Watching an exceptional documentary on The Hudson’s Bay Boys [BBC iPlayer] about the last generation of Scots who went out to work for the Hudson Bay Company in Arctic Canada in the 1960s - 1980s.

As 20-year-olds they moved half way round the world to work in the trading posts and general stores, appraising seal-skins and selling flour, sugar, (cigarettes, alcohol) - but more than that, being the sole coordinator of food supplies and medical care for these very remote communities. Some huge stresses that are only just alluded to, but what you hear from them is mostly just an overwhelming love for the communities who welcomed them and, in turn, they married into and became a part of.

If nothing else, do watch this excerpt on how the 1980s campaign against seal-fur destroyed the economy across the Arctic north.

“They stayed here in towns all the time. Had a lot of impact on families, suicide went up, skyrocketed. Lot of kids were, young people, killing themselves. A lot, I mean a lot. And that, people, Greenpeace didn’t do nothing, nothing. They wanted to save seals, that’s it.

Beats Frozen Planet’s “people of the Arctic” episode into a cocked hat for (a) showing real everyday Inuit life, not sanitised ‘tradition’, and (b) pace Spivak, letting the native speak.

I was quite shocked and very disappointed by how Frozen Planet dismissed indigenous experiences and presented them as exotica, as picturesque landscape to be shot in high-def slow-mo. Going into great depth about the cameramen’s fears of shooting half-way down a 100m cliff, but not a word from the Yupik man climbing it to get food for his family. Just lovely aestheticised shots of seal-cubs.

The Hudson’s Bay Boys shows (briefly) what films like that can do to Arctic ways of life.