Cawker & Young Outfitting is a small private company that was established in 2000. With the help from the Nunaunt government and the community of Arviat the proposal of building a world-class fly-in tourism lodge on Ennadai Lake was accepted. No roads, no railways, no airstrips, no infrastructure of any kind existed where Cawker & Young had decided to establish their lodge.

The closest road is 200 miles away, and the only way to get hundreds of thousands of pounds of building materials and heavy equipment to construct a gravel airstrip to Ennadai Lake, was to fly it in.

In February of 2000, with temperatures averaging between -25 C to -50 C an ice strip was constructed on Ennadai Lake using a bombardier track machine which was flown in on a DC3 with skis. Once the ice strip was constructed to particular aircraft specifications loads of building material arrived using a variety of aircraft, from DC3's, Dehaviland Otters and Beavers, Hawkers, Skyvans, and finally to the largest of them the C-130 Hercules.

By the end of April, all of what was needed to construct the lodge and the gravel air strip was at Ennadai Lake, and the non-stop construction of Ennadai Lake Lodge began. With almost 24 hours of daylight by the beginning of June construction went quickly. By the end of August of 2000 Ennadai Lake Lodge was complete, along with a private gravel airstrip and the rest as they say is history.

With great physical and financial risk Cawker & Young have created a truly world-class lodge in the middle of nowhere . . . a true "Oasis in the Arctic".