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Book description
Billy Connolly is a comedian and banjo-playing folk musician, an ex-welder from Partick, an area of Glasgow in Scotland. He is very proud of his Scottish roots although he now lives mostly in Miami, in the United States, and is world famous. Here he describes his journey around the virtually unknown coastal areas of the Arctic in his own inimitable fashion, with quirky humour, a zest for life, passion and wisdom. His enthusiasm is infectious, as he relates tales of eccentricity and wonder, conveying his idiosyncratic take on things. To travel right across the the Northernmost parts of the world, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, has never been possible before. But now, because of global warming, the ice melts for a few weeks in the summer, so ironically it is possible to experience this epic journey. The book is lavishly produced, with colour photographs on every page, many being the sort of holiday snaps a reader might take of themselves, of people they meet and places they see on their travels. More spectacular shots of the landscape use a full page of this large book. The text is set out in three ways: a linking narrative, interspersed with little speeches or strongly worded expositions by Billy Connolly, and boxes of textbook information. It works well. Sadly, the large print version has no illustrations whatsoever, not even the map at the front. The first section describes Nova Scotia, and the crossing over to Newfoundland. Billy Connolly starts at Halifax, the port where most of Canadas immigrant settlers landed. Although it was founded in 1749, most of the immigration occurred during World War II, when Canada provided sanctuary for thousands of evacuees fleeing persecution, from Germany, Holland, Italy or Russia. Shortly after the war there was an assisted passage scheme from Britain. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scot, was the first man to map Canada in 1879, and he also tried to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. He even called the longest river he found Disappointment River, because it flowed North to the Arctic, and not to Alaska as he had hoped. So the Scottish connection in Canada is particularly strong. Billy Connolly was both surprised and enchanted to experience the piping in of the ship at Halifax, by what appeared to be 19th century Scottish highlanders.He is clearly moved when he visits a graveyard in Halifax, devoted to those who died on The Titanic. It had been established there by the White Star Line, who owned the famous ship. Most of the relatives of those who died would never be able to visit the graves, of course. Billy Connolly then visits the Highland Games at New Brunswick. We can feel his confusion, as these Canadians seem to be more Scottish than the Scottish themselves; the traditions having been kept alive and fiercely guarded. Yet New Brunswick started off inhabited by the Mikmaq Indians, before being settled by the French and English with a large influx of Scots and Irish. He says, Their descendants have kept that culture so intact that Scottish historians sometimes travel to Canada for advice on things that have been forgotten back home. But he makes it clear that there is a lot of kitsch as well, stalls selling knick-knacks. Crossing to Cape Breton he feels that they too have hung on to their Scottishness speaking Gaelic, and keeping various dance and music traditions. He describes the Acadians in Cheticamp, descendants of French colonists, many of whom eventually headed south to settle in Louisiana, and are now referred to there as Cajun. The Cajun style of playing the fiddle is directly traceable back to the Cape Breton fiddlers. And he describes the exhilarating experience of riding his Harley-Davidson motorbike along the Cabot Trail. He felt very at home in Newfoundland describing it as a fantastic place. The hospitality of one town, Gander, achieved world fame during the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11th September 2001, because so many aeroplanes were diverted there, and Gander was suddenly expected to cater for 6500 extra visitors. The inhabitants pulled out all the stops to help the people who had arrived on their doorstep. Billy Connolly called them, awful nice folk. They find it very easy to communicate... which is a very Irish thing in fact. People just swan up to you and talk to you like theyve known you all their life.But he didnt like the theme park LAnse aux Meadows, where fishermen have given up being fisherman, and now enact a Viking way of life for the tourists. As he points out, the Vikings were only there for a few years.Part two starts with an apt quotation from John Ruskin,Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.This part of the book, about Baffin Island and the Inuit, is perhaps the