Canada's official motto translates as "from sea to sea."
But for many years now, there's been an unofficial version:
"from sea to sea to sea."
Because Canada doesn't just have west and east coasts,
it has a north one as well.
Just over that hill is Inuvik,
a small town of about 3,000 people in the Northwest Territories,
about 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.
But it's not on the Arctic Ocean.
Until recently, this was the end of the Dempster Highway,
about as far north as you could get by Canada's road system.
There wasn't a continuous link from sea to sea to sea.
Except in winter when the ice was frozen enough to support vehicles.
But in 2017, after years of difficult construction over the permafrost
and hundreds of millions of dollars in costs,
an all-weather highway finally opened, from here to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean.
So for the first time, we can drive there.
...or we could take a plane.
RADIO: "ATC clear."
It turns out that building an all-weather highway across permafrost
is an incredibly difficult logistical challenge.
It's now springtime.
The thaw is beginning and large sections of the highway,
particularly in the south, have pretty much turned to mud.
There isn't quite enough gravel,
it isn't compact enough, it isn't cold enough.
If your vehicle gets caught there, you are hours from help
and you have no cell phone service.
So for safety, the government has closed the road, at least for now.
But sooner or later, the road will be fixed
and the highway will reopen
and Tuktoyaktuk will be connected again.
And that's going to change things here.
- I was born and raised here.
21 years ago(!) - [laughter]
- But anyways, I lived here all my life.
Never going to move. I enjoy my life here.
There's just under 1,000 people that live here year-round.
We do a lot of fishing, lot of hunting, berry picking, whatnot.
Do the seasonal thing.
When they got the go-ahead to finally start building the road,
it took about five years and they would only work in the wintertime
because the tundra is frozen.
And they don't want to damage the tundra because once the permafrost's at surface,
it's gonna start melting.
They would make ice bridges.
Even to where they would haul the gravel to us
just so they don't do damage.
Tuktoyaktuk is not isolated anymore. It's supposed to be year-round.
So if you want to go travel down south,
you just hop on a vehicle, if you own a vehicle,
just head down.
Whereas in summer months, we'd be isolated.
We'd wait for the scheduled flights to come in
or we go by boat, if you own a boat.
Most people were for it.
They were hoping the prices would go down
for groceries, gas, whatnot.
And the gas price did go down a bit
because we had a second gas station open up.
So that is one of the good things.
It just gives more opportunity for everybody.
- Now I want to be clear.
This is not some abandoned Arctic outpost.
There's cell phone service here.
There's a lot of people and there's fast internet.
Eileen, who I interviewed, she runs the local taxi service.
This is a proper town. It's just very far north.
The future of the Canadian Arctic is unknown right now.
Climate change means that the permafrost is melting.
Sea level rise is already threatening this town.
This highway is just going to be one more change in a century of them.
- We never did feel isolated because we're from here.
Yeah, we're just used to the way we're living all the time.