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.