most emotionally affecting part of the book. So far we have enjoyed Billy Connollys antics and his sense of fun and eccentricity. Here we see a more sober side of him, as he views the change and loss of an entire culture. The name Nunavut (our land) was coined as recently as 1999, when the Inuit were given autonomy over their territory on the southern coast of Baffin Island. The colonial history, as so often, was shameful. Representatives of the Canadian government could not pronounce the names of the inhabitants, so had renamed them with a Christian name and location number, giving them leather dog tags and insisting that these names and locations be used. Billy Connolly met a survivor from these times, who had been renamed Adam E7-2256 in 1940. In 1969, an attempt was made to redress the situation replacing the names with Inuit names, but many could not adapt, and many of the kinships had been lost. Later on in the book, Billy Connolly learnt the trigger for the setting up of the Nunavut territory - in effect giving their own land back to the Inuit. Formerly Nunavut was snow-bound, but now the snow has melted, and for several weeks in the summer it is actually a dust bowl. As a consequence the Inuit way of life has changed irrevocably. For four or five thousand years, their lifestyle had been based on hunting. Now though, they have been thrust too quickly into the twenty-first century. They have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and a severe drink and drugs problem. Billy Connolly watched old film, in the Iqaluit museum, which showed earlier times, when Inuit people happily stood outside their igloos, wearing traditional sealskin clothes. He looked at the Inuit man next to him who appeared to be glued to the screen, wearing a baseball cap and a sweatshirt, and observed sadly, I should imagine he gently weeps. His whole world has changed radically; from the way of the dogsled to the Internet, prefabs and fast food. Tookie seemed completely unsure what his role in the modern world might be... His face will always haunt me and seeing him there like that made a wee hole in my heart. There are mountains of rubbish all over the Nunavut area, dumps full of everything from half-frozen dead dogs to plastic waste and even vehicles, the Inuit having no procedure for coping with it. In their previous lifestyle rubbish was organic, and dropped anywhere, as it would go back to the land. Huskies are also a problem having overbred, and gone wild. Billy Connolly poignantly describes a simple scene, I spotted a husky dog creeping around a rubbish dump and that summed it all up for me. That husky should have been barking and woofing, charging through the snow with a sealskin collar, not sniffing at the rubbish. He didnt even know he was a metaphor.He went on to Auyuittuq National Park, a beautiful Arctic wilderness, the name translating as the land that never melts although he observes wryly, theyll have to change the name, it doesnt perma any more. He described the brilliant turquoise ice of the glaciers, and how he saw with his own eyes chunks of ice breaking off from icebegs and falling, and glaciers hanging over mountains as they retreated, like a big drip of cream as if theyre oozing into the valley. In nearby Pangnirtung he noticed,Much of the towns social life revolves around fast food joints such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. At one end of the town kids were eating junk and doing wheelies, while at the other end the elders spotted a whale in the bay... Once again, though, I was saddened to see that their town, which is bang in the middle of all this sensational beauty, was a bit of a dump.Billy Connolly does not mince his words about the incoming whalers, who made a profitable industry before leaving, or the Canadian Government who took away the Inuit names and stole away the children to educate them.Igloolik, literally there is an igloo here is the geographical centre of Nunavut, and the territorys most traditional town. Billy Connolly found it remote, rural, neat and tidy, though an expensive place to live. Even though it had an old feel, one of the inhabitants he met who had been born in an igloo in 1936 now lived in a modern house with double glazing and cable television. This man told Billy Connolly how in Inuit mythology, white men were considered to be the result of a union between Inuit women and dogs. When the white explorers had arrived, they seemed to be so ugly and repulsive to them, that the Inuit thought they must be the children of these dog-like creatures, looking for their mothers. Here it was that he first encountered throat-singing, and tried to get to grips with the language of Inuktitut, which is still the first language in Igloonik, and from which we have words such as kayak and anorak. But at his next stop in Pond Inlet, Billy Connolly was confronted