Cardiac Arrest, Northern Prices Style

Please swallow all foods and take a deep breath before casting your eyes on the photo below.







Clyde River, Nunavut. 12 cans of Coke. And no, there is nothing special about this case of pop. It's just a regular case of Coca Cola. For $60.

I used to think $21 for 12 cans in Rankin Inlet was expensive. I'll never say that again.

Photo credit goes to a brave coworker of mine.

Baker Lake

I made a trip inland to Baker Lake this past week, and thought I'd put up some photos.





















An old Hudson Bay Company post which has been turned into a visitors centre.






















A little bit of leftover snow on June 28th.






















Snowmobiles on Baker Lake.



















Calm Air Saab 340 landing at the Baker Airport.

There are a few more photos of Baker on our Flickr page if anyone is interested. The link is over on the right sidebar. Here's a couple more pictures from around Rankin the last few days...



This is the remaining ice in the Meliadine River.



Jaime on the mighty Honda.

(posted by Jeff)

I did take photos!

Hah... and Jaime says I'd never get photos of Chesterfield Inlet:



I missed some great photos coming into town, but checked my camera and couldn't take anything. This is the Chesterfield Inlet Airport.



The doors of smaller airports in this region have walk-in-cooler (or fridge) doors on them which I find kind of amusing.



This is a photo of the edge of town. I went to get a pop at what I thought was the Northern, and an older man indicated that the Northern was way across town, so I went thirsty all day until I got back to Rankin.



This is the tail end of a Calm Air Cargo plane that left before us. I really wanted to take a picture of the vintage bird I was flying in (A Fairchild Merlin IIIA? ca. 1970?), but checked my camera before it came in!

(posted by Jeff) (with Jaime's help in the photo department)

Whale Cove

I made my first trip to Whale Cove on Tuesday. Despite my return flight being held back a day by poor weather*, it was a tremendously pleasant town to visit.

It's intimidating travelling into a community for the first time... numerous bad thoughts flip through your head like walking 20km from the airport to your hotel if your ride doesn't show (almost happened to me in Coral Harbour due to miscommunication), but Whale Cove was very friendly. Having only 300 people in town, everyone knows everyone else, and goes out of their way to welcome strangers.

Chatting with an old friend tonight on the 'net made me realize how difficult it is to describe living here in Nunavut. Where do you start when someone asks, "so tell me, what is it like there?" It's not like living on Mars, but it isn't quite Southwestern Ontario, either. There is so many similarities and so many differences. I was totally stumped, and still, after some thought, cannot explain how it feels to live here day-to-day. To summarize

Things I like:

No traffic, minimal driving.
No shopping, few stores.
We're five minutes from nowhere.
I get to travel around and see neat places at work.
Our apartment is quiet.
The people: much friendlier than in Ontario.
The cat seems to like it here. I swear she just smiled.
Minus 50 is nifty.

Things I don't like so much:

The cable goes out occasionally, but we're too cheap to get satellite.
I (we) spend too much time playing on the computer and watching TV.
There aren't (as m)any good restaurants to eat at. No jalapeno soup or jambalaya - anywhere!!!
I don't feel as productive at work as I did working in 'the South.'
I don't get to see my family.

Things I'd really like right now, but can't have:

A 26 oz. medium-rare striploin steak from The Keg, complete with garlic mashed potatoes and three pounds of butter.
A spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's.
A pint of Kilkenny's. Or 30.
A visit with my family.
A top-speed run in my old Toyota Camry.

*I say 'by poor weather,' but I have a suspicion that it was due to the fact that I was the only person leaving town that day: the weather the day of my departure was substantially worse.

(posted by Jeff)

Imminent Storm Threatens Village

We have our first-ever blizzard warning in effect as residents of Nunavut. Straight from the lips of Environment Canada:

Blizzard warning for Rankin Region including Whale Cove upgraded from winter storm watch Blizzard conditions will develop overnight or on Sunday morning. This is a warning that blizzard conditions are imminent or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements. An intense low pressure system moving into the region will bring strong northwesterly winds of 60 gusting to 80 km/h in its wake creating blizzard conditions overnight or Sunday morning. Conditions will improve by Monday morning.

We're very excited. We've heard so much about the bad winter storms this area is subject to, but this is the first evidence we've seen that supports it.

In other news, I was in Repulse Bay this week, here's a couple of pictures... The first is an overview of about half the town, and the second is an arctic circle monument as seen from my hotel window.














(posted by Jeff)

Bye, Baygulls!

The baygulls are flying south!
I just heard about 5 minutes' worth of squawking over the apartment. It comes and goes but it definitely sounds like they're all leaving.

I don't blame them, it is getting seriously cold here. It's been averaging about 6-7C during the day AND night. Putting on the toque and winter jacket to go fetch the mail felt weird but it doesn't usually occur to me all that often anymore how warm it is in Ontario right now. At some point it's probably not healthy to keep comparing here to Ontario and I'm glad to say I don't think about Ontario that much these days.

It also actually occurred to me just now that Jeff and I will soon be wearing down-filled parkas. Why are we using bird feathers if most birds fly south for winter?! Doesn't that mean their feathers aren't warm enough for winter? Heh..figure that one out!

So Jeff went to Chesterfield Inlet yesterday. Due to the fact he was only there for 3 hours, he did not get any photos or any stories of what it's like there.

Jeff's flight tomorrow for Coral Harbour has been cancelled as well which is probably better for him anyway since he has a cold.

Oh yes, the dreaded television situation. One of Jeff's coworkers let us borrow one of his TVs while he took his vacation. We were excited, thinking we'd at least get CBC but alas, nothing comes in. Our antenna is with the rest of our stuff in Mystery Land right now so no TV for us. I looked into the satellite attached to our building but it's going to take a long time to ever get connected to it. We have to have our own receiver shipped up (there's $100-$200). Once it arrives, we pay some guy another $200 to probably plug the thing into the wall (it looks like our apartment is already satellite-ready), and then fork over another $136 for annual "maintenance." After that $436+ (at the cheapest), we have to give Bell even MORE money on a monthly basis for the channel package we want. Needless to say, I'm disappointed. I've never had satellite TV before so I didn't realize the dish can bring in multiple TV packages. I just assumed a package was assigned to the dish and the guy would have some spare receivers lying around. He'd hook 'er up and we'd be set.

One more week until school, yay!

(posted by Jaime)

Coral Harbour

Thought I'd make a quick post with a few photos from my excursion to Coral Harbour. There's a few more on our Flickr page, but these are my favourites.


Down the street from my shack hotel. After I took this photo, I noticed that about 6 kids were watching me take the picture and taking a liking to my digital camera. By the time I walked a few houses down the street, the kid-count was up to at least a dozen.


A view of houses along one of the main thoroughfares ;)


I'm presuming this is the "harbour" part of Coral Harbour. I was surprised at the size of some of the boats (none visible in this picture), but presume they're part of a commercial fishing operation (?)

P.S. This is for Mudlark (Jess). She has the option to move to either Cambridge Bay or Iqaluit and she's not quite sure where to go. Any thoughts? She'd appreciate it!

(posted by Jeff)