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Suburban Graffiti

EESHR!

Dawn-Louise Mcleod
OP Columnist

Bored in suburbia? Well, hey dude, hacky sack and
devil sticks are passé—grab a few idle rocks and build
yourself an inukshuk!

An inukshuk—for the uninitiated, that’s pronounced
“ee-nuke-shuke” (rhymes with kook)—is one of those
topply cairn-like anthropomorphic figures anywhere
from five inches to twenty feet in height that is quick
becoming an icon of Canadian grooviness. And no
wonder—‘likeness of a person” is the rough translation
from Inuktitut, the Inuit language.

Inukshuks are rearrangements of the existing envi-
ronment, markers to guide sustenance-seeking trav-
ellers through an otherwise-featureless landscape.
Though usually made of nearby rock slabs, in a pinch
other materials can be substituted. Stuck in a Safeway
line-up, for example, | use National Enquirers and Oh

 

Henry bars to build them on the rubber conveyer belt.

The initial West Coast sighting of an inukshuk was
in 1987 at English Bay, where the Northwest Territories
had generously plunked the Expo 87 leftover. Judging
from its prominence on travel webpages, this particular
inukshuk is internationally famous. But for years my
family and | ignorantly called it an eeshk. And, | regret
to say, it was there my ex-husband and | first kissed.
Thanks to that memory, I’ve never really liked the
eeshk.

But lately I’ve been seeing its multitudinous off-
spring everywhere. My girls brought sticky versions
back from Brownie camp, tokens of the leaders’ hip
craftiness. | spotted a guy in downtown Vancouver
building inukshuks while passersby gave him money—
a new spin on squeegee kids. A few small inukshuks
have even appeared in the centre of my coveted swim-

ming hole, a nearby lake. And on a recent weekend
retreat at a friend’s oceanside villa near glamorous
Powell River, | noticed moss-covered stone figures fes-
tooning each curve and dip of the rock-slathered cliffs.

“They've been here ever since | was a kid,” said my
host. (That explained the moss.) | envisioned genera-
tions of children being restrained from knocking the
inukshuks over. “Young lady, you’re just a stone’s throw
away from being grounded,’ might have been the
parental rebuke.

My Google search yielded a few surprising
results. Microcell Communications Inc., kennel for
that yappy little Fido, has a subsidiary company
named Inukshuk. Inukshuk is a popular commercial
name. There is an Inukshuk kayak, Inukshuk consult-
ing firm, Inukshuk environmental planning firm, and
I’m sure it won’t be long before McDonald’s sells The
Big Inukshuk. An inukshuk game forms part of some
writer's online portfolio (but if the name of the game is
not lame, the game itself is). For those too spoiled to
build their own inukshuk, shop online at Inukshukman
for the perfect corporate brownnosing gift or little
chunk of Canada for rock-deprived tourists. With a
starting price point of $19.95 (plus shipping and
taxes), somebody’s making a killing by picking up
rocks and gluing them together—another fine exam-
ple of Canuck initiative.

One of my seven-year-olds explains the lure of
inukshuk building:

“You find all these big rocks, and when you put one
on top of another you have to make sure it stays there
or you’re going to have to find a different rock—maybe
even a different shaped one. The eeshk can get as big
as you want until the whole thing falls over and you
have to start again. Isn’t that fun, Mom?”

Rock on, Sysiphus. You know, he’s the guy the
gods doomed to futile and hopeless labour.

Ready to upshuk?
Send your comments to iconoclastcom @ yahoo.ca

 

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