Special Charter

During our evening dog walk I noticed a plane coming in to land. At first I didn't pay much attention, then I wondered why it seemed to be coming in so slow. Eventally it got close enough for me to realize that it wasn't slow, rather it was so enormous that I had been watching it come in from miles away.

The plane is as tall as our airport building!

I was so impressed and intrigued that I drove down to the airport to get a closer look.

It is so dry

I have been in Iqaluit for 8 weeks, in which time my body has absorbed the contents of a huge vat of Cocoa Butter that would have lasted me 6 months in the damp costal climate of BC. I exfoliate and moisturize my body and apply various concoctions from Skoah to my face but still I feel all dried up... like a middle-aged lady who spends too much time in the Palm Springs sun.

On my return to Vancouver I will be checking into Miraj for a Hammam & Gommage with Orientale Massage & Nettoyage de Peau. Essentially this involves sitting in a steam room for 20 minutes drinking lots of water and trying not to pass out, you are then laid on a marble slab and scrubbed all over with a pumice soap before being rinsed off. Head swimming and skin tingling, you stumble to the treatment room and collapse on the massage table. After a gentle facial you are anointed with scented oils and massaged back to life. The treatment complete, you are given a robe and led to the lounge for sweet mint tea and cake. Try it, you won't regret it.

Really?

Easter Sunday we headed out on the ice again to watch the last of the Toonik Tyme events; the snowcross. As this is a snowmachine event we decided to travel on the snowmachine, makes sense to us. A row of vehicles and spectators lined the side of the course, we parked at the end of the row and watched the practice runs, enjoying the sunshine on our faces. A couple with their baby arrived and parked about 20foot to our right, they got off their machine and started chatting to some other people behind us. Blaine was sitting on our sled, I stood beside him chatting while I photographed the action.

After 30 minutes or so of practice runs, the starter dropped the flags and the race began. Apparently this was the signal for the aforementioned group to come and stand right infront of us! There are miles and miles of open ice and they have their own machine parked off to the right but no they just walk right past me as I am taking photos and then stand there. Blaine and I were too amazed to say anything. the four of them stood there for the whole time chatting away smack bang in front of us blocking our view and my pictures!!!

Do you know these people? Do you have any idea why they would be so freakin' rude?

As you can see there is PLENTY of space but they took the effort to walk from behind us, around us and regroup again infront of us. I have tried to think of a plausible explanation but am drawing a blank. To top it off when we started the engine to leave, the chick in the Maple Leafs toque turned around to look at the sound of the engine, but only moved aside when her man pulled the stoopid beatch out of the way.

Rant over, happy Easter everyone!

My! What a big qamutiq you have...

On our way home from wings tonight we drove to the end of the breakwater to enjoy the sunset. We noticed a couple of snowmachines towing qamutiqs heading towards us on the ice, it was not until they got closer that we realised the first guy had a boat strapped to his qamutiq. 

My guess is that this wooden boat is about 25' long, combined with the wooden sled itself that must make for a pretty hefty load to be towing.

Dog watching

On Sunday morning I took the dogs out for their usual walk on the bay. This morning's walk featured entertainment, the Toonik Tyme sled dog race was scheduled to start at 10am. We had a bit of a run around (which means me driving them following) then drove over to the start line where I stalled, in the middle of the path! Happily Fred from city works was on hand to turn the ATV's fuel onto the reserve tank and I sheepishly moved out of the way. With the puppies safely seated on the quad, and tied to it for good measure, I pulled out the camera to photograph the start of the race. Johnny and Sage are really good dogs and they didn't try to hop off but I was a little dubious so didn't get the pictures that I would have liked as I didn't want to walk too far away from them.

My Toonik Tyme album can be viewed in all its splendour here.

FYI, I went to the Baffin Gas station and filled up then turned off the reserve. Approximately 70km of driving costs $14. To fill up the tank from dead empty (last week's experiment) costs $18. The snowmobile has a fuel guage, the quad doesn't.

