Playing the world’s northernmost golf course is unlike anything I’ve done before | Canada Voices

The first thing you notice in Ulukhaktok, NWT, is that everyone waves.

Everyone.

From passing ATVs. From trucks. From fishing boats and front yards. People wave at you and smile. They ask your name, then remember it for the rest of your trip. They wave because you’re in their community and people here have helped each other for thousands of winters.

I’m waving as well right now, but to a raven, and for separate reasons. I’m on the ninth hole of Ulukhaktok Golf Course competing in the 40th Billy Joss Open and this raven has just stolen my ball.

I normally wouldn’t mind (it’s a free drop for raven theft), but the same bird just stole my previous ball, too. Someone recently found a raven nest sporting 200 golf balls.

I drop another red Callaway to the ground. Around me, the tundra is green and yellow and dotted with hundreds of purple flowers called saxifrage that the community turns into jams and teas. The afternoon light is a muted lavender and it’s so quiet you only hear golf shots.

I try a low runner from 40 yards to the astroturf green, finishing just short. Dale Nigiyok, my playing partner, pitches to six feet, perfectly judging the mixed-surface run-up as everyone here seems to do. As Dale waves to a friend, I look out over the land.

This is the world’s most northern golf course. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

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Ulukhaktok (pronounced ooh-lock-hack-tock) is an Inuvialuit community of 450 people in the High Arctic of the Northwest Territories.

It is 2,100 kilometres north of Calgary. So far north that in summer, it is light out for 24 hours a day. In winter, there is 24-hour darkness, with -40 C temperatures.

ATVs and snowmobiles sit outside houses raised on wooden blocks above the permafrost. Fishing boats fill the pebbled beach. The roads are gravel and the language is English and Inuinnaqtun. Although there are two grocery stores – the Northern and the Co-op – community members hunt and fish for extra food, as they’ve done for thousands of years.

And there is golf.

For a game born in St. Andrews, Scotland, it’s fitting that golf came to Ulukhaktok via a Scot. Billy Joss, a Hudson’s Bay Company manager from Aberdeen, was transferred to Ulukhaktok from Read Island in 1962, to manage the HBC store that later became the Northern. He brought his golf clubs. The community noticed.

“My first memory of golf is being six or seven years old and watching Billy hitting balls out on frozen Kings Bay,” says Eddie Okheena, now 68, a repeat winner of the Billy Joss Open and one of 11 extended family members who golf. “Billy painted his balls red with nail polish so he could see them on the ice.”

Joss taught others in the community to play. In 1982, two years after his death, the Ulukhaktok Golf Course was built on the tundra. Three holes with sand greens, 10 minutes from town. The northernmost course in the world. The track was expanded to nine holes in 1988 by then-recreation director Tony Kulbisky and an existing tournament was renamed the Billy Joss Open.

After the course expanded, the game took off.

“Everyone played, probably a third of the community,” says Gary Okheena, Eddie’s nephew. “All my friends played.” To this day, golfers start their seasons early. “In the spring, while we’re hunting eider ducks on the ice, we take a five-iron and hit shotgun shells to pass the time,” Gary explains. Adds Vincent Alonak, “We take an eight-iron to our caribou hunting camp, too, and make a four-hole course for a couple weeks.”

As golf grew in Ulukhaktok, so did the tournament. Celebrities accepted invites to come play. NHL players. Olympians. This year, 25 players – mostly locals – are competing in the 40th Billy Joss Open. They arrive on ATVs, golf clubs bungee-strapped to front panels. Everyone plays in jeans and hoodies, their swings carved from hours of watching Golf Channel and YouTube and hitting used shotgun shells on ice.

The tournament is 27 holes, held over three days in July – the same weekend as the Open Championship at England’s Royal Birkdale. It’s why I’ve flown from New York to Toronto and grabbed a five-hour Air North flight to Yellowknife, then a two-hour propeller plane ride up to Ulukhaktok.

“Everybody’s so friendly here,” says Curtis Banksland, Ulukhaktok’s best golfer, before teeing off on the first hole. “Everyone encourages one another to do well. It just feels like a big family tournament.”

On summer nights, the community hums.

At 11 p.m. after the first round, I stroll beside Queens Bay in broad daylight. ATVs buzz by. Families wave as they pull in on fishing boats. Teenagers play basketball. A five-year-old rides her bike.

Another endless summer night, with no bedtime in sight. It’s also the height of the Arctic char run, with lots to be done. Half of today’s golfers are out fishing.

