7:35 p.m. on April 2, 2009 (EDT)
Barb and I did a little hiking in a corner of ANWR when we went up to the Brooks Range, though I can't claim expertise and extensive experience. But the first reaction I have to your plan is - do you really realize how big Canada is? Do you really realize how far it is from Inuvik across Nunavat, the NWT, and Yukon to the Alaskan border? Canada is the second largest country in the world in land area. I would assume you plan to fly to Inuvik, do a few days backpacking, then fly to Fairbanks and either rent a car (there is a car rental agency next to the Fairbanks airport that rents cars modified for the drive up the Haul Road, aka the Dalton Highway) or take the bus up to ANWR. It is a really long drive (or bus ride) from Fairbanks, and a bit dangerous, due to all the really big multi-trailer trucks on the Haul Road. You really do not want to drive your own vehicle up the Haul Road, unless you are carrying at least two oversize heavy duty spare tires and lots of spare parts. The rental cars have beefed up, raised suspensions. You will have to have a CB radio (you transmit your location before virtually every turn to warn the trucks, who travel typically at 50-60 on the downhills, and keep in mind that the Haul Road is gravel, with deep mud stretches, and less than 10% paved after you get about 75 miles north of Fairbanks (Livengood - the gravel and mud are in the summer - it is ice and often not plowed fall through spring).
Standard, unmodified SUVs and pickups are not really up to the Haul Road, and that's a good road compared to what you might take as the most direct route across Canada (I would suggest swinging back south to Canada 1, the TransCanada Highway, as a better and faster route choice if you really want to drive that far, and do check the distances so you won't be too surprised - this is much farther than driving New York to Seattle). Most people take 4-5 days to drive up just the US Border to Fairbanks part of the AlCan (though I know a few who claim to have done it in a single 48 hour stretch by swapping drivers).
If you do have a breakdown on the Haul Road, be aware that there are only 3 or 4 places you can get repairs done between roughly 75 miles north of Fairbanks and the North Slope. Well, actually only at the Yukon River and Coldfoot, if it's anything more than a flat tire. And that's about the only two places to get gas, too, in the 450 miles (count on averaging 40 mph or less).
Years ago, Barb and I (and our son) flew our plane from where we were living at the time (Mississippi) to visit her parents in the LA area, then up to Calgary, with the ultimate goal of getting to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. As we stopped to visit friends in Calgary, we suddenly realized that our distance remaining to the Arctic Coast was more than we had flown to that point from Mississippi via LA. Our plane was well suited to bush flying (we had flown it into and out of small clearings in the Rockies, among other places, many times).
You can use a bush pilot to take you from Fairbanks to one of the airports on the boundaries of ANWR, but it ain't cheap (despite the heavily subsidized avgas prices in AK).
I would actually suggest, based on your statement about not having a lot of experience or training, that you should do a shorter trip from Inuvik or up the AlCan to Fairbanks, then rent one of the modified cars.
Once you have solved the transportation question, the backpacking is a breeze. You will only have a few brown bears and musk oxen to deal with, oh, and a few wolves. There was only one couple (canoing by themselves on the Yukon) eaten by a bear last summer. The rest of the critters are pretty innocuous for humans. Well, except for the State Bird of Alaska (and the Arctic generally), namely the mosquito. I was talking to someone today about mosquitos, who thought he had seen big mosquitos. I showed him some photos we had taken of these small "aircraft" with other things that showed the scale. They are huge, to say the least. But, they do not carry diseases like mosquitos in most of the rest of the world, and they tend to fly slowly. On the other hand, when you are approached with what looks like a WWII bombing run over Dresden or Tokyo, it's hard to swat fast enough. Pure DEET barely keeps them at bay. (legend has it that during WWII, the Alaskan mosquitos crossbred with B29s. Truth is, they get that huge because of the 24 hour daylight north of the Arctic Circle).
On map and compass - you do realize that you will be close to the geomagnetic north pole, and that the magnetic dip is rather large, don't you? Plus the magnetic declination is rather large (up to 30 deg or more in the area you say you are going). Canadian maps are fairly difficult to get for the Nunavut province, and USGS maps for ANWR are 1:50,000 or smaller scale, hence the detail is small and hard to read (though there isn't all that much to use as landmarks on the tundra in ANWR, plus a lot of it looks the same - now which stream is this? Looks like the last 3 we crossed!). This is one place where skill with a GPSR comes in handy.
Anyway, the backpacking (or canoeing) is a piece of cake. Have fun on your adventure!