Qitdlarssuaq and the Canadian Eskimo Dog

Beginning in the late 1960’s and continuing until the early 1980’s, a Yellowknife-based boarding kennel operator and dog breeder, with a professional biology background named William Carpenter, worked tirelessly to establish what eventually became known as the Canadian Eskimo Dog as a registered breed with the Canadian Kennel Club. To facilitate this initiative, Carpenter and others based primarily in Canada’s north formed an association known as the Canadian Eskimo Dog Research Foundation.

In fact the C.K.C. had been registering Eskimo Dogs almost since its inception over one hundred years ago, but at the time of William Carpenter’s initiative in the early 1970’s, there was possibly one living CKC registered Eskimo Dog. Working closely with the Canadian Kennel Club, and with the message that the “pure” Eskimo Dog was on the verge of extinction, Carpenter captured international public attention and mobilized a significant amount of personal, private and government interest, as well as a fair bit of financial support. A breeding program was established in Yellowknife, and hundreds of Eskimo Dogs were bred and some of these were eventually registered with the Canadian Kennel Club as Canadian Eskimo Dogs. This story is documented in a National Film Board movie entitled Qimmiq - Canada’s Arctic Dog and is available to view on line (www.nfb.ca). I have vivid memories of visiting Bill Carpenter and his kennel at the height of the breeding program in the late 1970‘s, it was truly exciting with what seemed like at least a hundred incredible adult dogs present at any one time. I was last in Yellowknife three years ago and went back to the site but was barely able to recognize it. It was no longer a kennel and seemed abandoned, all of the past glory was gone.



As part of the larger project, William Carpenter did a re-write of the existing C.K.C. breed standard for the Eskimo Dog. The C.K.C. accepted this reworded standard and agreed to register those dogs that were part of the Canadian Eskimo Dog Research Foundation’s breeding project, but as Canadian Eskimo Dogs. This choice of name was at the insistence of the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) (the International Canine Federation, based in Belgium). The Swiss had developed a breed standard for what they called the Greenland Dog, essentially the Greenland Eskimo Dog and the FCI did not want this dog to be confused with Eskimo Dogs bred in Canada. A comparison of the two standards shows very few differences however one result of this development was the creation of the clear impression that the Canadian Eskimo Dog was a separate and distinct animal from those indigenous dogs that resided elsewhere in the north, specifically those thousands of Eskimo Dogs that resided in Greenland.



Suddenly, people were asking the question….is the Canadian Eskimo Dog one and the same as the Greenland Eskimo Dog?



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In 1987, expedition members Renee Wissink (leader), Paul Apak, Theo Ikummaq, Mike Immaroitok (Inuit team members)and Mike Beedel (photographer), travelled by dogteam from Igloolik Nunavut (then part of the N.W.T.), to Qaanaaq (formerly Thule) Greenland and return, a journey of 3000 km. Their dogs were Canadian Eskimo Dogs and they were retracing and commemorating a journey taken in the mid 1800’s by a truly charismatic and quite amazing Inuit shaman named Qitdlarssuaq and his group of incredibly dedicated followers. Qitdlarssuaq could rightfully be called an Arctic Moses, albeit a very violent, cunning and ruthless one.



At the time of this expedition, I was fascinated by the story of Qitdlarssuaq and was completely engrossed by Mike Bedeel’s phenomenal photographs, particularly those of the dogs. I subsequently had the pleasure of meeting Mike and of talking with him about his experiences on this expedition. It struck me at the time that if “Canadian” Eskimo Dogs could travel so easily to Greenland, then perhaps dogs had been travelling back and forth between the two countries forever.



Most recently in the June 2011 edition of Up Here magazine, I discovered an article written by Jerry Kobalenko, entitled The Shepherd of the High Arctic, a very entertaining, well written and concise accounting of the history of Qitdlarssuaq the man, his life and particularly his travels. I won’t repeat many of the details of this Up Here article but encourage anyone interested to read it, it should be readily available.



