AMAZING GRACE - A Journey Through the Torngat Mountains National Park

‘It’s true. The little people exist. They dress in sealskins and caribou hides, just like us. But when the machinery came, the aeroplanes and the snowmobiles, they fled north. My cousin in Hebron went for a walk, and he came across a dwelling of these little people. He saw a pile of bones and a little person with a bow and arrow.’

‘How big are they?’ I asked Sophie Keelan, a youthful 71-year-old Inuit elder with a long career in healthcare and a cheeky smile.

‘All different sizes. Just like us.’ Noticing perhaps a hint of disbelief on my face, Sophie reiterates: ‘They’re not stories, just true.’

A few days earlier Sophie and other Inuit welcomed us to their homeland on the northern tip of Labrador, Canada. Over the days that followed, we explored this mountainous land by boat and on foot. We saw polar bears and whales, glaciers the size of cruise ships, and ate raw Arctic char on the beach. As the Northern Lights flickered in the evening, we spent time with our hosts, discovering the land through their eyes, hearing stories, playing traditional Inuit games. We also discovered a story so heartbreaking and so forgiving that we wept with our new friends. Though the Torngat Mountains are one of the most dramatic places on Earth, it wasn’t the landscapes that were imprinted in our minds, but the words of Sophie, of Andrew and of Gary, of Boonie and of Maria.

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