Iqaluit's second country market

The market was advertised to start at noon on Saturday, we got there at 11:30 and it was almost over. We were a little disapointed to see prices hiked considerably from last month so didn't buy any fish. From what we hear caribou is pretty scarce this season, I don't know if the heads were all that was left by the time they arrived but I was rather amused by these ladies strolling around the square casually brandishing their grocery shopping.

Toonik Tyme hill climb

First celebrated in 1965, Toonik Tyme is Iqaluit's spring festival. It is such a big deal that most of the city gets Friday afternoon off. Municipal and territorial governments, schools, banks, mechanics, lawyers, accountants, pretty much every employer shut their doors allowing staff head out for some fun in the mild spring afternoon.

Blaine and I jumped on the sled and quad respectively and headed out onto the bay with the puppies for a run around. After a brief lesson I took the sled for a burn and boy does it run smooth. We messed around in our usual area then loaded up the dogs and took the new ice road over to sealift beach. The road is a temporary clearing of the snow of the bay to mark out the dog sled route for the big race on Sunday. When I say big race we are talking 3 hours, not the Ititarod by any means but it should make for good entertainment.

We got back to the house at 4pm, put the dogs in their bedroom (with the T bones from last night's steak) and headed out to the hill beside the Arctic Winter Games Arena to watch the hill climb. When I first saw the event listing I had assumed it was some sort of running event - duh we are in the arctic! It is of course a snowmobile race. Probably the most impressive thing for me was the abundance of snowmachines, not competing, but driven to the event by spectators. Spectators sitting astride their machines lined the hillside surrounding the bowl where the climb course was set out, Blaine counted 80. Given that the city has a population of less than 8,000 this is a high ratio of sleds, certainly when seen through an English girls eyes!

There are a huge number of events lined up over the weekend and I plan to visit as many as possible, and of course to blog about them for your reading pleasure!

Blaine blogs

The shock and awe of the third cold winter month (March) in Nunavut is giving away to mud and slush, others call this April or Spring. I stood out on the tarmac at work in a short sleeve shirt and chatted with one of the guys about the transportation norms - or abnorms in Iqaluit. My colleague explained, when visiting family in the Maritimes he forgot where he was when he jumped on an atv and when ripping into town on the road, until he went over an overpass on a freeway and realized he was not in Iqaluit land anymore. I found out there are official ski-doo trails in the city but nobody seems to know where they are. Fences are not that popular. So as long as there is snow on the ground, it pretty much looks like everything not on the road or one of the few sidewalks is a ski-doo trail. Not withstanding ski-doos stop quicker than atvs, so the pros and cons of different non-traditional vehicles begin.

Back to the above, as our known reality starts to thaw and the weather warms, we have talked less about the desperation of needing a vehicle that has doors and heat. Instead we have embraced the atv lifestyle in Iqaluit, while still weird, it’s awesome to grab some groceries and rip off road or down the beach for kicks on the way home. The need for atvs becomes more obvious over the need for a car or suv. However normal, it’s hard not to giggle to yourself when you pull up to a stop sign and the RCMP or Enforcement pulls up behind you, it’s just crazy wrong - but legal.

That brings us to the city Enforcement Department. Once called Bylaw and often mistakenly referenced as Bylaw, but no, Municipal Enforcement. As I understand it, unlike other cities and towns that have contracts with the federal government to provide police services through the RCMP, Iqaluit does not have a contract arrangement with the RCMP to provide municipal policing. But the RCMP do provide major crimes services to the residents of Iqaluit, figure that one out. Normally the RCMP would provide traffic enforcement. In addition to enforcing a variety of city bylaws (hence the confusion), Enforcement also performs traffic enforcement. Which will explain the above reference of when an RCMP or Enforcement truck pulls up behind you at a stop sign you feel nervous but it’s cool. Enforcement also manages animal control, which is a tough job here. The dogs have their trusty Iqaluit dog licenses, as unclaimed dogs can be “put down” (taken to the dump and shot) if they have been busted one too many times. Get this, there are DOT enforcement trucks that drive around the city, but don’t ask me what they do, the only scales here are in the bathroom. So emergency trucks with red and blue lights include; DOT, Enforcement, RCMP and one Fire Command truck. We have one fire truck that accidently put red and blue on the light bar, we have not gotten around to change it and as mentioned the DOT guys don’t seem to mind.

