My toughest trip

An RCMP officer recounts an Arctic patrol in which he escorts a young indigenous woman to her rightful husband, is stranded by a storm on an island, and finds the woman has died in childbirth. He improvises to keep the newborn alive—warming and feeding the infant with evaporated milk, sheltering it in a kayak, and paddling to the nearest camp—then returns the child to its family and later recovers the mother’s body. The account combines voyage detail with reflections on the harsh practicalities of northern travel, intergroup tensions over marriage, and the solitary duties of law enforcement in remote regions.