Kangirsuk, 1970

If you were to go back in time to the early 1970's, your aircraft would have two possible landing areas. The easiest was on the river ice directly off the village. The other was up the hill on the frozen lake. In the pictures here, the river option was made impossible due to the very rough ice surface. On years when this happened all aircraft were forced to use the lake above the village where the ice usually froze smoothly.










Coming down the hill, your first view of Kangirsuk was the 'garage' area, the power-house for the diesel-electric generators, and the Hudson's Bay Company store and warehouses on the west side of the little bay, the kangirsuk in Inuktitut. Once down at the bay, you came to the road leading past the school and the teachers' residences, the post office, the provincial school, nursing station, the Coop store and then the village itself. Continuing through the village would bring you to the oil storage tanks at the end of the street.


Roughly 200 people lived there at that time. It was a very self-contained community with little outside travel. Trips were made north to Koartaq now and then, but the village of Aupaluk to the south had not be created, although it's possibility was being discussed by some people.

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them. The photos are actually 5 pans from west to east, the first pair being extreme west views, to the last, which shows the extreme east view.