Our ski-doo (snowmobile, snow machine) will be done tonight, very much thanks to a colleague at work who offered to chip in after a lengthy wait in line at one of the local dealerships. That brings up another topic, not reflective of all service industries in Iqaluit or the north for that matter, but customer service is a luxury and competitive service is a far-fetched ridiculed concept. Asking when your vehicle will be ready is more a philosophical dialogue than a conceptual one. Case in point, if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Iqaluit answer – there are no trees here!  So now that we have embraced the convertible life style (atv/skidoo), Emma chose to strategically run out of fuel right beside the fire hall. I had just cleared a run with the crew and was asked to return to the hall, when your asked to come back to the hall it’s usually not good news (I did not do anything wrong). But Emma running out of gas was a nice compromise. We had not checked and the fuel gauge was on reserve, so it was bone dry.

There is a new take away restaurant that serves donairs, this is something we need to try but Emma makes amazing food and spoils me rotten so it’s hard to eat out, outside of wing night Wednesday at the Legion.  We will leave the food critic review for another day.

An Iqaluit Stable

We are now the proud owners of a 550 Polaris Edge Touring snowmachine to compliment the 350 Yamaha ATV.

Isaiah

This afternoon I looked out the office window and noticed a skeleton wearing a toque.

Tinah and I went down to investigate and introduce ourselves. He was missing his lower jaw and right hand.

His hat is crocheted with the name Isaiah, so we introduced ourselves to him.

By the end of the day he was wearing a T-shirt.

A special guest post

I had intended to post tonight but that time was spent editing a document for Blaine and it is now well past bedtime. By way of an olive branch to my loyal and no doubt disapointed readership, Blaine has offered to write a guest post. It is his bedtime too so not sure when this special will appear, but we can all be sure that it will be fabulously enthralling and perhaps lead to a regular guest spot, or maybe even his very own blog... does anyone know the Inuktitut for Mohawk?

Wing Night

Wednesday night is wing night in Iqaluit, both at the Legion and the Storehouse Pub at the Frobisher Inn. We have not been to the Storehouse, but we have now participated in Legion wing night three times. This week was particularly significant for three reasons; I am now an associate member so was able to sign Blaine in rather than us both having to get Craig or Gerry to sign us in; We drove there together on the Quad; Blaine was not on duty so was allowed to have a beer.

At the legion wings are 25c each, beer is (a rather less reasonable) $9 per can. Beer in Nunavut comes in cans or bottles; the bottles are Corona; cans include Rickards Red, Molson, Canadian... all the crappy beers. There are no kegs. There are few glasses.

The Legion opens at 5pm and is instantly busy. Make your way past the smoking shed and join the line up inside the double doors to sign in and check your coat at the compulsory $1 coat check. Canada Goose jackets are bulky so the coat check makes sense and they don't try to screw you by charging another buck for your helmet. To the left of the coat check a short corridor leads to the quiet room which I have not yet explored, the open doorway to the right leads into the main room. As you leave the coat check desk you immediately join the queue which snakes back from the bar. At the cash-only bar you order your beverage and wings then take your receipt to the kitchen hatch at the back of the room. Carefully print your name on the paper and hand it in then take a seat and wait for your name to be called over the tannoy. Depending on who is MCing the kitchen mike you may or may not be able to decipher your name when your order is called. The wings arrive piled high on a paper plate (our landfill is a hungry beast that needs regular feeding) which you then take to the adjacent table to load up from a selection of six sauces; Honey Garlic, BBQ, Thai, Sweet & Sour, Hot and Xtra Hot. I like to combine BBQ with Xtra Hot.

Two Rickards Red and twenty wings makes a happy Wednesday :-)

Water, wheels and warm hands



Caesar Milan never thought of sealskin mittens as a dog training device - I have their undivided attention!

It certainly isn't my intention to only update this blog on Sundays and I apologise for the gap, but it has been quite a week.

