collecting.  We’ve become impressed with the work of a carver on the Great Northern Peninsula. His name is Abiel Taylor.  He used to be a fisherman. He now owns a quite successful craft store, stocked entirely with his own carvings.  We bought one carving from his son at a craft fair in Corner Brook.  He does lovely carvings of kayaks and hunters; we like the larger ones he does, but they’re a little expensive so we’re going to have to wait a while before we get one of those. 

I'll add more pictures when I get around to taking some good pictures of the carvings. I've tried several times, but I've not been happy with the results. I'll also flesh out the stories a little more.