FYI the northern communities use either ice roads, trains, or planes to travel long distances

Ice roads require ice, which forms later and melts earlier in the places where the rivers still freeze properly. Trains don't get half way to the top of Canada but even so they - and a lot of the air strips further north - rely on permafrost, which is disappearing, for stability.

You may not be far enough north: not many canoes where the summer sea-ice lives.