Hall Beach and Igloolik

Hall Beach

Last week I went to Hall Beach and Igloolik for a double circuit.  A double circuit is when two communities have court in one week.  Like any other circuit, the lawyers, judge, clerk, interpreters, reporter, in-custody accuseds and out-of-town witnesses all have to manage to get to a small arctic community, at the same time. But for a double circuit, in the middle of the week, everyone has to pack up and manage the same feat all over again in a second community.

After we finished court in Hall Beach, the entire court party and everyone’s luggage was taken to the airport in the back of an open Co-op cube van.  It was a dusty ride, but it was fun.

After we got to the airport, things got less fun. Somehow, the court and all of the lawyers ended up on two different flights to Igloolik, and both were delayed due to a low cloud ceiling in Igloolik.  After a couple of hours, Canadian North (the airline that all of the lawyers were booked on) decided that they weren’t going to attempt to land in Igloolik but would instead fly everyone to Iqaluit, and then try to go again the next day. First Air (the airline that the judge and the rest of the court were booked on) decided that they were going to fly to Igloolik and hope that it would be possible to land.

You can probably guess what happened.  The court ended up in Igloolik without any lawyers.  The lawyers ended up with an unanticipated night back in Iqaluit.

The next day we went to the Iqaluit airport to try again. When we checked in, the boarding passes were green-stickered with the dreaded “LANDING SUBJECT TO WEATHER.”  Things were really not looking good for the Igloolik circuit.  If we didn’t land in Igloolik this time, we’d lose the one remaining circuit day, and court in Igloolik would have to be delayed until the next circuit at the end of September.

Somehow, we made it in.  There was fog, but incredibly there was none over the runway when it was time to land, and the Igloolik circuit was saved.

Of course the weather was beautiful the next day.

Igloolik

Songs: 
The Prayer of Francois Villon - Regina Spektor
Northmart - The Jerry Cans
I Gave You All - Mumford & Sons
The Wine Song - The Cat Empire

Second Circuit in Sanikiluaq

From April 26th until May 2nd I was in Sanikiluaq again for court. This time I got to stay in the new(ish) hotel instead of the old one with all of it's problems.  The new(ish) hotel had heat in all of the rooms, working internet and a greatly reduced risk of dying in one's sleep due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Luxury!

Here is a picture of the dining room in the luxurious new(ish) hotel.

The day that I flew in to Sanikiluaq was the same day that the new cook at the hotel flew in. We were chatting, and I learned that this was her first time in Nunavut. I was telling her about how it is such a small world up here. This is true even for southerners with respect to other southerners. I said, "Take us, for example. I'm meeting you for the very first time ever, and if we talked for even a few minutes, I'm sure that we'll pretty quickly figure out that we are connected in some way."

It took less than a few minutes. Maybe one minute or less. I mentioned that I had visited my mom on the way here.  My mom lives in eastern Ontario, about a mile up a dirt road near the tiny (population 120) Hamlet of Easton's Corners and the tiny (population 209) Hamlet of Jasper.

"Easton's Corners?" she said, "Really?" It turned out that the new cook lives on the highway between Easton's Corners and Jasper. There are some farmer's fields between the dirt road and the highway. If my mom and the new hotel cook in live more than couple of kilometres apart, I'd be surprised. 

The Sanikiluaq docket was not a particularly heavy one so I was able to get out and take a few more pictures than I managed the last time I was there. Also, it wasn’t as bitterly cold as it was in mid-January, so I was more inclined to head out for a bit of sight-seeing.

Nunavut Court of Justice a.k.a. the community hall

We ended up staying in the community for an extra day once court was done because of the weather. On the Tuesday, a massive fog rolled in and wouldn’t leave. It lasted well into the next day. 

One hundred km/h winds arrived on Wednesday afternoon. This took care of the little fog problem, but with winds like that, there was no way that the court charter home was going to be able to land.  I went for a walk and the wind was strong enough to pick up tiny pieces of gravel which hit me in the face.  It was also strong enough to push me around so that I was staggering like a drunk person on my way to and from the Northern.  

It was hard to hold the camera steady, but I managed to get a few shots.

Boat across from the Northern

Igloo church

Looking toward the old hotel where we stayed last time

So beautiful

We flew back to Iqaluit on Thursday afternoon and I arrived only a few hours after my daughter Gwenna who came to Iqaluit from Toronto for a two-week visit before heading off to Edmonton.

Next stop: Hall Beach and Igloolik.

Songs:
Your Ex-Lover is Dead (Final Fantasy Mix) - Stars
Farewell - Apocalyptica

New Start, Revisited

If you slip and land on your head you can cross here? Upside down people permitted?

The process of making Iqaluit home has been slower than I would have liked. This can probably be explained, at least in part, by the fact that it is hard to make friends, settle into a new apartment, and to adjust to a new office and life when traveling so much. Since arriving here in November, I’ve been on four circuits and I’ve traveled to Ontario three times. I added it up and it comes to about 11 weeks away.  That’s almost three months out of five that I've been gone.

