The New Northwest Passage – Cameron Dueck

Subtitled ‘A voyage to the front line of climate change’, The New Northwest Passage is Hong Kong-based Canadian Cameron Dueck’s account of sailing eastwards along and around North America’s northern most coast – the islands and inlets, straits and sounds of the fabled north west passage.

Alongside interesting detail on the preparation and maintenance of his yacht, the Silent Sound, and the history of the far north of Canada and Alaska, we get to follow Cameron and his team on their voyage – meeting the people and communities of the far north, and hearing more about their issues and concerns, not just about climate change but more often about the viability of a capitalist economy in such a remote region and its coexistence with an Inuit culture.

The book also left me wondering about the onboard relationships and their fate after landfall in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I also wonder why Anna doesn’t seem to appear on the Open Passage Expedition website (other than mentions in the blog), whilst Drew is billed as a team member.

On a pedantic note, I did get irritated by the sloppy proof reading with sentences splitting randomly into paragraphs and spacesbetweenwords getting lost.

I want to visit the Arctic even more now … Svalbard in the summer?

Publisher page: The New Northwest Passage – Cameron Dueck