TORONTO -- The Bombardier died about 10 km out of Arviat, and that was a stroke of luck. It's nearly 800 km from Churchill to Rankin Inlet as the snowmobile travels and there are only two settlements along the way. We broke down close to one of them.
And to more luck. With about 1,500 people, Arviat is not a big town, but someone there had a junked engine with the pulley we needed in good condition. But it was about time for some luck. From Rankin to Churchill and back to Arviat is about 1,200 km, and in that distance we had a couple of dozen minor breakdowns.
Rankin Inlet is a village of about 2,500 people on the western shore of Hudson Bay, about 400 km south of the Arctic Circle. It's the second biggest town in Nunavut, which used to be the eastern part of Canada's Northwest Territories.