The fact that the details of Qitdlarssuaq’s exploits survive at all is due to a couple of fateful developments. In the early 1850’s, Britain was pre-occupied with the fate of the expedition of Sir John Franklin and of his ships Erebus and Terror. Franklin had been attempting to find the elusive Northwest Passage however it was becoming increasingly apparent that Franklin and his men were probably all dead. In 1853, the British Admiralty pulled out all the stops and mounted a huge search party consisting of five vessels under the overall command of Sir Edward Belcher. As part of this initiative, Commander Edward. A. Ingelfield captain of the steam tender Phoenix had delivered supplies and dispatches to the vessels under Belcher’s command. He wrote a report (?) entitled A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin --With a Peep Into The Polar Basin. While taking his “peep” into the Polar Basin, Inglefield describes a chance meeting with Qidtlarssuaq and his followers on the south coast of Devon Island. There are even surviving photographs taken of Qidtlarssuaq’s followers at the time. Then, in 1858, while living on Philpots Island, Qitdlarssuaq met British explorer Leopold McClintock, who informed him (through an interpreter) about the Polar Inuit living to the north on the coast of Greenland. And then decades later, a very aged survivor of the Qitdlarssuaq odyssey, one-eyed Merqusaq, shared the details of the migration with none other than Greenland-born ethnographer Knud Rasmussen and it is thanks to this chance combination of factors that many details of this saga are known today.



The distance from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic to terra firma on Greenland is only about 35 kilometres across Smith Sound. This is exactly where Qitlarssuaq crossed over to Greenland in 1863 and it is where he subsequently established contact with the Polar Inuit, a group of Inuit that had become cut off from all other humans and who had been living a totally isolated existence for centuries. These were the people that Captain John Ross had first met in 1818. Ross actually interacted quite closely with them and describes their lifestyle, particularly their use of dogs and he actually brought back (to the British Museum) an incredible Qamutik (sled) made of fragments of (walrus) bone and a few small pieces of wood lashed together with thong and with the running surface on the runners made of strips of walrus ivory.



At the time that Qitdlarasuaq met them, there were only 140 surviving Polar Inuit. To quote author Kobalenko in the Up Here article, “they were within one bad hunting season of dying out entirely”. Qitdlarssuaq and his band integrated with the Polar Inuit and in the process he re-introduced a great deal of lost knowledge and technology to these people. They intermarried, in short the two cultural groups became one. The Up Here article ends with the statement that “today, over one third of Greenland’s Polar Inuit are direct descendents of those bold migrants from Baffin Island”.



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It strikes me that their dogs must have done the same thing (integrated), or maybe it was like they were meeting long lost cousins for the first time. There is no genetic distinction between Canadian and Greenland Eskimo Dogs and I do believe that in fact genetic testing (or is it DNA testing?) that confirms this statement has been undertaken but I cannot make this statement with total certainty at this time, perhaps there are some readers that could confirm this fact.



Some people will comment that Eskimo Dogs bred in one area do not look exactly like those bred in another locale and so they are not the same animal. It is a fact that when dogs are raised in a particular locale, in conditions that are unique to that region and with little or no introduction of “outside” bloodlines, and with different nutrition and with the particular breeding preferences of the owner/breeder, the dogs begin to emphasize traits that reflect these variables. My own Eskimo Dogs, which I first received from the Arctic in 1983 but with virtually all subsequent litters being born and raised in British Columbia do not have the thick coats that their Arctic-bred-and-raised cousins have. So while my dogs may not look exactly like those from Igloolik, they are still one and the same dog. Similarly, I personally love the fact that Eskimo Dogs come in all colours and I keep all dogs that I breed, consequently I have all sorts of different colours in my kennel. However I know of another breeder that prefers grey animals, further he prefers to run big males in his team. It is not surprising therefore that over time his whole kennel has taken on a noticeable grey colour with a preponderance of large (grey) males.



This Qitdlarssuaq history suggests that both the Canadian Kennel Club and the International Canine Federation should re-examine their policies which have arbitrarily dictated that those dogs bred in Canada are separate and distinct from other Eskimo Dogs, particularly those bred in Greenland. And as long as I am writing about confusing things, the Canadian Kennel Club might also want to make a clear decision about the actual name of this breed. In her book The Canadian Inuit Dog: Canada’s Heritage, author Genevieve Montcombroux states “although the Canadian Kennel Club still registers this breed under the name ‘Eskimo’, this book will consistently refer to it as the Canadian Inuit dog (except when quoting from historical works), since the Inuit people themselves object to the term Eskimo. The name Inuit was officially adopted at the Inuit Circumpolar Conference of 1977”. Since the publication of this book, while still officially the Canadian Eskimo Dog, the breed is often referred to as the Canadian Inuit Dog.



