Shining Happy Iqaluit People

Wow! What a week I had!

Last Saturday was my 30th Birthday. When I was offered this job there were a few things in particular that made me reluctant to move to Iqaluit… my nanny’s 90th birthday party this past summer, Curtis and Pam’s wedding in Calgary this September (which I thankfully still made it to!), and my 30th birthday. I had visions of sitting alone on this significant occasion in my life with no one to celebrate with. I even went so far as to throw myself a 30th birthday party in Halifax four months early, lol! Well, let’s just say my worries were totally unfounded. I had a great birthday with many lovely people to celebrate with.

The first thing I did on my birthday was go to a yogo class the instructor calls Sun, Moon and Hoop. Sun for the sun salutations that we do first, followed by moon salutations and completed with 45 minutes of hula-hooping! It was so much fun! I love a good sun salutation… challenges your body in a lot of ways without too much unnatural bending and stretching… and hooping is a fun way to work your middle. I don’t mean to brag, but I am a pretty good hooper! I went again yesterday, and let’s just say it leaves you surprisingly tender.

That evening Eva and I had people over for drinks and desert before heading down to the Legion for dancing. I invited a bunch of people in the hopes that half a dozen or so people would show up, but we ended up with a full house! It was wonderful, and everyone here is so thoughtful and generous. There were even unexpected gifts! Here’s a story about one of them…

You all know my Ford Explorer arrived last week. Well, on the afternoon of my birthday I noticed that it has a tape deck! I haven’t seen one of those in a while, and I was reflecting on where I might dig up some old tapes without coming up with any good ideas. Three or four hours later Mark and Robyn, who didn’t know anything about the truck or the tape deck, showed up with two stacks of tapes! It was so weird. They were giving them away at the library, so they picked out a couple of handfuls of tapes that I am younger than, and then proceeded to sing a song they wrote about all the things I am younger than. So much fun!

Once at the Legion I hardly left the dance floor for three hours! The whole evening was overwhelming in the best kind of way. I feel very fortunate to be aquainted with such wonderful people.






I was very busy at work this week. I had a workshop that I have been planning for the past three months on Tuesday and Wednesday. It went very well, but it took a lot out of me. I was operating at half capacity for the rest of the week. Not much else to say about that…

So you’ll never guess what league I am going to join this fall? It feels very Canadian of me… I’ll give you a hint: I’ll be a woman with a broom. No, it is not the league of housewives, but the curling league! I have never thrown a stone before in my life, but given that I am dancing at the Legion, it only seemed fit to join the curling league. I practiced for the first time yesterday and it wasn’t pretty. Let’s just say I am not a natural… in fact, there is something very unnatural about the angle of my leg in the picture below (and it goes on for days!). There were falls, bumps and bruises, none more severe than those to my pride… it is pretty difficult to fall gracefully on ice… and I am pretty tender today, especially following two hours of Sun, Moon and Hoop… but I shall not give in! I shall persevere and master this sport on ice! League play starts on Tuesday...

My rubber leg...

Yesterday was a BEAUTIFUL day in Iqaluit… I think it must have gone up to 5 degrees! It’s been a pretty mild week altogether, though I suspect we are in for some snow this week. We have been pretty spoiled so far this month, so I am okay with that. Besides, I am going home for a visit in less than two weeks so I don’t much care what it does here. I do find it quite funny though how bundled I tend to be compared to the locals. I walk everywhere and I often have to strip off layers, but I always leave the house prepared for any turn in the weather. I frequently find myself quite comfortably wrapped in a scarf, hat, mitts, two layers of jacket and rain pants… passing people in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Us newbie’s stand out like a sore, or should I say cold, thumb! I have even passed toddlers dressed more scantily than I am. I occasionally catch the locals giving me a look up and down and then stifling a chuckle. I am sure they are wondering to themselves how I figure to make it through an Iqaluit winter at the rate of clothing layers I am acquiring!

Here are some pictures of my walk on Saturday evening…

The sky reminded me of a water color painter's brush storkes on a very large canvas...

So peaceful...

This is my favorite walking path along the coast; reminds me of Newfoundland...

The sun setting behind the Iqaluit dump fire... which is still burning...

I would like to finish with a quote from the first page of a book I just started reading, The Year of the Flood...

"The air smells faintly of burning, a small of caramel and tar and rancid barbecues, and the ashy but greasy smell of a garbage dump fire after it's been raining."

I can relate...

Northern De-lights

So winter landed and reared its ugly head last week and scared the @#%* out of me. I couldn’t help but wonder what I had gotten myself in to. We had several days of bad weather, including snow, sleet and hail, gusts up to 90 km/h and cold! I walked home one day in a blizzard and the wind was blowing so hard the next morning that I could feel the house trembling as I was lying in bed. At home (Nova Scotia!) the first snow of the season usually suggests that Christmas is fast approaching, so all this snow has been giving me those warm, fuzzy Christmassy feelings. I have to keep reminding myself that it is only October!

I’m delighted to report however that winter went back to sleep for a while and it turns out that fall is to last longer than a couple of weeks after all. It went up to 8 degrees over the long weekend, and it has been clear and beautiful all week.
I had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with friends on Sunday night. There was so much food! And then I went for a long stroll on Thanksgiving Monday down by the bay and discovered that the sea lift is in! The water was calm and the sun was sparkling off the surface, it was beautiful… and there she was, the ship that was carrying my big blue beast! The great Explorer...

