The Canadian Rangers operate in Canada’s remote and isolated regions.
In April 2010, Eye on the Arctic producer Levon Sevunts traveled to the northernmost part of Canada to do a story about the Canadian Rangers, a volunteer militia force that patrols Canada’s Arctic.
A Ranger and a Canadian flags fly on Inuit sleds loaded for an Arctic sovereignty patrol in the vicinity of the Canadian Forces Station Alert. Photo by Levon Sevunts.
An Inuit Ranger shows how to slant the walls of the igloo and how to fit the snow blocks together using nothing more than a snow machete or a long kitchen knife. Photo by Levon Sevunts.
Born and raised in Armenia, Levon started his journalistic career in 1990, covering wars and civil strife in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In 1992, after the government in Armenia shut down the TV program he was working for, Levon immigrated to Canada. He learned English and eventually went back to journalism, working first in print and then in broadcasting. Levon’s journalistic assignments have taken him from the High Arctic to Sahara and the killing fields of Darfur, from the streets of Montreal to the snow-capped mountaintops of Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. He says, “But best of all, I’ve been privileged to tell the stories of hundreds of people who’ve generously opened up their homes, refugee tents and their hearts to me.”