How I shop (updated)

Today someone who is moving to Iqaluit asked me about how we shop. I didn't have time to respond to the email at work but while I was walking the dogs this evening I had a brainwave... why not blog my response?

I don't like Arctic Ventures, although the little 'exotic foods' section in the back right corner can be kind of interesting provided you inspect the best before dates closely. There is not a big turnover in this section and the "new products" sign is looking older than it did when I arrived 6 months ago. The baking stuff is pretty good and you can get superfine sugar here which they never have at North Mart. The upstairs in Ventures is awesome (on an Iqaluit scale) the bookshop is comprehensive and you can buy furs and all kinds of things. Oh and the music played outside is very entertaining, Bollywood & Opera at full blast all distorted over the speakers in a failed attempt to reduce loitering.

My shop of choice is North Mart, yes I know it can be a pain to make your way through the mess of taxis and tangle of abandoned shopping carts then run the gauntlet through the lobby just to get in and there are never any shopping baskets but at least it is mostly sort of clean inside. I probably spend between $500 and $700 a month on groceries such as bread, fresh fruit & veg, cheese, meat, frozen fish (fresh stuff looks very suspect) and milk.

The weekly Metro flyer from Montreal is very enticing but with the different cargo rates for the varying food groups I find it all too complicated. A friend has a nifty spreadsheet that approximates the cost on your kitchen table, he tells me if there are any unmissable deals. Once we ordered a load of T-bone steaks which were amazingly good and excellent value. Sadly they have all been eaten and I am waiting for them to be half price again.

Baffin Canners is good if you can find it. I don't like the brand of milk they sell but it is the place for (frozen) cake and meat.

If you have access to the $1 per kilo staff rate for cargo with the airlines then you can happily shop online from the Country Grocer or Metro Glebe in Ottawa. This is a great way to stock up on heavy things like pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, canned fruit pie filling and frozen fruit and french fries. The HST rebate makes this even more attractive, but again only with that $1 per kilo rate.

We sealifted mainly for dog food so didn't really have a comprehensive plan for the human food component. Next year we will be shipping up much more. The 2.5 m3 500kg crate cost just over $700 to package and ship. Let's say that half of the shipping was dog food, that means it cost us $350 to get $1,000 of groceries here. By my crappy math that makes it 1/3 more expensive, which is much better than the 2 to 4 times more expensive that it costs here. i.e. a 1l carton of orange juice for $1.33 instead of $4, a tin of pumpkin pie filling for $5.33 instead of $9. Back though to the old issue of stumping up thousands for one grocery shop, and then having the room to put it all.

The airlines have very generous baggage allowances, two 70lb bags per person and a very liberal attitude to hand luggage. If you are strong (or have friends in Ottawa and Iqaluit to help you) and are willing to wait a day if your baggage gets bumped you can take them up on the offer that: "A maximum of three additional pieces can be accepted at check-in subject to $50.00/per piece" First Air and "Third & subsequent pieces accepted on a space available basis $50 per item" Canadian North. That is less than $1 per kilo so I say load er up!

[oops. I never claimed to be a math genius... you cannot determine the cost per kilo when the values in your equation are lbs... 70lb = 44kg in airport land so it is $1.14 per kilo]

The ratio of suitcases to giant rubbermaids / action packers on the Iqaluit airport luggage belt is 1:1. Buy the biggest container that is within your airline's required dimensions and a roll of duct tape, load it up, tape it up and pay your $150. Suggestions for your extra bags include frozen steak, frozen steak, frozen steak and toiletries. If they say the plane is full have them tag the steak as priority and leave the clothes to follow you later.

If you are visiting a friend or relative who lives in Iqaluit you will be issued a list prior to your departure from home. Pack your clothes in your hand luggage, your hosts will ensure your suitcases / rubbermaids are full to the gills.

our sealift arrives

We were not overly impressed by the "customer service" from NSSI Desgagnes. As I have not received a response to my request for clarification so I can only share with you my understanding of the process:

1. Wait for boat to arrive
2. Telephone NSSI office / beach shack 979 0002 which is never answered and does not have voicemail
3. Drive to NSSI office / beach shack which is never staffed
4. Telephone Desgagnes in Montreal who will advise you to repeat steps 2 & 3
5. Drive around sealift beach and compound (avoiding being run over by recklessly driven heavy equipment) looking for a) your crate and/or b) an NSSI employee
6. After approximately one week you will find someone who takes your PO Box number for billing and tells you that Hansons's will deliver your crate
7. On the same day you will receive a bill in the mail from NSSI Desgagnes to demonstrate that they had your PO Box address all along
8. Come home from work one day (August 31) to find crate outside house

Wasn't that fun and efficient?

You will then need a man and some tools to open the crate and carry the contents inside.

The main driver for our shipment was dog food. Johnny and Sage eat a brand that is not sold here so we either have to bring it up by boat or plane (Orijen never responded to Sage's letter). We popped a few things in the crate for ourselves too.

I spent Wednesday evening (after wings) arranging all the goodies down in the sealift room.

