Living with Polar Bears
Fred Bruemmer
Writer / Photographer / Arctic Journeyer
Following is the complete transcript of an interview conducted by Leeann Myers (PBI Advisory Council) with Fred Bruemmer, on July 2, 2005. Bruemmer spoke from his home in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
PBI: How did you end up in Canada?
Bruemmer: The usual after-war thing. I was born in Latvia but I’m Baltic German, which is a sort of sub-tribe. We spoke German at home and Latvian—both languages. We had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. Then came the Russian invasion, then we moved to Poland, then came the war. It was the usual refugee story. My brother went first to Canada. And I followed one year later. I’ve been here since 1950.
PBI: When was it that you got involved in going to the Arctic regions?
Bruemmer: A long time ago. A very long time ago. I started to go... really, first, to the sub-Arctic. Because I worked in a gold mine in Kirkland Lake, which is in northern Ontario. Any miner, what does he do during the holidays? He drinks beer or goes fishing. (laughs) Well, you do. I was sort of fascinated by further north. I used to go as far north as the train goes, which is just above north James Bay. And in those days, things were very simple. Indians came to the store, I would ask "Can I go with you hunting?" and they’d say, "Sure, come along. You pay for the gas for the motor" or something like that. And those were the kind of trips I made. That would be 1952 to 1953; that’s as far back as the first trips went. That was just... we’d be out four or five days, hunting ducks and geese and whatever. And we were camping in the forest. And I liked that. I found out that was something that I very much liked. And then after that I became a journalist and started with writing and photography.
PBI: You also traveled around with various Indian peoples...
Bruemmer: That was the first thing I did. I went back much later, high up in the Arctic, and stayed with Inuit for a while. And found out that their culture was on the verge of being absolutely changed. Now you’re going back to say, 1964. I was already freelancing then. We talked it over and I said that is something I’d like to do, photograph it and write about it while it still exists in its natural way.
PBI: What was causing changes to come?
Bruemmer: Because they were moving people off the land into towns and villages.
PBI: Against their will?
Bruemmer: Not really, but more a question of, they built the towns and the houses and people were urged to come into towns so their children would get an education. It wasn’t against their will; it was nothing forced. But at the same time, there’s something that’s very enticing in one way. What it did is change the culture totally. And I could see that. The people who had moved to towns just simply were different. They may have still hunted on weekends, but it was never the same again. They were never people who truly lived off the land. And at that time, I lived with people who could remember when they’d been discovered. Who had lived in the Arctic before white people. That’s how far back it goes. They could still remember the expeditions that discovered them. So I lived with these people for 30 years—I left every spring, in March, and came back in October.
PBI: Did they mind having a white man with them?
Bruemmer: They probably did. But I didn’t immediately stay six months at one time, but I would stay for 2 to 3 weeks here, 2 to 3 weeks there. It was only later that I started to stay a very long time, in very remote camps. I paid for my room and board, so to speak, which helped because in those days they made no money at all. They did a bit of trapping, maybe, but basically they lived off the land. They lived very much the way they had lived forever and ever. And now it’s over. It’s long over.
PBI: What did you find appealing about it personally?
Bruemmer: A tremendous freedom. And a very fascinating life. And also a feeling that it’s a very ancient culture, it’s totally different from ours; and it’s a hunting culture, extremely specialized. Survival in the Arctic at 40 to 50 [degrees] below [zero] takes great specialization and an enormous amount of knowledge. And they sort of became the masters of survival. And at the same time they ... remember, they knew of me after a time; I was the only white man who ever did that. So eventually they knew of me from one end of the Arctic to the other, because I lived all the way from Siberia to Greenland. So that was one of the major things—my first five or six or seven books are all about life in the Arctic and the vanishing way of life.
PBI: Back then were they wearing clothing made out of skins?
Bruemmer: Oh yes. It was all fur clothing. And so did I. You lived entirely, 100 percent, on meat—half of it eaten raw, half of it eaten cooked.