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This discussion has presented suggestions for several other blog posts. In the future I may want to write about the history of the Canadian Eskimo Dog Research Foundation in more detail, and maybe about the process involved in obtaining CKC registration for those Foundation dogs that came to be known as Canadian Eskimo Dogs as well as for other dogs that were not part of the Foundation’s breeding program. But let me close on this note.



I have imagined that I was a great Inuit hunter travelling across the barren Arctic with the most incredible team of working Eskimo Dogs that has ever existed. These animals were strong like bulls, tireless, ravenous, loyal, faithful and intelligent. With this team I could cover great distances and everyone marvelled at their performance and their appearance. In my imagining, I know that I am a very lucky person! Then I ask the question of myself, would these dogs be better working animals if someone working for the Canadian Kennel Club in Toronto signed a piece of paper (after I sent them some money), stating that my dogs were purebred and “registered”? Would my dogs care if they knew that they were purebred and registered? Would anyone know if they were purebred and registered?



After thinking about this for some time, I stopped registering my dogs, (although I keep good breeding records and I think that I know that they are purebred animals). This breed is not unlike a 5 gallon pail of fresh cow’s milk…..the cream rises to the top. It is the dogs themselves that determine which animal will pass on its traits, based on its ability to excel and survive. If I was a great Inuit hunter, I could not survive unless my dogs were the best and I would ensure that this was the case, without asking the CKC to sign a paper indicating that my dogs were purebred and registered. This has been the reality over thousands of years.

Addendum:
Thank you to Sue Hamilton, Editor-In-Chief of  The Fan Hitch, the Journal of Inuit Sled Dog International.  Sue steered me to an article written by Dr. Hanne Friis Andersen D.V.M. and published in the Vol. 7 No. 4 (September 2005) issue of The Fan Hitch.  This article is really a brief summary of her 2005 Master's Thesis and it does confirm my understanding that those dogs in Greenland and the Canadian Inuit Dogs are essentially one and the same.  To quote from  Dr. Andersen's article  "...for my research, four different dog populations were blood sampled. Three populations in Greenland: Ilulissat (the Disko Bay area on the west coast), Thule District in the north and East Greenland. These three populations were compared with genetic distances between the populations. It turned out that the largest genetic distance found was between Ilulissat and the East Coast and the smallest distance was between Thule and the East Coast. The Greenlandic populations were then compared with the fourth population I sampled: the Canadian Inuit Dog. The distance between Thule dogs and the Canadian dogs was smaller than distances between dogs within Greenland. Hence, the genetic variation within Greenland is of the same size or larger than between dogs from Greenland and Canada. Based on my research there is no reason to think of the breeds as separated. Rather, they are populations of the same dog breed".

Sue also suggested that Dr. Andersen's work essentially confirmed what Ken MacRury had stated in 1991 in his Master's Thesis entitled  The Inuit Dog:  Its Provenance, Environment and History.  I wish I had re-read this valuable docuement before writing my blog post.    On page 27 of this document, MacRury states...."Degerbol and Freuchen (1935) report that the Polar Inuit (Cape York Eskimos), prior to the introduction of dogs from Canada in 1864 by Qidlarssuaq (Wissink, 1987) and his group, had dogs that were, 'very small and not possessed of much stamina -- most probably these dogs had become degerate through long isolation...'  It would seem likely that these were Thule culture dogs living in an isolated area where food was scarce and where their size was a survival advantage.  The migration of 1864 not only brought larger dogs but also improved hunting technology by the reintroduction to the area of the bow and arrow, the kayak, and the fish spear which improved hunting success and thus secured the increased food supply needed to sustain the larger dog".

A big thank you to Sue for her valuable input.  My hope is that by blogging as well as  sharing reaction and  input from others, all of us who are interested in these topics will benefit and our understanding of sled dog history will grow accordingly.