When the Whalers Were Up North

Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic (McGill-Queen's Indigenous and Northern Studies, Book 1)

By: Dorothy Harley Eber

Narrated by: Brianne Tucker

The author tells a story drawn from oral memories, a story which will soon disappear with the last Inuit generation to have seen the whalers. Tales are told of when the whalers first appeared on the north-east coast of Baffin Island, how they set up land stations in the whale-rich waters of Cumberland Sound, and how they eventually pushed on into Hudson Bay. During this time the Inuit not only fed and clothed the whalers, they hunted with them, adding to the whalers' wealth. Our understanding of change in Inuit life is often linked to the fur traders, who arrived in the North fifty years after the arrival of the whalers. In truth it is the Inuit's close contact with the foreign world of the whalers which marked the beginning of a change in previously undisturbed Inuit culture and traditions.

©1989 Dorothy Harley Eber (P)2024 McGill-Queen’s University Press

Critic reviews

“A remarkable collection of Eastern Arctic lore.”—Books in Canada

“A major contribution to Inuit social history.”—Mick Mallon, Nunatsiaq News

“A gem of a book ... Eber has succeeded well in elucidating the interaction between Eastern Arctic Inuit and the American and Scottish whalemen who came to Cumberland Sound, Hudson Strait, and Hudson Bay in the century before the last whaler left in 1915 ... Anyone interested in the socio-economic impact of Arctic whaling, the Inuit, or the ethnological record of such inter-cultural contact will find this book worthy of study.” Briton C. Busch, Argonauta