The shaggy musk ox recently came close to sharing the fate of its prehistoric contemporaries the sabre-toothed tiger and the mammoth. It had been hunted ruthlessly and with no thought for tomorrow by the Eskimo and others struggling to survive on the bleak and barren Arctic tundra.
Just in time, a spectacular operation using icebreakers and helicopters was mounted to catch some of the musk oxen and take them to a place of safety.

In the midst of a vast snowfield, the dark speck of a man, squat, fur-muffled, motionless. Lilliaxi, the Eskimo hunter, crouches beside a seal's breathing-hole. Around him lies an endless empty land, harsh but beautiful. This is the old picture of the Canadian North. But now ice-breaker and oil rig, prospector and aeroplane have shattered the old, cold dream, and igloos are things of the past.