Denis Venne
In the news
Arctic Survival Training the Inuit Way
Makivik Magazine
“Relatively few non-Inuit have ever built his or her own igluq and slept in it, but Air Inuit messenger Patrick Quesnel has. Quesnel, a qualified pilot who hopes to eventually fly airplanes in the North, decided to take the same Arctic Survival Training Course this past March that other Air Inuit crew have been taking for the past three years. It was also his first time ever in Nunavik.”
“I am six-foot-three, and my igluq was six-foot-four inches in diameter,” he said, recalling how patient his Inuit instructors were, especially when it was time to show him how to insert the last couple of pieces to complete the roof. “It might seem easy to cut the snow blocks, but it is not that easy. When I broke them, we laughed about it as I tried again — three, four, even five times if I had to.”
