Life behind the lens has offered Ryan Bray a world of opportunity. But on the Jasperite's recent trip through Canada's high Arctic, it was the moments without a camera that he cherished the most—the time spent watching a pack of Arctic wolves bathing in the sun or paddling a kayak through ice floes in the moonlight.
Bray's journey, which lasted nearly two months and had him travel 20,000 kms, was in support of the final installment in the documentary series Into the Arctic.
Canadian landscape painter Cory Trepanier launched the multi-year project in 2006 with the intention of documenting his journey as he created 75 original oil paintings from remote corners of Canada's north and visited all seven national parks in Canada's Arctic.
For his third and final film in the trilogy, Trepanier asked Bray to accompany him as the film's cinematographer.
“That was a random phone call I wasn't expecting,” said Bray with a laugh, reliving the phone call that would result in a summer spent traversing Canada's north.
Bray's day job is working as Jasper National Park's digital media specialist, shooting promotional photos and videos of the park. Trepanier found out about Bray through a mutual friend and colleague who had filmed his last expedition.
“So Cory went and researched me and saw some of my work and in that initial call he actually offered me the job.
“Basically it was a two-hour phone call where he explained this grand adventure to places I'd never heard of, never seen on a map and had no idea existed. It was super exciting. I was basically on the phone trying to catch up to what he was saying, and didn't for a second comprehend the vastness of the expedition he was putting together.”
Bray said it wasn't until he had actually touched down in each of the Arctic communities, national parks and historic sites that he had any semblance of an idea what was going on.
“I really didn't comprehend it until I was actually there.”
Although Bray's first flight was to Yellowknife, his adventure didn't truly begin until he and Trepanier were 1,255 kms above the Northwest Territories' capital city, touching down in Aulavik National Park, a seldom visited Canadian park located on Banks Island.
In 2015, Bray was one of only four visitors to the park—with the other three being a part of his group.
“It's very different from Jasper where you can just rock up and just enjoy the park,” explained Bray, who has been living in the Canadian Rockies for the last decade.
“To get onto Banks Island and into Aulavik, you fly from Inuvik and you stop in a little town called Sachs Harbour and then you refuel and you keep flying; it's a three-hour flight in a Twin Otter.
"You can probably fit six to eight people in it, but it costs $20,000 to get in and $20,000 to get out, just for the plane; forget the cost of your gear, forget your food, forget anything else.”
The reason people pay the big bucks to visit Aulavik is to paddle the Thomsen River, which runs through the park, flowing north above 72 degrees of latitude, making it the most northern navigable river in the world.
Bray spent 14 days paddling the river and filming, as Trepanier set up his easel and captured the beauty of Aulavik's river valleys, rugged badlands and dramatic coastlines.
It was on that trip that he saw muskoxen—of which there are 70,000 on the island—as well as Arctic fox, gyrfalcons, peregrine falcons and Arctic wolves.
When he recalled his experience with the wolves, Bray's voice lowered and his speech slowed.
“It was probably about day seven or eight into the trip,” he recalled, “and we had just set up camp and it was kind of rainy and we were cooking, and then somebody spots out of the corner of their eye these two little white dots up on the hill—these two Arctic wolves popped over and were checking us out. They were looking right at us.”
The following day, the group found their tracks, as Trepanier painted a scene with muskoxen in the distance, and they thought that was as close as they would ever come to the majestic creatures.
But, that wasn't the case.
A few days later, when they arrived at their pick-up point, where the Twin Otter would retrieve them in a couple of days, the group saw a pack of wolves across the river.
“There was this one wolf actually checking us out from the other side and then he swam across and was circling us and came within 15 feet, super close to us.
“It was definitely a young Arctic wolf and he was super curious and smelling us and looking at us. It was really cool because he wanted to check out what we were, because he had never seen humans before.
“Then eventually he went to the other side and a bunch more of the pack showed up and it got sunny out and they all laid out and spent the whole day lying on the beach. It was a really cool scene.
There was about six or seven of them and then in the far distance you could see a herd of 20 muskoxen.
“That was actually one of the coolest moments. I just sat on the riverbank and had a little bit of time to myself, and just watched the wolves and the muskoxen and the birds flying by, with the sun coming out.”
From Aulavik, the trip took Bray to Norman Wells, then Iqaluit—the capital city of Canada's eastern territory of Nunavut—and from Iqaluit to Frobisher Bay, a large inlet of the Labrador Sea, named for the English navigator Sir Martin Frobisher, who, during his search for the Northwest Passage in 1576, became the first European to visit it.
Bray and Trepanier kayaked through the bay, from Iqaluit, amongst massive pieces of ice, until they found an island where Trepanier spent the afternoon painting.
That evening, as the sun set—something the men hadn't experience while in Aulavik, where there was 24 hours of daylight—they packed up and paddled back to the city.
“We had to go the long way around because the tide was so low,” recalled Bray. “It was really cool because it was dark and the previous two and a half, three weeks I hadn't seen darkness.
“We were in the kayaks and I just remember paddling and looking off and there were all these mini icebergs of winter ice floating around, and the rocky shore and this moon glistening there and just pouring down and just the silence around us, it was just so cool—I don't even know how to explain it,” he said, trailing off.
For Bray, that was another moment where he left his camera tucked away and he just enjoyed the view, capturing it only in his mind.
“It was one of those moments where you're just like ... wow,” he said. “It was a highlight of the trip.”
Bray admitted he doesn't have too many of those highlights, having spent nearly all of his time capturing footage of the journey, filming Trepanier nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week as he painted and explored new landscapes.
“Everyone since I've been back from the trip has said, you must have had some amazing experiences and saw so many things, and I did, I really did, but at the same time because of the nature of the film and what we were trying to capture, it was a whole journey we were trying to capture, so because of that I lived behind the lens.
“The only times I had real experiences was in moments like [in the kayak] and that's why they were so important to me.”
As a professional photographer and videographer, Bray said the advice he often gives to visitors to Jasper is to remember to experience the moment; life doesn't have to be all about capturing the perfect photo.
“What about living that moment? That is something that is so, so important to me. I try to capture moments constantly to share with people, but the best thing you can do to capture that moment is to actually put the camera down and just take it in and just look with your own eyes.
“This trip for me, when I look back at it, I remember a pixelated screen a lot. That was my experience, but there are also those few moments I'll never forget.”
Bray will be presenting a slideshow about his trip, showing photos and sharing stories, at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. Everyone is welcome.
Nicole Veerman
[email protected]
