Questions

If anyone leaves questions in the comments I will respond to these in the comments section as well so just click where you left your question and hopefully there will be an answer.

Sunrise

This photo was taken at 9:45 on February 8.

Just a few Igloolik facts. The population here is 1600. 90% are Inuit and generally speaking everyone here speaks Inuktituk. Power is supplied to the town by four diesel generators. Fuel for those and the vehicles in town is supplied once a year by a tanker that comes into port and pumps fuel up to a three large fuel storage containers to the west of town. The houses are heated with fuel oil and water is supplied via a tanker truck that gets water from a well system just outside the town limits. The tankers supplying fuel oil and water are running pretty much 10 hours a day and just keep going from house to house. Each residence has heated storage tanks either under the house or inside the house that hold water and sewage. There are a couple of sewage trucks that come around and clean out the tanks. Sewage is disposed of at a series of open sewage lagoons east of town.

There is an Anglican and catholic church here. There are two stores, and two hotels both of which have small restaurants. The one hotel does pizza delivery and I had a chance to have their Arctic Char pizza (similar fish to salmon) and its was excellent. So far the people here have been very friendly.

The detachment boundary is approximately 35 miles south of Igloolik and 500 miles north and is somewhat egg shaped. There are no other communities within the area, however, there are a number of temporary camps that are used for hunting.

If anyone has particular questions post them in the comments and I will try and answer them.

Co-op Parking Lot

As you can see snowmobiles are the primary means of transport. There are 1600 people here and only about 40 trucks. Everyone else owns a snowmobile. After taking this photo I went into the store to pick up a couple things. I got a box of crackers, loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat. Cost $16.45. Needless to say I may start eating snow.

Street Hockey

The cold weather doesn't keep the local kids from enjoying Canada's game. At the time I took this photo it was -20 with a windchill of -28. It didn't dampen their spirit though. After I took this photo (I was working at the time) I stopped by to talk to the kids. They informed me that their goalie was better than Richard Brodeur. I figured I better put that assumption to the test. After a couple warm up shots which were stopped I joined in the game for a few minutes. I did manage to put one past the goalie, and no I didn't hip check the kids into the snow and then pepper spray the goalie to score.

For those that may be wondering there is a elementary school, a high school and a satellite college building here. The kids learn only in Inuktituk till grade 3 then they start taking English. Everyone here as a result is fluently bilingual. Most of the teachers here are on 3 year contracts, most are young and just out of University. For some Nunavut was the first place that offered them employment. That being said there are a few that have been up here for some time.

Igloolik Sunset

This photo was taken at 3:30P.M. sunset here is at 3:45. Both the sunsets and sunrises are quite beautiful. For those who like watching the sun come up the great thing is you can sleep in till 9:30 and still catch the sunrise. Right now sunrise is at approx 9:45 with sunset at 3:45. The sun only rises about 20 degrees from the horizon and then tracks around to the west. There is no sun here from mid November till mid January. The average winter temperature here is -35 and there is a fairly constant wind. The wind chill generally subtracts about another 10 degrees. Today for example it was -28 but the wind chill was -37. And to all those I told the wind chill doesn't count, it does. While it doesn't make a big difference when bundled up it is very noticable on any exposed skin such as a person's face. I made the mistake of taking my mits off to deal with a lock and within about a minute my hands were freezing. When the wind drops off it seems alot warmer.

Work

After a few days here I am starting to get into the swing of things. It is somewhat different in the fact that you do everything here. There is no public service staff so you do your own exhibits, CPIC entries, filing, maintenance ect. Today I started out by
obtaining make and model information for all the furnaces in the detachment, and the out buildings.

It also turns out we administer driving tests here for people who want a licence. Being a dedicated traffic man that task fell to me. Of course a road test here is a little different. There are no intersection lights and only two four way stops in town. There are no highways so the road test consists of making sure they yeild at the three yeild signs, stop at one of the stop signs and signal their turns. Parallel parking is also no existant so we just get the person to back in beside another parked vehicle. If they manage to do all that and not exceed the max posted limit in town of 50 km/h (Which is only on the 1/2 km trip up to the airport then they get a Nunavut Licence which I understand is only good in Nunavut.

Also had a couple warrants to execute today. I made the mistake of getting out at the first residence without my gloves on thinking how cold can my hands get in 1 or 2 minutes. Pretty damm cold. Walking from the truck to the house and waiting for someone to come to the door my hands nearly froze.

The weekend was remarkably quite so for those of you that like constant action you may want to give this place a miss. I know it's busy at times here but over the weekend (including friday) we had two complaints 1 theft of a computer and 1 domestic that turned out to be just an argument.

Its supposed to warm up a bit over the next few days but the wind remains pretty cold. It got up to -27 today but the wind chill since I've got here has never got above -40. I used to think the wind chill didn't really count but trust me it does.

If it does get a little warmer I hope to take out the detachment ski doo and go for a burn.

I will post more photo's but probably not till the weekend as I have to borrow a computer as the works ones will allow me to add text but not upload photo's.

Thats it for now. Take care

Out for a Walk

Went out for a walk Saturday afternoon. This Inukshuk is about 1 km from where I am staying. Not too far but I did manage to get some frostbite on my face as it was -40 with the wind chill. I ended up covering about 3 km. The snow is packed like concrete so its easy to walk on. Even the drifts will support a persons weight. Now I know why I could never build an igloo as a kid.