Passage to Sackville.: inukshuk

A few weeks back while driving up the Bedford Highway I noticed something odd out on a piece of re-claimed land in the harbour. Actually it wasn't ONE "something odd"; it was a whole lot of "something odds".

Saturday I set out to find out what the odd things were; and I wasn't disappointed.

They're inukshuks. NO. Wait. Ms. Wiki says that one of them is an inukshuk but many of them are "inuksuit". There's your new factoid for the day. Inuksuit. You're welcome.

Perhaps if you're not Canadian you're not acquainted with the term "inukshuk" (ĭ-no͝ok′sho͝ok). Inuksuit are monuments made of natural stones that are used by the Inuit for communication and survival. The traditional meaning of the inukshuk is "Someone was here" or "You are on the right path.

However folk all over the World seem to make them and they pop up in some pretty unexpected places.

In 2012 when my brother Darrell and I travelled to the remote island of Delos, in Greece, and climbed a big ruin-strewn hill to cast some of my parents ashes to the wind, we were met by a circle of inuksuit.

Chances are you've encountered them in your travels too.

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And here I was in on a rocky piece of infill on the Bedford Basin marvelling at the biggest collection of inuksuit ... oh gosh ... I can't get used to saying the RIGHT word. I WANT to say "the biggest collection of frikkin' inukshuks" I'd ever seen in my life.

The MacKay Bridge in the distance.

I wandered around checking them out.

Of course the dogs were with me.

See the Timmies cup ?

In the distance I noticed a gentleman picking up rocks and apparently fixing up one of the inukshuks.

I hustled over and quickly learned that he had created them; all of them.

Let's call him NLM. NLM told me that he had been creating these pieces for 5 years and in fact his first creation wasn't of stone but was a Christmas Tree decorated with Tim Hortons cups.