Sealift Storage

The MV Camilla Desgagnes arrived in Koojese inlet on Tuesday night. On board the 133 metre cargo ship is  the fourth of eight shipments that form the 2011 "sealift" for Iqaluit and other communities in the Canadian Eastern Arctic. None of Nunavut's 25 communities is accessible by road at any time of the year, Ice Road truckers is in the West. The 33,000 people who live in the Territory rely on air transportation to deliver supplies throughout the year. During the summer, when the ice retreats and the ocean becomes navigable a series of cargo ships make the journey north to deliver all manner of goods: Building supplies for the construction industry (including heavy equipment); vehicles both for individuals and commercial bulk orders; dry goods to resupply the grocery stores and for those individuals who have the resources to place an individual order.

Much like ordering alcohol (other than from the poorly stocked and overpriced Rankin Warehouse) the sealift is out of reach to most of the population as it requires credit cards, internet or fax connections, and considerable investment. If you are interested in learning more there is an excellent article about food mail / nutrition north in Up Here magazine. Back in July when we were in Montreal we spent almost $3,000 in one day on dog food and groceries which we delivered to the NSSI cargo packaging company in Ste Catherine. A few weeks ago we got the bill for crating and shipping which was $750. Spending $3,000+ in trip to the grocery store is not something you are used to before moving up here Revenue Canada tax returns fund the majority of private sealifts. If you can't tack a shopping trip onto a holiday there are a number of companies in Ottawa who will do the shopping for you (for a fee).

So when your year's supply of toilet paper, canned tomatoes, pasta, flour and dog food arrives, what do you do with it? We are lucky enough to have both a "Cold Storage" and a "Sealift Room". The Cold Storage is a secure lean-to on the side of our house, it looks like part of the house but it is not insulated, hence it is cold, sometimes very cold indeed. We store empty suitcases, camping gear, tools, the generator, snowboards and bikes in here, shortly it will also house sixteen bags of dog food.

Our cold storage room

A door leads from the cold storage to the Sealift Room which is a kind of a corridor between the cold storage and the downstairs hall. This room is within the house proper and has insulation and heat, although it is always the coolest room in the house, once there was frost on the inside of the door to the cold storage. This room doubles as the dog's bedroom, a cool dark room with no windows is essential for letting them know it is bed time during the never-dark summer nights. As you can see there are two deep shelves running the length of the room, the bottom shelf is currently devoted to dog food and out of date soda, the top shelf holds light bulbs, coffee, pasta, spices and the extra toilet paper that I couldn't fit in the laundry room. In a characteristically anal way I have labeled the rubbermaids for easy reference.



Our sealift room



We believe that our crate is here in Iqaluit, but because two ships arrived at the same time everything is backed up. tomorrow Blaine is going to cruise around the compound by the coastguard looking for our crate so that we can get it delivered to the house for unloading. stand by for an account of the delivery and unpacking experience!

Car Shopping

We are trying to buy a vehicle, which up here means pretty much anything from sedan to a pickup and an ATV to a snowmachine (we don't use the brand name Ski-Doo as a universal noun, think vacuum not Hoover). The Suzuki will be joining us in July or August so we don't really want to buy a car just to use for a couple of months, rather we would prefer to build a stable comprising a vehicle for each occasion and season:

• ATV for use on days above -10, maybe May to September (buddy in the Yamaha dealership informs us it is very unwise to run your quad in colder tempreatures, ATV suicide in fact)
• Snowmachine for hunting, Sunday trips to Apex or Sylvia Grinnel and general running around town from Mid-October to Mid-May.
• Suzuki for commuting, and times when we want a roof.

First you must find a vehicle for sale. This is acheived through posters on noticeboards, the Facebook Iqaluit Sell / Swap page, and word of mouth. No-one has the foresight to date their posters so you have no idea how long they have been promoting their wares... maybe that is deliberate. The facebook page is not categorized in anyway so there is a lot of scrolling to be done, but reading the comments where people occasionally bitch about the price or quality of the items for sale is entertaning compensation for the effort. Having located a vehicle that you are interested in you then must attempt to make contact with the vendor who may or may not respond to telephone calls or emails. You may then find that having made contact, viewed the vehicle and made an offer, that the vendor decides not to sell. It is a different world up here and you will drive yourself insane trying to figure these things out, so just roll with it.

I forgot to mention perhaps the most important and most difficult part. You must reconcile in your mind that paying showroom prices for used vehicles is normal, and that showroom prices do not include tax or shipping. When I say showroom, that applies only to ATVs and Snowmachines, there is no car dealership up here. July to October is sealift season when the market is flooded with fresh mechanical meat, the rest of the year you get to make your very limited choice from those vehicles already here, or you pay big bucks to fly something up. Unless of course you know someone on the inside and can access the $1 per kilo cargo rates. Currently on the market is a 2007 Dodge Nitro for $20k, a 2010 Polaris Switchback for $10,800 and a 2008 Yamaha Kodiak for $6,500

As soon as we have made a purchase I shall be all over posting it here, in the mean time I need to get some sleep so I am ready for my pedestrian commute in the morning.