We finally moved back home on Friday after 8 nights at the Capital Suites. Staying in a hotel may sound like fun but we have spent more time in hotel beds over the last two months than we have in our own bed so we just want to be home. Our stress levels have been through the roof with not knowing when we would be home and the knowledge that all hotels are booked out from Monday 4 so it was with great relief that we learned the water was back on.

On Monday night we bought a 350cc Yamaha Quad, getting it on the road was, as with all things in Nunavut, far more complicated than really necessary. But let me back up a bit, yes I did say ON the road. ATVs are allowed on the roads provided they have lights and are insured. To me this equals the perfect vehicle, I can ride on the roads around town to get to the shops, work, Tim Hortons etc, but when it suits me I can nip off the road and take a short cut, head to the beach or whatever takes my fancy. Snowmachines on the other hand are not allowed on the roads, rather they are ridden pretty much everywhere else. In my estimation snowmachines outnumber cars here in Iqaluit and the town is criscrossed with snowmachine tracks alongside the road, across the road, behind buildings, in between houses, along the beach etc. The space behind our house is a veritable race track on the weekends.

I digress... Tinah needed to replace her drivers license so we went together to Inuksugait Plaza and proceeded to the blue building where the printed sign taped to the door directed us to the office next to the Quick Stop in the green building (those really were the directions). Inside the driver licensing office we were attended to by a very helpful lady who reviewed my documentation and informed me that since I would be surrendering it, my BC drivers license could not be utilised as one of the two required pieces of government ID, however my Permanent Resident card and Social Insurance number would suffice. Unfortunately these are in the wrong name so I had to come back the next day with my divorce certificate. Everything closes at lunch so all events in this tale take place during working hours, fortunately I had to work late on Tuesday so had accrued banked time to burn. I returned on Thursday with a print out of a scan of the divorce certificate which was accepted without hesitation. A few forms and $68 later I left the office clutching my temporary license which is essentially a till receipt.

Over to apartment 210 in the pink "red" building where I spent an hour getting insurance, this cannot be issued without Nunavut ID (said till receipt) and is processed online using painfully slow internet and an even slower computer. Unlike BC, Nunavut requires all drivers to be named on the policy so I had to provide driving history and the supporting documentation from ICBC for both Blaine and I. Ironically ATV insurance is not eligible for discounts, but they still demand the information. As this is my main vehicle and I will be driving it on the roads at peak times I opted for full insurance which cost $330 for the year. The Nunavut Insurance office also dealt with the transfer of ownership, I was given a temporary red slip and am to expect the real one in "a month or two". Presumably this documentation proved that I owned and had insured the vehicle as I was then directed back to the green building where I paid $28 for my very own polar bear plate. We think the "can't run an ATV in -10" yarn was just a scare tactic to make us buy a snowmachine from the dealership because it runs just fine, simply plug in the block heater an hour before you need to head out and you are good to go.

By the time this was all done with I had, for the second day in a row, missed the liquor permit office which closes at 4pm. Friday morning I used my coffee break to get the permit for my wine order and was pleased to note that they have extended their opening hours and now operate 9am to noon and 1pm to 4:30pm whereas they used to only open 1:30 to 4pm in the afternoon. Blaine and I have decided that quantity should rule over quality in terms of booze importation so I ordered a selection of bag-in-box wines.

While riding around I found that even with fleece liner gloves worn under down-filled mittens, my right thumb was getting cold. As this digit controls the throttle it is not an option to put your hand in your pocket. A couple of weeks ago a lady came into the office selling a pair of caribou gauntlets that would have been perfect for riding, but I didn't know that I needed them then. I was planning to head to Northmart to check out their selection of mittens and was lamenting to Gerry that I should have bought the caribou ones when a lady appeared with two pairs of ring seal mittens with red fox cuffs. The smaller pair had beautiful patterns and fit me perfectly, the only drawback was that they are not cured so they have a very strong aroma of seal which drives the dogs nuts. I decided that the puppies could learn to live with it, here was the opportunity to have fashion and function for only $80 so I snapped them up and counted down the minutes until I could wear them on the drive home. Blaine took the photo of the dogs greeting me when I got home, they went insane and I have their undivided attention whenever I put the mitts on, although I have to be wary of inquisitive teething!