I’m really missing that feeling of connection to place.  Ottawa was where I was born and grew up, and where my mom, brothers and many of my friends live. However, Ottawa hasn’t been my home since 2004. And even then, I only moved back for three years so that I could go to law school. Ottawa really hasn’t been my real home since 1996 when I first moved to Toronto.

Toronto was my home for quite a long time.  I used to own an adorable 1920s house in a great little neighbourhood near Coxwell and Danforth.  It was a wonderful place to raise my family.  But when my nest emptied, it was time to move on.  I haven’t lived in Toronto since August, 2010. Even though my daughters and some of my other favourite people call Toronto home, whenever I visit, the city isn’t really mine anymore. Maybe because I haven’t completely decided yet whether I’m ever moving back.

Even though I lived in Cambridge Bay for more than two years, it never really felt like home to me. For a lot of small town nonsense reasons, and because I missed my family and couldn’t see them often enough to remain truly happy for very long there, it was always just somewhere that I stayed as a long-term visitor. Sometimes I was a very happy visitor though.  I became friends with some really wonderful people. And if I hadn't lived in Cam Bay, I would never have discovered how much I love  fishing and ATVing. I'm really going to miss that this summer.

My contract to work in Iqaluit runs until September 2014, another 17 months.  That could seem like I have a long time left before I start making decisions, but it isn’t really. I’ve already been living in Nunavut for much longer than that without having come to any conclusions about what I want to do or where I want to be next.

If I go back to Ontario, I have no idea where I’d want to live. At this point I’m not entirely sure if I’ll go back to living in Ontario when my contract is done.  Maybe I will eventually love Iqaluit so much that I will decide to make a life here.  But for the love to happen, I really need to try harder to settle in, make friends, participate in life etc. Or, as they say, take off my coat, stay a while.  Stay for more two weeks at a stretch anyway.

Next stop, Ottawa and Sanikiluaq. I leave in a week. I'll try to do better in May.

Iqaluit, and me.

Songs:
Take Me To The Riot - Stars
Rococo - Arcade Fire

Pangnirtung Circuit - Part 2

Court finished on Thursday February 14^th just before lunch, and the flight back to Iqaluit wasn’t until 6:45.  This meant that I had a chance to see a little more of Pangnirtung than just the community hall where court was held.  

The first stop was taking a closer look at the Old Blubber Station. It was a beautiful sunny day.

One member of the court party left for a quick snowmobile trip to Akshayuk (or Pangnirtung) Pass in Ayuittuq National Park.  Myself and two others decided to check out the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts & Crafts instead.  The centre has two buildings, one for printing and one for textiles.  Below are a couple of pictures that I took inside the print studio.  The first picture was taken on the ground floor where the artists work. The second picture was taken from the balcony where prints from all of the collections are stored. A fair amount of money was spent that afternoon.  There were far more works that I admired than I had money for that day, so I foresee many future visits and bank account depletions.

Another place that I went that day was the Pangnirtung fish plant. Turbot fishing had just started shortly before we arrived and there was no turbot yet processed for sale.  I did bring home some tasty arctic char fillets though.  

It was a little after 4 p.m. when I headed back to the hotel from the fish plant.  It was getting a bit dark, but I managed to take these two pictures.

During the circuit, the court party stayed at the AuyuittuqLodge.  John Thompson, co-counsel on the circuit, already described the hotel in his blog but I’m going to throw my opinion out there too.  It would be hard not to write about the hotel when writing about Pangnirtung.

Incredibly, the food was mostly delicious.  This is a very surprising thing for anyone familiar with the typical deep-fried-with-a-side-of-frozen Inns North dining experience.  Even though I’ve been pretty disciplined about what I eat lately, Chef Louis’ food was tempting enough to lure me off plan a few times.  I’d say that the food was better than any of the places in Nunavut that I’ve stayed at so far.

The rooms are pretty terrible though.  I think that my room was almost the worst room that I’ve stayed in so far in Nunavut.  My tiny room had no desk or chair or place to work other than sitting on one of the two single beds.  The rooms also had no private bathrooms so it was necessary to use a communal one down the hall.  One night my room had no heat.  I think it was actually colder than the 13-degree room that I experienced in Sanikiluaq.  Fortunately, unlike Sanikiluaq, the heat was fixed right away so I only had one miserable sleepless night.  (Also, unlike Sanikiluaq I don’t think I was in any danger of carbon monoxide poisoning once the heat was turned on again.)

Overall, I had a great experience being in Pangnirtung.  This was what my walk to work looked like even on a blah low-contrast kind of day.  Hard not to love that.

Songs:
I'll Fall With Your Knife - Peter Murphy
Visoko -Yulia Savicheva