For four centuries, sailors sought this route at the cost of their lives; today, a few expedition ships make the crossing each summer. The Northwest Passage is not a port of call: it is a voyage of about 1,500 kilometres through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, between Baffin Bay and the Beaufort Sea, where each day depends on the ice, the wind and the captain's decisions. Under a sun that does not set in midsummer, here is what passengers on this exceptional voyage really experience.

In the footsteps of Franklin and Amundsen

History accompanies every nautical mile. On wind-swept Beechey Island, three headboards mark the graves of sailors from the Franklin expedition, lost with its 129 men after 1845; you land by Zodiac, in a silence no one thinks of breaking. Farther west, the Inuit hamlet of Gjoa Haven bears the name of Roald Amundsen's sailing ship, which wintered there for two years alongside the Netsilik — learning polar survival from them — before achieving, in 1906, the first complete transit. Dundas Harbour, an abandoned government post with sagging buildings, adds its own chapter of solitude, as does the wreck of the Maud, Amundsen's other ship, visible in the shallow waters of Cambridge Bay.

The communities of the Far North

Itineraries stop in a few Inuit communities — Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, facing the glaciers and bird cliffs of Bylot Island, Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and sometimes Ulukhaktok, renowned for its prints. Everywhere, the welcome follows the rhythm of the place, between the co-op store, the school and the beach where boats are drying. The visits, prepared with the communities, combine throat singing, traditional games of strength and agility, craft workshops and simple conversations in an arena or a co-op. These encounters, where Elders talk about life on the land before and after settlement, are often among the most memorable moments of the voyage.

The wildlife of the straits

Lancaster Sound, at the eastern entrance of the route, ranks among the richest waters in the Arctic. From the bridge or the Zodiacs, you watch for polar bears on ice floes, walruses hauled out on the shallows, migrating belugas and narwhals, and sometimes a bowhead whale, the elder of the cold seas. At Prince Leopold Island, 300-metre cliffs shelter one of the largest seabird colonies in the Canadian North: murres, kittiwakes and fulmars by the hundreds of thousands. On the tundra, musk oxen in defensive formation and Arctic foxes complete the picture, under the watchful eye of the armed guides who accompany every walk.

Sailing dictated by the ice

No itinerary is guaranteed here, and that is its very nature. Charts are redrawn every day based on ice reports; a blocked strait is bypassed, an open bay becomes an impromptu landing site, a morning by Zodiac along an active glacier like the one in Croker Bay replaces a planned hike. Days alternate between sailing through cliff-lined channels, naturalists' lectures, observations from the bridge and landings on the tundra. You have to accept the unexpected: it is part of the deal, and it is what turns the cruise into a true expedition.

Crossing the line

One evening, somewhere between two straits, the expedition leader announces that the legendary part of the route has been completed. Passengers raise a glass where so many crews were shipwrecked, aware of the privilege of a crossing still reserved for a handful of ships each year. You do not come back from the Northwest Passage with mere photographs: you come back with a sense of the world's measure — its immensity, its fragility and the tenacity of the peoples who have lived there for millennia.