August 17^th, 2026

Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada

Cambridge Bay is our final port in Canada. We were due to arrive at 1:00 PM so I was surprised when I woke up this morning to see we were already there.

The town looked a lot more developed than Gjoa Haven.

The captain explained that there was a crew member who was unable to disembark in Greenland, so we had arrived here early in order for him to catch a flight home. I thought it was nice of Seabourn to be so accommodating, but I also thought it would be nice if we could go ashore earlier seeing as we are already here.

Brian had a Zoom meeting in the afternoon, so could only go ashore after the meeting ended.

Luckily I wasn’t involved in the meeting and as soon as we were permitted to go ashore, our Image Masters group, led by Max, boarded a Zodiac and we headed for the beach.

We had no particular itinerary for our time in town; we just looked at possible interesting things and took loads of photos.

Many of the group had very fancy cameras and lenses. I just had my ancient iPhone SE.

Near the beach there were some interesting metal sculptures.

We spent a long time taking photos of them from all angles.

Max had a look at my photos and declared them OK (very diplomatic) and then took a few himself using my phone. He asked me if I planned to get a new phone any time in the near future. Looking at my broken phone case and distressed screen protector, I reassured him that the phone itself was in good working order and I was quite happy with it.

We then set off to explore the town.

There was some very basic looking housing which apparently is used by seasonal laborers,

And some nice looking houses.

The town did tend to be quite monochromatic

But there was also this one brightly colorful building.

There was no shortage of places of worship.

We did not visit this one

But we did go inside the Anglican church.

It had a pretty, rather minimalist interior

But I loved the stained-glass windows.

On our walk around town, we came across a woman walking a dog, and the dog lovers in the group (most of us) had to stop and pet it. It was a rescue dog and due to fly to a new home in Halifax tomorrow. He was photographed from all angles by the group, and seemed to enjoy the attention.

I think Jim took the best photo.

 

I must say that up until then I hadn’t noticed the large numbers of dogs chained up in their owners’ back yards. It seemed that almost every house had a large white dog.

We came across an interesting looking character. He was a Norwegian sailor who had left Norway 4 months ago in a boat similar to Amundsen’s Gjoa and was following a similar route to that Amundsen took through the Northwest Passage. Jim took this photo of him and our group.

We had seen his boat when we landed on the beach, it looked so small compared to our large ship.

We ended our photographic walk around the town at the May Hakongak Community Library & Cultural Centre situated inside the high school.

This is the local community center with a museum, regional archives, library, and art gallery.

There was also a research lab, but no one was there. The sign outside had a description of a Canadian Antarctic research program, but said nothing about Arctic research.

One of the very cool programs there was the Elders-in-Residence program which connects youth with traditional knowledge holders.

They had a great exhibit on hydroponics – very useful in this very barren part of the world.

There were several vendors of local handicrafts, and they seemed to be doing a roaring trade with folks from the ship.

The community center was very interesting, but unfortunately the battery in my phone died so I couldn’t take any more photos.

After the museum I wandered through the dusty streets towards the beach and the Red Fish Arts Studio where a snack was waiting for us, as well as more local handicrafts.

Then I headed to the Zodiacs and back to the ship.

When I returned to our cabin Brian was still on his Zoom meeting, no chance of him getting to go ashore because soon after I got back to the ship, the final Zodiacs were hoisted onto deck 9, and we were ready to get going again.

We said goodbye to Canada and had caviar in the cabin.

As we made our way through the channels separating the islands we saw a little sail boat. It looked like the boat of the man we had met in town. It was so small against this vast Arctic expanse. It is good to know that there are still true adventurers in this world. Follow your dream. Mine involves champagne and caviar.

Later we watched the sunset. The first sunset we have seen on this cruise. No green flash though.