How I Survived: Four Nights on the Ice

Thus begins Inuit elder Ittusardjuat’s How I Survived: Four Nights on the Ice, a recounting of his survival on the ice pack between a fishing camp and his home in Igloolik, Nunavut, a hamlet located on an island near Melville Peninsula and south of the northwest arm of Baffin Island. The events took place in December 2008, a time of year when the region receives only about three hours of day light. Ittusardjuat had traveled to a fishing camp at a site called Iqualuit to pick up materials left there by his son, and he was on his way back when he lost the trail and encountered very poor conditions on rough ice formed far from shore. Ittusardjuat had to abandon his qamutuk or sled as it kept getting stuck. Soon after, his snowmobile broke down and would not restart. Having already eaten his food, he now faced a cold night on the Arctic sea ice.

Fortunately, Ittusardjuat remembered survival tips he had learned many years earlier when his family lived in an iglu. To avoid hypothermia, he had to stay dry, and this meant sleeping on his snowmobile so that his kamiik or skin boots would not get wet from the snow. The next day, he discovered the nature of the mechanical problem with his snowmobile but could not fix it. Thirsty, he used gasoline to melt ice into potable water. He unsuccessfully tried to signal a search plane at night using his flashlight. Finally, on the fourth night, he awoke to two snowmobiles that had traveled from Igloolik to the fishing camp and followed his trail to his location. The survival skills he learned long ago are still valid today.

By choosing to present this story in a graphic novel format, the publisher may be hoping to reach reluctant readers. For readers in the south, the graphics illustrate unfamiliar objects like the qamutuk noted in the story, but maktaaq is not shown. The work includes notes on Inuktitut pronunciation and the English translation for the four words that appear in the story in Romanized Inuktitut. A map showing the route traveled between Igloolik and the Iqaluit fishing camp may confuse southerners who are unfamiliar with the geography of the region and may only know the name Iqaluit as the capital city of the territory situated much farther to the south and on the eastern side of Baffin Island. There is no scale, and it is unclear how far the camp is from the hamlet. Perhaps it would have helped to include an inset map showing more of Nunavut so that readers could more quickly place the location.

Hoddy is an illustrator, comic artist and animator. His illustrations are warm with shades of blue depicting ice, snow, and the sky and more vibrant colours to make the snowmobile and the narrator’s clothing stand out from the background. The illustrations for the most part match the text and overall provide an attractive graphic novel. Some drawings span two pages, but most of the pages contain one, two, or three image cells. The text is rather meager and plain, lacking adjectives and adverbs, for a 48 page graphic novel so the sequential pacing is somewhat drawn out.

In its press release, the publisher suggests the book is suited for those 12 years and up. However, the text is straightforward and could easily be read by children as young as 7 or 8 except perhaps for the word “hypothermia”. The implicit message of How I Survived: Four Nights on the Ice, that it is valuable to learn how to live on the land as these skills can still be useful in modern times, may be targeted more to middle school readers who may be at higher risk of devaluing advice and knowledge passed down from parents and elders.