Nainette

In early October 2009, another wildlife artist and I completed a five-week wilderness canoe expedition across Nunavik and Labrador at the Inuit village of Nain on the Labrador Sea. Nainette was an abandoned runt in the village who, according to the fisherman we were staying with while waiting for the weekly freighter back south (a two-and-a-half-day voyage to Goose Bay), would be "raven-picked bones in a snowbank in a month." Three days later, she was the cutest stowaway aboard the MV Northern Ranger and beloved by the entire crew. For just over 16 years, Nainette lived with my wife Bonnie and me in Montreal and northern Vermont. A perfect hiking companion, she was a devoted and profoundly loved member of our family. We lost her to cancer this past October.