I greet a father and son cutting arctic char on school desks in their front yard.

“We caught 33 char today,” the son says, smiling. He speaks slowly and gently. “What brings you to Ulukhaktok?” the father asks.

“I’m playing in the BJO,” I reply, which draws happy nods. “So is my brother, David,” the father says.

What a way to meet a community.

Mary Kudlak is frying bannock.

The 83-year-old elder, wearing red fur boots and a purple knit hat, traditional tattoos on her face, hunches over her fire near the fifth green.

She drove her ATV three hours to get here, then promptly began frying arctic char and bannock like a triathlete moving from swim to bike segments.

“Braydan, there’s bannock,” Mary calls to the tournament’s youngest player, and the 14-year-old runs over for breakfast. This is the best snack bar in golf.

Mary now fries arctic char, boils strong coffee and cooks caribou stew with carrots and onions, plus bannock sizzled to a delicious golden brown.

Another elder, Rose Nigiyok, chops celery and potatoes with an ulu, a traditional curved knife for which Ulukhaktok is named (in Inuinnaqtun, Ulukhaktok means “the place where ulu parts are found”).

This feast happens each tournament day, run by elders and volunteers. A crowd of 20 gathers around pots and picnic benches eating. Kids. Parents. Even Ulukhaktok’s two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers, one of whom, Sam, is playing in the tournament and beating me by one shot.

As Mary cooks, she doles out knowledge of the land and explains how food is shared in the community. “It’s how our people have survived for so long,” she says.

Mary and Rose and the other elders are revered in Ulukhaktok. They are the knowledge-holders of the community. On my last day in town, Mary will drive her ATV to our cabin to give my photographer and me pebbles as goodbye presents. Rose will tell us, “I love you both.”

New golfers coming off the fifth and ninth greens now stop for refreshments. Everyone hugs. This is life here. This is community. This is Mary’s kitchen, and we’re just living in it.

Ulukhaktok Golf Course is short (a par-33 of 1,992 yards) but deceptively tricky. The greens are tiny and the rocks send balls in all directions.

“It’s a game of luck on this tundra,” Brendan Kanayok tells me.

On the seventh hole, Tony Kulbisky, who had four balls stolen by ravens yesterday, hits a shot to two feet. “Is this a gimme?” he asks, then laughs. “On this course, nothing’s a gimme.”

In my first two rounds, despite being a former 1.8-handicap, I shoot 47 and 48. Ulukhaktok’s golfers are lapping me. Curtis Banksland opens with 35 and 38. Gary Okheena shoots a 1-under 32 in the second round, tying the course record, including a hole-out on the sixth from 100 yards.

These are the golfing powerhouses of Ulukhaktok: Curtis, Gary and Brendan. Dale Nigiyok and Vincent Alonak. Nathan Okheena.

On any other course, they’d be scratch golfers, but they know these holes like their elders know the land, having fizzed five-irons through the summer nights of their youth.

Curtis Banksland, 36, wins the 2026 Billy Joss Open.

Seventy people pack the Community Hall for the award ceremony – a sea of hoodies, Titleist caps and smiles. Recreation director Gayle Elias announces the prizes (the top prize is $600, plus a trophy). Marge Akoaksion wins the women’s division, Colin Okheena beats his brother Eddie for the Masters division, Corbin Alonak wins the juniors.

I realize I know almost everyone here.

As the ceremony ends and we file from the hall, Mary walks up to me.

“Our family is down at Kings Bay,” she says. “You should come.”

You don’t say no to Mary.

I head to the beach in the silver daylight. It’s nine o’clock at night, but 20 family members are working on the shore. Fishing. Preparing food. Eating candied char with syrup. Elders and toddlers and everyone between.

I watch, deeply moved by what I’ve experienced in this community. Mary’s niece sees me, perhaps sensing what I feel. “You know, my dad had a saying,” she says. “There are no strangers, only friends you haven’t yet met.”

She turns to a passing boat, with golfer Eddie Okheena heading out to fish.

And she waves.

If you go

The next Billy Joss Open runs July 16-18, 2027, in Ulukhaktok, NWT. E-mail [email protected] for more information. The tournament entry fee is $120.

Air North flies from multiple cities in Canada to Yellowknife. Once in Yellowknife, plan on staying a few days to catch your breath and play a warm-up round at Yellowknife Golf Club (with sand fairways and astroturf greens). From Yellowknife, Canadian North flies direct to Ulukhaktok three times a week.

The writer was a guest of Tourism Northwest Territories and Air North, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.