Melting into the wilderness

A LEGACY is something every explorer hopes to leave behind. But the most memorable traces of James Clark Ross' presence at Port Leopold, on Somerset Island, are two initials and a year, 1849, carved into a rock on a bleak Arctic beach.

The letters, E and I, stand for Enterprise and Investigator, two of many ships employed in hopeless attempts to solve the mystery of missing Royal Navy officer Sir John Franklin, who'd set out four years earlier to claim the fabled Northwest Passage trade route for Britain.

It took decades to find Franklin's ill-fated vessels: Erebus in 2014 and, more recently, Terror, this past September.

With only weeks of open water each year, the search posed an enormous challenge to Parks Canada.

Ice was once the biggest obstacle for explorers in the Canadian High Arctic - but it's now melting at a rate too close for comfort and opening up the area to cruise ships.

I joined a voyage on the 96-passenger Ioffe, a Russian research vessel whose sister ship, the Vavilov, was involved in the mission to find Erebus.

Completing the Northwest Passage, a shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is a tightly scheduled multi-week journey, but I've opted for a snapshot of the cruise.

Starting in Resolute, I spend seven days sailing through historic straits and barren islands where sheer cliffs and glaciers conceal abundant but shy wildlife.

The largest seabird colony in the Canadian Arctic resides on Prince Leopold Island, yet a few nautical miles away the skies are silent.

On first impression, the Arctic appears overwhelmingly empty. Even the region's apex predator is dwarfed by its surroundings.

"Bears of a monstrous bigness," recorded by John Davis in the late 16th century, were initially mistaken by the British explorer for sheep.

When we enter Coningham Bay, buttercream dots in the distance arguably resemble balls of wool but in reality, there's nothing cuddly about polar bears.

Cruising in dinghies we approach downwind. Beluga whale carcasses scatter the shoreline; trapped in tides, they're hunted by both bears and Inuit indigenous people of northern Canada.

A large male pulls at blubbery flesh. As the wind changes, we creep within 200 metres of a mother and her cub as they lovingly nuzzle.

In total, we see 41 bears in just three hours in this polar desert.

On Devon Island, a herd of musk ox disappear as soon as we land. A solitary male lags behind, nursing a bleeding harpoon wound.

Inuit guide Ted conducts our stealth advance in a manner only a seasoned hunter could execute. In his pocket is a knife made from polar bear bone which took two years to craft and dry.

"Promise me you'll use this," his grandfather instructed as he handed the heirloom down.

For Inuit communities unable to afford expensive imports, controlled hunting is a sustainable means of survival. It's also their connection to their cultural heritage.

When John Rae came searching for Franklin in 1854, the Inuit were his most valuable source of information.

They spoke of white men on King William Island, and one even wore the gold braid from a naval uniform as a headband.

Startling reports of cannibalism, though, were not well received in Victorian England; Lady Franklin even tried to discredit Rae by asking Charles Dickens to pen damning pamphlets.

Although the final chapter of Franklin's life remains inconclusive, three of his men - possibly the last survivors - were eventually found six feet under at Beechey Island.

On the day we visit, raging winds make it incredible to imagine it as a place of shelter when the sailors overwintered in 1845.

We toast their simple graves with a shot of whisky beneath marauding grey clouds.

A kayak trip along the island's rising coastline reveals weaving kittiwakes and I'm struck by how lively the Canadian Arctic can be.

"Pay attention to details and there's so much to discover," says assistant expedition leader Eva, who's navigated the Poles for more than two decades. "So much is still unknown."

In a few years, that will change. This summer, the 1,070-person Crystal Serenity sailed through the Northwest Passage, signifying the imminent arrival of mass tourism.

Whether or not this fragile environment can support it is questionable.

Equally controversial is the darker reality of increased access; the destruction threatened by climate change - as methane frozen in Arctic sea ice could double the amount of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere overnight. A thought more chilling than the biting polar air.