with the difference in the two cultures. He is very proud of being a self-proclaimed citizen of the world and springs to the defence of the indigenous Inuit to live their traditional lifestyles, killing whales and seals for their food and skins. He joined in a seal hunt here, trying to quell his mixed feelings. But later, witnessing a group of narwhals from the shore, watching them in delight frolicking and playing, he was shocked to the core to hear a gunshot, as the Inuit hunted them. It came home to him with a jolt then, how very different his own perceptions really were. The third section of the book starts in the town of Resolute, Cornwallis Island, which is one of the coldest places on Earth,ugly with its sheds and industrial plants and dumps everywhere;This is where Billy Connolly learns of a disgraceful episode from recent history for which the Canadian government has now officially apologised, after an Enquiry called it, one of the worst human rights violations in the history of Canada. In 1953 some Inuit were forcibly relocated from northern Quebec, purely to establish Canadian sovereignty during the Cold War. They were made promises of a good lifestyle, and the option to return, both of which were broken. The harsh land proved impossible for them to adapt their skills to, and huge numbers died, mostly very young. One grave in the town of Resolute was for a man born in 1964, who died in 1990 at just 26 years of age.He muses over this episode from history, and many more shameful aspects of colonial history, where the explorers who were credited with discovering places (notwithstanding the peoples who were already living there...) were usually the ones with the most money, and those who may have deserved credit were often overlooked. John Franklins expedition is shrouded in mystery and conjecture.The more I followed in the footsteps of Franklin, the angrier I felt at the propaganda Id been fed about him all my life. I was always led to believe that he and the rest of those explorers were heroes when as far a I could see, they were a bunch of t******. The touting of upper-class idiots as heroes has happened throughout British history and I am tired of it... I think they are dithering, blithering idiots...prancing about the Arctic with a [candelabra and] silver dinner service, dressed as if he was going to dinner in Pall Mall. The big mistake these people made was that they took Britain along with them in their ships.Franklin had ignored his captains advice and gone into Peel Sound the wrong way. Billy Connolly says with a mixture of sorrow and disgust,It was here that they got stuck for two years, in mountainous ice that grew before their very eyes, making huge thundery noises. And it was here that they tried all their escapes, towing their lifeboats full of things they didnt need. Franklins body was never found, despite thousands of pounds being sunk into funding further futile expeditions, and there is evidence of cannibalism, and possible lead poisoning. Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer known as the first to travel along the Northwest passage from Gjoa Haven, (Uqsuqtuq meaning plenty of fat) got to know the Inuit, and learnt many survival skills from them. He said, If you want to do these wonderful people a real favour, leave them alone to live the way they have always lived.Years later, Billy Connolly thinks he was right, observing,This is beyond the magnetic North Pole, in a place where a couple of months a year you have no light, plus nine months of winter... These kids see everybody else in the world having a great laugh with rock and roll and boogie-woogie but theyre stuck there... There are plenty of reasons for topping yourself.Amundsen claimed that the discovery of the Northwest Passage should be given not to Franklin but to Dr. John Rae, who came from the Orkney Islands, and is known as the hero time forgot. He was second-in-command on one of the year-long expeditions to look for Franklin, and proved the existence of the Northwest passage, succeeding where Franklin had failed. Later, he mapped the area. He was discredited mainly because he was the first to convey the fact that cannibalism had been involved, and the British people, mainly led by Franklins widow, would not believe that this could be the case with their stout moral navy officers. Even her friend, the great Charles Dickens would not believe it, saying that they were probably eaten by animals, and if not,no man can show... that this sad remnant of Franklins gallant band were not set up and slain by the Esquimaux themselves. Nobody listened to individual tales of the surviving sailors by the Inuit, who tried to help various individuals over a period of four years. These stories were ignored because they came from the mouths of savages. John Rae continued to study indigenous tribes, for the rest of his long