Iqaluit

So I started my first week here completely in love with Iqaluit. We touched down on Friday afternoon and Rick, our community contact from the Nunavut Research Institute picked us up from the airport and took us over to his beautiful home, just up from the beach, for dinner and good conversation. We hung out checking out the tour de france for a while and then I headed out with Rick to help feed his team of sled dogs, who are beautiful friendly dogs, although they were currently being besieged by mosquitoes. From there we headed up to his son's boat which had just returned after spending the day out at sea with a small beluga. We grabbed a slab of muktuk (the outer layer of the skin and blubber) and brought it home for post dinner munchies, it was very chewy, but with some soy sauce it was a lot tastier than I had thought it would be.

The next morning we woke up to a gloriously sunny day and woke up while sitting on Rick's deck overlooking the Arctic Ocean in a t shirt. After breakfast we headed up to Park's Day in Sylvia Grinnell park for Parks Day. We stayed just long enough to decide that it warranted more than the hour or so we had, so we heading onto our new home for the next three weeks. 322 White Row (it's not white any more, it was just painted so has been somewhat renamed Rainbow Row) is in the ghetto of Iqaluit, literally. Our place isn't bad at all, the view is stunning, looking out over the harbour, I can see the ocean from my bed!!! There's a nice big kitchen and a living room so I can't complain about that. More on the neighbourhood later.

So after unpacking we headed back up to the park and wandered into a naturalist walk on the flora of the tundra- there are trees here! They look like small plants, they are woody therefore are technically willow's. We wandered down along the Sylvia Grinnell River and noticed what we thought were crazy people swimming, but we waded in and it was lovely. Onwards up to the falls and rock hunting, there were some lovely copper samples and other rocks that as all of you who know me, I ended up with in my pockets. We checked out the falls which must have been a good fishing spot because there were about six tents set up above them. On the way back we hiked up to the second highest peak in the park, which had a panorama view of all the surrounding mountains, the ocean and all of Iqaluit- we also found owl pellets for a owl pellet dissection activity!

On Sunday we got a lot of set up done, and then Kris and I decided to head up to the Climate Change and Planning Conference that was going on at the Frobisher Inn (a hub in Iqaluit, complete with restaurant, bar and the town's movie theater). We got to see a presentation by Shelia Watts -Cloutier on the impact of climate change on the North and the struggle for labeling GHG emissions a human rights violation. After that there was an Arctic Fashion show, starting with amouti's (the jackets women everywhere here wear with their children tucked into a pouch behind them and a hood that can go over their head and the baby, they make so much sense) and boots made of ringed seal and caribou skin, and men's parka's and hip wader type pants all made from furs. They were so beautiful. Then came a contemporary fashion show mostly with seal fur. I am in full support of seal fur for fashion. People here eat the animal, make all kinds of things with the fur for survival, and if the seals are hunted for food, why not use the skins for commerce? Just my view, I don't support furs from factory fur farms in China, but seal skin from Nunavut definetely gets my vote beyond just the ethical issues, it is beautiful too. During the fashion show there was a high kick demonstration which was unbelievable, these young guys, perhaps around 18 had a stick with a small bundle of seal fur off a string at the end of it. They held it up to the ceiling and with both feet jumped up and kicked it about 7 meters off the ground. For the one kick the one guy hit the ceiling and couldn't go any higher. I would fall flat on my back!

After the fashion show and high kick we got to see throat singers. They were clearly more polished and skilled than the girls in my tent in Rankin Inlet, but despite their talent, which was awe inspiring and haunting, I still was more touched by my throat singing experience in Rankin. Following the throat singing (I know, I know, what an amazing night, we kind of snuck in too, as we weren't part of the conference...) we got to see two elders perform a number of drum dances which were as chilling and eerie as they were beautiful, the drum and the song transformed me somewhere not of this world while I was listening to it and it wasn't a bad place, but it was certainly powerful and different than any other music I had heard before. The night was not over, Tyler me and Kris headed back up to the park for a sunset walk (at 10:30 or so) and wandered up the river bed watching the sun sink below the hills and everything turn bright pink and orange.

Camp started the next day. This was the most challenging camp I have had so far, which is strange, as lots went amiss in Rankin and Igloolik was just huge, but despite having all the registration forms in, a college with all the resources we could want and four instructors, it was still difficult. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the kids in Iqaluit have access to a lot more summer camp type options and many parents decided to sign their kids up for science camp instead of the kids wandering into the camp of their own free will and getting their parents to sign them up after. Needless to say, it was a hard week with many different "personalities" but it was still ultimately very rewarding, as some of the kids REALLY wanted to be there and learn. I think we also manged to get some of the less enthusiastic kids into bits and pieces of science, which is at least a start, if nothing else the blubber mitt activity where kids put their hands into a ziplock bag filled with lard and then put that into a bucket of ice cubes to learn about arctic animal adaptations is always a huge hit!

On Monday night we rushed home from camp and took off again in big yellow school buses with no shocks back up to the park taking all the folks from the conference up to the park for a night of fun. It was 26 degrees that day, there was a huge heat wave in Iqaluit which I am now understanding is not the norm. Once we got dropped off, we headed straight up for a little lake that we had come across on our hike on the weekend, this time armed with bathing suits. It was a little intimidating at first, swimming in the arctic is not something that comes intuitively, but the water was wonderful, there was a bit of a breeze, so not too many bugs and it was one of the most refreshing and satisfying swims ever. From there we wandered back to the pavilion and had a night of really tasty bannock and tea with storytelling about the seasons and living on the land as well as more haunting drum dancing with a backdrop of a setting sun going down behind the mountains. Then the mosquitoes came out and we went home full of both new ideas and thoughts and damn good bannock.

The rest of the week wasn't as exciting we spent most nights preparing for the days ahead of us, they were intense. I am cooking a lot which is lovely, as I don't usually make time for a lot of cooking at home, and there is a surprising good selection of healthy and fresh foods up at the NorthMarts (owned by the North West Company who bought out the Hudson's Bay Company, which certainly left their marks on the North). We did get out one night to check out the huge full moon rising up over the ocean, it was stunning! Back to White Row. I sleep with ear plugs, one most nights there is a point at which a steady stream of profanities floats into my window around 2 am with someone storming away from a fight. On Wednesday night our neighbours were extremely drunk and locked out of their house by someone inside which caused about 2 hours of yelling and random unhappy banter. On Saturday night we called the police when a women punched a young teenage girl and two other women were fighting outside. This is a side of Iqaluit that makes me deeply sad. There is beauty in the landscape and culture, but there is still an ugliness here that I feel deeply, there have been so many scars inflicted on people here and it is clearly taking generations of time to heal. Working with kids gives me so much hope, they are smart, eager and full of joie de vive, so despite the pain and ugliness I've seen next door in Iqaluit, the beauty of the kids in the camps balances it out somehow.