There are famous places in the Canadian Arctic – names such as Beechey Island, Lancaster Sound and Pond Inlet that appear repeatedly in books about exploration, wildlife and the search for the Northwest Passage. And then there are places that barely appear on a conventional map. Duart Bay, tucked away in Dexterity Fiord on the spectacular eastern coast of Baffin Island, is one of them.
There is no settlement here, no road and no visitor centre. Instead, there are mountains, rocky shores, tundra and the cold waters of Baffin Bay. We arrived by expedition ship, but the way I really wanted to experience this landscape was from the seat of a sea kayak.
Sunrise, Then Sunset
Our day started ridiculously early. I was up at around 4.30am and watched a beautiful sunrise spreading across the mountains. Then something rather wonderful happened. As the ship turned around a bend, the sun that had only just risen disappeared again behind a high mountain ridge. Within about twenty minutes we had effectively watched a sunrise followed by a sunset. It was one of those strange little Arctic moments when geography, light and our own movement through the landscape combine to produce something completely unexpected.
Then the mist rolled in. This is the Arctic, after all, and plans here are always provisional. Mountains disappeared, visibility reduced and for a while it looked as though our hopes of exploring Duart Bay by kayak might disappear with them. Eventually the mist began to clear and we got our opportunity. It was worth waiting for.
Seeing Baffin Island from a Kayak
There is something very different about experiencing Baffin Island from a kayak. From the deck of an expedition ship the landscape is magnificent, but its sheer scale can make everything feel distant. From a sea kayak you are sitting almost at water level, with enormous mountains rising around you and the Arctic Ocean only centimetres beneath your hull. Suddenly the landscape becomes much more intimate.
You notice the rocks along the shoreline. You see individual plants growing above the high-water mark. Birds pass at eye level rather than somewhere below the ship. You hear the movement of water against the kayak and every small crack or movement of ice. It also makes you realise just how small you are.
The mountains along this part of Baffin Island rise dramatically from the coast. Some peaks in the eastern Baffin mountains rise well above 1,500 metres, and from sea level they look enormous, particularly when their upper slopes disappear into cloud or mist. There were no engines and no roads, just our small group of kayaks moving quietly through a huge Arctic landscape. For me, this is exactly what sea kayaking is about. You are not simply travelling through the landscape. You become part of it.
A Scottish Connection
What makes Duart Bay particularly fascinating is that hidden amongst this apparently untouched Arctic landscape is a remarkable little connection with Scotland. The best historical account I have found comes from the 1937 Cambridge expedition led by the Scottish geologist and explorer James Wordie. His party was attempting to resolve some of the geography around Dexterity Harbour, which had previously been used as an anchorage by whaling ships.
The Wreck of the Eagle
The expedition encountered a beach scattered with wreckage. It was identified as the remains of the whaling vessel Eagle, which had been driven ashore during a gale in 1893. That immediately changes how you look at the coastline. A remote Arctic beach can initially appear completely untouched, but suddenly you can imagine whaling ships sheltering in these waters more than a century ago, crews coming ashore and Inuit travelling to meet or trade with them.
The historical account also records that an Inuit village developed around Dexterity Harbour during the whaling period of the 1890s. A whaling harbour was therefore much more than somewhere European ships temporarily dropped anchor. Places such as this became contact zones between two very different worlds. There could be trade and employment, exchanges of knowledge, salvage from ships and access to new tools and materials. But European contact could also bring disease, exploitation and profound changes to established Inuit ways of life.
The wreck of the Eagle therefore feels almost symbolic. European industrial whaling arrived in the Arctic with ships, money and technology, yet ultimately those ships remained extremely vulnerable to the same forces that had always governed life here – ice, wind, weather and sea.
Why Is Duart Bay Called Duart Bay?
There is another Scottish connection, and this one is written directly onto the map. As Wordie’s expedition travelled into Dexterity Fiord in 1937, the character of the landscape apparently began to change. The steep, enclosed fiord walls opened into broader valleys and gentler mountains. To members of the expedition it reminded them of the country around the Sound of Mull on Scotland’s west coast, and they named the bay Duart Bay, after Duart and the famous Duart Castle overlooking the Sound of Mull.
I find that fascinating. As far as I have been able to establish, Duart Bay isn’t an Inuit place name stretching back through generations. It is essentially a Scottish memory transplanted onto the coast of Baffin Island by a group of explorers in the 1930s. Thousands of kilometres from Scotland, we were paddling through a Canadian Arctic bay named because its mountains reminded Scottish explorers of home. For a Scot sitting in a sea kayak beneath those same mountains, that gives the place an additional resonance.
A Scottish Memory in the Arctic
There is even a small physical trace of the expedition preserved back in Britain. Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology holds objects collected at Duart Bay by archaeologist Thomas Lethbridge during Wordie’s 1937 expedition, including a worked bone-and-iron pick recorded as coming from a “modern hut”. It is a tiny object, but another reminder that this apparently remote coastline has a surprisingly complicated human story.
A Landscape Shaped by Ice
The mountains surrounding us tell a much older story. Almost everything you see along eastern Baffin Island has been influenced by ice. During the last Ice Age enormous ice sheets covered virtually the whole island. Glaciers flowed through the mountains towards the sea, grinding into the bedrock, deepening valleys and transporting huge quantities of rock and sediment. When the climate warmed and the ice retreated, seawater flooded many of those glacial valleys. The result is the extraordinary fiord landscape we were now paddling through.
And the process hasn’t finished. Glaciers and ice caps still survive across Baffin Island, particularly amongst the mountains of the east coast. They are remnants of a much colder world, but they continue to influence the landscape today. The Arctic is also experiencing exceptionally rapid climatic change. Glaciers are retreating, patterns of sea ice are changing and the timing of freezing and thawing is shifting.
