'EVERYONE THOUGHT WE WERE STUPID'

JOHN STACKHOUSE

Butting out his Export A, the young man looks for his coat and prepares to head into the frigid northern night. Since the sun went down at 3 in the afternoon, an Arctic storm has slammed down on the plateau where his people have hunted for millennia. Visibility is down to a few metres and the temperature is on its way below minus 20. Markusie Papigatuk has been taught how to cope with such conditions -- conserve energy; if necessary, lie still in an igloo for days at a time. But tonight he isn't too worried about survival as, braving the storm, he sets out to cross his ancestral hunting lands . . . all of 100 metres to luxury accommodations managed by a recruit from Club Med.