PBI: What kind of meat?
Writer / Photographer / Arctic Journeyer
Following is the complete transcript of an interview conducted by Leeann Myers (PBI Advisory Council) with Fred Bruemmer, on July 2, 2005. Bruemmer spoke from his home in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
PBI: How did you end up in Canada?
Bruemmer: The usual after-war thing. I was born in Latvia but I’m Baltic German, which is a sort of sub-tribe. We spoke German at home and Latvian—both languages. We had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. Then came the Russian invasion, then we moved to Poland, then came the war. It was the usual refugee story. My brother went first to Canada. And I followed one year later. I’ve been here since 1950.
PBI: When was it that you got involved in going to the Arctic regions?
Bruemmer: A long time ago. A very long time ago. I started to go... really, first, to the sub-Arctic. Because I worked in a gold mine in Kirkland Lake, which is in northern Ontario. Any miner, what does he do during the holidays? He drinks beer or goes fishing. (laughs) Well, you do. I was sort of fascinated by further north. I used to go as far north as the train goes, which is just above north James Bay. And in those days, things were very simple. Indians came to the store, I would ask "Can I go with you hunting?" and they’d say, "Sure, come along. You pay for the gas for the motor" or something like that. And those were the kind of trips I made. That would be 1952 to 1953; that’s as far back as the first trips went. That was just... we’d be out four or five days, hunting ducks and geese and whatever. And we were camping in the forest. And I liked that. I found out that was something that I very much liked. And then after that I became a journalist and started with writing and photography.
PBI: You also traveled around with various Indian peoples...
Bruemmer: That was the first thing I did. I went back much later, high up in the Arctic, and stayed with Inuit for a while. And found out that their culture was on the verge of being absolutely changed. Now you’re going back to say, 1964. I was already freelancing then. We talked it over and I said that is something I’d like to do, photograph it and write about it while it still exists in its natural way.
PBI: What was causing changes to come?
Bruemmer: Because they were moving people off the land into towns and villages.
PBI: Against their will?
Bruemmer: Not really, but more a question of, they built the towns and the houses and people were urged to come into towns so their children would get an education. It wasn’t against their will; it was nothing forced. But at the same time, there’s something that’s very enticing in one way. What it did is change the culture totally. And I could see that. The people who had moved to towns just simply were different. They may have still hunted on weekends, but it was never the same again. They were never people who truly lived off the land. And at that time, I lived with people who could remember when they’d been discovered. Who had lived in the Arctic before white people. That’s how far back it goes. They could still remember the expeditions that discovered them. So I lived with these people for 30 years—I left every spring, in March, and came back in October.
PBI: Did they mind having a white man with them?
Bruemmer: They probably did. But I didn’t immediately stay six months at one time, but I would stay for 2 to 3 weeks here, 2 to 3 weeks there. It was only later that I started to stay a very long time, in very remote camps. I paid for my room and board, so to speak, which helped because in those days they made no money at all. They did a bit of trapping, maybe, but basically they lived off the land. They lived very much the way they had lived forever and ever. And now it’s over. It’s long over.
PBI: What did you find appealing about it personally?
Bruemmer: A tremendous freedom. And a very fascinating life. And also a feeling that it’s a very ancient culture, it’s totally different from ours; and it’s a hunting culture, extremely specialized. Survival in the Arctic at 40 to 50 [degrees] below [zero] takes great specialization and an enormous amount of knowledge. And they sort of became the masters of survival. And at the same time they ... remember, they knew of me after a time; I was the only white man who ever did that. So eventually they knew of me from one end of the Arctic to the other, because I lived all the way from Siberia to Greenland. So that was one of the major things—my first five or six or seven books are all about life in the Arctic and the vanishing way of life.
PBI: Back then were they wearing clothing made out of skins?
Bruemmer: Oh yes. It was all fur clothing. And so did I. You lived entirely, 100 percent, on meat—half of it eaten raw, half of it eaten cooked.
PBI: What kind of meat?