For those of us fortunate enough to return regularly to polar regions, climate change isn’t simply something represented by lines on a scientific graph. Increasingly, you can see it happening in the landscape around you.
Arctic Wildlife — and Polar Bears
Wildlife watching from a kayak is also completely different from wildlife watching from a ship. You are travelling quietly and slowly, constantly scanning the shoreline, the water and the sky. We saw Glaucous Gulls, one of the characteristic large gulls of the Arctic, and King Eiders, spectacular sea ducks which breed across the High Arctic.
And, fortunately, we didn’t see a polar bear. That might sound like an odd thing for a wildlife guide to say. Polar bears are among the most extraordinary animals on Earth and seeing one in the wild is an unforgettable experience. Seeing one when you are sitting in a sea kayak, however, is not necessarily the encounter you are looking for.
This is very definitely polar bear country. Polar bears occur throughout the eastern Baffin Island region and can travel enormous distances along coastlines and across sea ice. During the ice-free season they may be encountered on islands, headlands and beaches, and they are extremely capable swimmers.
Consequently, every potential landing in this part of the Arctic has to be approached carefully. A beach that appears completely empty from a distance may not necessarily be empty. Polar bears can blend remarkably effectively into patches of snow, pale rock and ice. It is one of the reasons travelling here requires proper expedition procedures and experienced teams. Before anyone lands, the surrounding coastline has to be thoroughly checked. I’ll return to polar bears and polar bear safety in another Wee Wild Adventures blog because it deserves an article of its own.
The Arctic Isn’t Empty
One of the great misconceptions about Arctic landscapes is that they are empty. From a distance the tundra can certainly appear almost barren. Get close to it and an entire miniature landscape appears. Plants grow low to escape the worst of the wind, often hugging the ground and creating their own slightly warmer microclimate. Depending on where you land, there may be purple saxifrage, mountain avens, Arctic willow, mosses and lichens.
Some plants may only stand a few centimetres high but can be surprisingly old. Everything has to happen quickly because the Arctic growing season is extraordinarily short. Plants flower, set seed and prepare for another winter during a brief burst of summer. That slow growth also makes tundra vegetation vulnerable. A plant community that has taken decades to establish can be damaged very quickly by repeated trampling. Travelling responsibly here means remembering that what looks tough enough to survive an Arctic winter can actually be surprisingly fragile beneath our boots.
Perhaps one of the most striking things about paddling somewhere like Duart Bay is simply looking inland. There are no roads disappearing through the valleys, no railway lines and no electricity pylons marching across the horizon. In many directions there is virtually no visible sign of modern infrastructure at all.
The Sea Is a Highway
But it is important not to confuse the absence of roads with an empty or unknown landscape. Inuit have travelled these coasts for generations, developing an extraordinary knowledge of wildlife, currents, weather, sea ice and seasonal conditions. For Inuit, the sea has traditionally been a highway rather than a barrier.
That is an important distinction when looking at a map of the Arctic. European maps tend to present the region as pieces of land separated by large areas of water. For people travelling by kayak, umiak, boat, dogsled or across sea ice, those same waterways could connect communities, hunting grounds and travelling routes. The landscape we were paddling through might look remote to us. It was never simply empty.
Kayaking at Human Speed
Our paddle through Duart Bay reinforced something I have felt many times while kayaking in wild places. Kayaks force you to slow down. On a ship you can travel hundreds of kilometres in a day. In a Zodiac you can quickly move from one landing site to another. A kayak travels at human speed.
You notice a bird sitting on the water ahead. You watch the shape of the mountains change as you move along the shore. You feel changes in the wind. You notice jellyfish beneath the kayak. You hear sounds that would otherwise be lost beneath an engine. Sometimes you hear the distant crack of ice. And occasionally, somewhere out across the water, comes the unmistakable sound of a whale breathing.
It creates a completely different relationship with the place.
The Attraction Is Simply Being There
Duart Bay doesn’t have one famous monument that everyone needs to photograph. There isn’t a visitor attraction or a sign telling you what to look at. The attraction is simply being there.
Perhaps that was the real lesson of our morning. At 4.30am we were watching the sun rise across the mountains. Twenty minutes later our movement around the coast had taken the sun behind the mountains again. Then the mist arrived. For a while it seemed that our plans to kayak might disappear altogether.
Then the mist lifted and suddenly we were out on the water, paddling through a remote Arctic bay beneath the mountains of Baffin Island. We saw King Eiders and Glaucous Gulls. We didn’t see a polar bear. There were no crowds, roads or buildings. Just kayaks, mountains, tundra, sea and a name on the map carrying an unexpected memory of Scotland.
It was a wonderful morning, and perhaps that is one of the reasons I love working and travelling in the Arctic so much. You arrive with a plan. The weather, ice and wildlife decide what actually happens.
Sometimes they give you something much better.
Why not take the opportunity to read our other blogs about Nunavut and the Canadian arctic;
- Beechey Island: Polar Bears, Franklin and Three Graves Beside the Sea
- Kayaking with Arctic Wildlife: Staying Safe Around Polar Bears, Walrus and Whales
- Croker Bay: Paddling Beneath the Glaciers of Devon Island
- Dundas Harbour: Ghosts in the Fog on Devon Island
- Isabella Bay: In the Realm of the Bowhead Whale
- Qikiqtarjuaq: Gateway to the Wild Mountains of Baffin Island
- Port Leopold: Paddling Through the Search for Franklin
- Prince Leopold Island: Paddling Beneath a City of Seabirds
- Radstock Bay: Paddling Through a Thousand Years of Arctic History