Northern Sights

Three years ago, in late spring, Adam Shoalts started walking eastward from an isolated truck stop in northern Yukon, alone. After a few days’ hiking, he launched a canoe and kept going until reaching Baker Lake, Nunavut’s sole inland community, four months and 4,000 kilometres later. On the way, the adventurer from Ontario travelled over mountains, along (and often up) wild rivers, and across icy lakes. He waded through cold, rushing waters where a misstep could spell disaster. On occasion, “screaming gales” pinned him on shore, forcing him to wait out precious days before the first snows would start falling in September. He was in a race against winter.

Shoalts’s route was patched together with the help of topographic maps, satellite images, and a few old reports he’d found in libraries in southern Canada. It carried him through the Richardson Mountains to meet the Deh Cho, or Mackenzie River, at Tsiigehtchic. He paddled south from there, going several hundred...