She’s a bit old and rusty around the edges, but I have confidence that she will carry me around this winter on those snowy, blustery days, and keep me dry from the rain.

The best thing about clear skies is... northern lights! A friend called me the other night and asked if I wanted to go out and check out the northern lights with him outside of town. He keeps his eye on this website that tracks solar activity and gives an indication of the best nights for viewing northern lights, and it was supposed to be a good one. We went out and I just couldn’t believe it... they were amazing. There were probably half a dozen bands streaking across the sky directly overhead from one horizon to the other. They were weaving, joining together and breaking apart... and when they were right overhead to could actually see them flowing and streaming like a river. I don’t know how else to describe it. It kind of gives me an eerie feeling... like in ghost busters when the clouds start to open up and swirl around... you just know something serious is about to go down.

Last night I was walking dogs at the shelter and when I went in the building the sky was clear, no northern lights to be seen. Then when I took black Molly out (Molly is a dog , not a fish... a little fish tank humour for all you aquarium lovers out there), the sky lit up! I was stumbling along behind Molly with my eyes on the sky. These ones were quite different from the ones the night before. The night before they were smooth and they flowed like water... these ones were like icicles stabbing down from the sky and they moved much faster... like a set of chimes in a gale. And there were hints of pinks and blues and purples, which aren’t as common on Baffin Island as in other areas. There no capturing those ones on film... that is something you just have to see.

Now for the downside of the nicer weather... stinky garbage fire! You may or may not have heard (and you probably haven’t) but the Iqaluit dump is on fire! It has been on fire since September 24th, spewing toxic smoke into the air, and there’s no stopping it... they have to wait for it to burn out because it is deep in the pile and they say it could be burning for months!

Thankfully the prevailing winds blow the smoke away from town. Early in the week though there was no wind so the yellowish smoke was drifting into town creating a haze and closing schools and offices. It smells pretty bad and people have been complaining about headaches and other ailments. It’s not so bad today though, so I am working away, and I better get back at it...

A Work Story...

I travelled to Rankin Inlet this weekend for an NWMB (Nunavut Wildlife Management Board… that’s who I work for) workshop. We are working with the communities to identify their wildlife management and research priorities to help guide our funding programs.

So we flew out of Iqaluit on Friday evening after work. It was a beautiful evening for flying, just a light cloud cover, so I got a good look at the landscape. The terrain to the west of Iqaluit is very flat and, because there are no trees on Baffin Island and very little vegetation, the abundance of exposed rock on the landscape tells the story of the recent glacial past quite clearly. From the air the landscape is very linear and you can see where massive ice caps, kilometers thick (can you even comprehend that? kilometers thick!), grooved and gouged the rock and earth. And there are so many lakes! It just goes on and on and on.

Rankin Inlet is an Inuit hamlet on the northwestern shore of Hudson Bay. There is a string of communities in this area of Hudson Bay north of Churchill, Manitoba… Arviat, Whale Cove, Rankin Inlet, and Chesterfield Inlet. The population of Rankin is about 2500, making it the second most populated community in Nunavut!

It’s difficult to get a good look at the town from the ground because it is so flat. We pretty much went straight to our hotel and… it pretty much looked like a bowling alley from the outside. You wouldn’t believe what is considered perfectly acceptable for accommodations up here, and there is most often only one option in the communities. And expensive! I’m sure my hotel room in Rankin cost somewhere between $250 and $300, despite the fact that it looks like it was outfit in the early 80s. In Pangnirtung there is only one hotel, it costs $250 per person per night and apparently they will throw you in a room with a complete stranger if they need the space. Ahhh, but it is all part of the experience of northern Canada!

The workshop itself was really interesting. We had representatives from each of the communities in this region (the Kivalliq Region) discussion what their wildlife priorities are and coming up with a collective list. All workshops and meetings up here begin with a prayer in Inuktitut from one of the elders present. It is the one part that is never translated, and I would so like to hear what they are saying. Everyone takes it very seriously. Nunavummiut (the Inuit of Nunavut) are so genuine.

Depending on the translation equipment, it can be difficult to follow discussions, especially if the translator is not particularly good. At this workshop we had these funny headsets that hang down from your ears and you have to remember to put them on or take them off as the translations change… I often forget to take them off so that I am listening to the headphones in Inuktitut while someone is speaking in English and it takes me a moment to figure out why I can’t understand!

I went for a walk around the town on Sunday morning. It was kind of dismal, to be truthful. Rankin and the other surrounding communities have a lot of problems with polar bears, so most of the dog teams were fenced in. Polar bears come into town in search of food and will kill sled dogs. The dogs had a good howl while I was walking and past, and for those of you have been to the Corning’s house during a good howl (yes, I acknowledge that we’re all a little bit crazy), you should hear 50 huskies howling! It’s amazing, albeit somewhat mournful.

There is a giant Inukshuk in town and my picture just doesn’t do it justice! It is about twice as tall as I am… I regret not getting a picture with me in it, but I was by myself and without a tripod. It was nominated as one of the Seven Wonders of Canada (I saw that on the CBC website).

That evening my co-worker Adam and I went to get a bite to eat and on the way back there was a wall of dark, ominous clouds rolling into town. We were afraid that we were going to get weathered in (flights to and from Rankin are often cancelled because of wind and other weather), but our flight made it out on Monday.

P.S. It is winter now here! But I'll save that story for another day...