life, exploring Greenland and Iceland, exploring new territory, having areas named after him from the USA to Russia. Yet so far Britain has ignored him.The only way for Billy Connolly to traverse the Northwest Passage was over 8 days by cruise ship, which he referred to sardonically as the floating old folks home musing over the fate of earlier explorers, and casting a jaundiced eye over his fellow passengers to consider who was the least stringy! He has never been what he calls beige, despite being 65 himself by this time. When a polar bear was sighted in the distance he described the rush to the side of the ship, even though it was a mere speck on the horizon. Billy Connolly mused over the fact that he had been spending time with the Inuit, who described killing a polar bear single-handed with a knife, relishing the luxury of the meat. He felt emotionally more akin to the tourists, in their excitement, but loathed the happy tripper feel of it, the way people came from centrally heated homes to a warm comfortable berth on board a heated ship, returning home again feeling that they had seen the world. Mentally he was on the side of the Inuit, for their traditions and culture. Landing at Tuktoyaktuk (meaning it looks like caribou), or Tuk, which was formerly called Port Brabant until 1950, Billy Connolly was surprised to learn that the chief pastime here in the Northwest Territories was a form of television bingo. He was fascinated by the pingos, naturally occurring little hillocks made of ice, and covered with moss and small plants, and by the biggest walk-in fridge in the world. Many of the Inuit children who were sent away to have a Western education were forcibly taken from here. Some of them never returned home, and scandalously some suffered both physical and sexual abuse, for which the Canadian governments has formally apologised.I still find it hard to get over the huge vastness of the Northern Territories, he says, travelling along the Dempster Highway, ending in Dawson City, Yukon, a bit windblown and tumbleweedy. It is known as the epicentre of the Klondike gold rush in 1896, which is famously written about in verse by Robert Service, who as a result became known as the Canadian Kipling. The writer Jack London also lived here, having gone there with his brother to pan for gold. Yukon is a huge area, twice the size of Britain, but only has a few thousand inhabitants, and in Tombstone Territorial Park,jagged black granite peaks, alpine lakes and an explosion of colour in between. It took my breath away; it was amazing.In the final section of the book Billy Connolly is in more familiar territory, travelling down the West coast of Canada on his Harley Davidson. He remembered the descriptions of the Yukon from White Fang, which he had read as a boy. In Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, he met up with Nancy Ball, one of the great highlights of the trip, a tiny elderly woman who ran a great ranch all on her own. He heard tales of grizzly bears from those who lived alongside them, and saw bears in the wild for himself. In New Aiyansh he met a member of the Nisgaa, Alver Tait, sent away from his parents as a victim of the disgraceful residential school system. Returning to his home Alver Tait immersed himself in his native culture. Billy Connolly stayed for some time with the Nisgaa, Canadas only self-governing Forest Nations tribe, being profoundly impressed by these people, who seemed so gentle, spiritual and unresentful despite all the maltreatment they had suffered at the hands of white Canadians.Despite the sorry history he chronicles, Billy Connolly has only praise for modern Canada and Canadians. He loves the country,There is a size and beauty to everything in Canada that takes your breath away - mile upon mile of fjords and mountains and forests and rivers. The overpowering scale of the country came home to me when I realised that it had taken 10 weeks to cross... British Columbia, the flower of them all, with its cowboys and Indians, its bears and its eagles... Canada is in good shape. Theyve got some lovely folk there and I never met helpfulness or had a welcome like it anywhere in my life.These are a few personal highlights; any reader will discover different ones of their own. I could have described the carefully crafted scarecrows of world despots by the fiddle-playing Chester, the significance of the totem poles by the First Nations, felling a huge tree (diseased due to the infestation of mountain pine beetles) in Horsefly, British Columbia, or kissing a cod. If you have a yen for the hairy, wild and weird Big Yin, and a sense of curiosity, you will love this book. It is a delight to read, entertaining, funny, poignant and devastating in parts, moving and informative. What more could you want from a book of this type?
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