Grise Fjord is named as one of the Arctic settlements to which Inuit were forcibly moved during the Cold War. In the novel, the place carries the history of a state-imposed relocation: people were sent far north in the name of strategic security, but away from the land and animal routes on which their way of life depended.

Place in the Relocation

The account places Grise Fjord alongside Resolute Bay as a destination for Inuit relocated from their traditional territory in the southern Arctic. The Canadian government feared that the Soviet Union or the United States might claim the uninhabited Canadian Arctic. Officials described the move as relocation and presented northern hunting grounds as an improvement; the narrative makes clear that this justification did not match the conditions people encountered.

The relocation was not a voluntary migration. Inuit were transported by aeroplane hundreds of kilometres farther north, without their tents, kayaks, canoes, or sleds. Grise Fjord thus appears not simply as a remote settlement but as part of a policy that moved people to serve a territorial and military purpose while disregarding the practical means they needed to live on the land.

Land and Livelihood

The new settlements were nowhere near the caribou trails or summer breeding grounds. At the same time, the former hunting grounds were bulldozed, removing places and reminders that might have enabled people to return. The animals did not alter their habits to accommodate the imposed settlement, leaving relocated families with limited access to food and clothing and dependent on small game and fish.

The place is therefore associated with a rupture between settlement and subsistence. The relocation altered where people lived without making the surrounding environment usable on the terms of their former lives. The narrative links that mismatch to deaths among relatives, later reliance on welfare, and the destruction of an established way of life.

Memory and Significance

Grise Fjord enters the story through an account of collective and family memory. Leon Anawak’s uncle recalls that he was relocated when young and that Leon’s parents were relocated too. His recollection turns an official policy into lived history, connecting the named northern destination to the experiences of families separated from their homeland and familiar hunting grounds.

The episode gives the place significance beyond its position on the Arctic map. Grise Fjord stands within a history in which security policy and government explanations obscured the costs borne by Inuit communities. Remembering the relocation restores the human consequences that the administrative language of moving people north could conceal.