Back home

I have returned from the north and have been eating fresh veggies and all sorts of wonderful things since I got back!  Its good to be home, but it was a great experience being up there.  I met some fabulous people and had some amazing experiences.  Something I will never forget!

Thanks to everyone who followed my blog, it was great sharing these experiences with you!  I am now moving to Boston, perhaps I will need to change the name to the "Beantown blog"!  Keep in touch!

Nicole

Grise Fiord

I've been wanting to share about this community for many weeks but never got to it.  Grise Fiord is Canada's most northern civilian community. (Alert is farther north but is just researchers)  The settlement was created in the 50's by the Canadian Government who moves people from northern Quebec promising them housing and hunting and that they would be able to return home in one year in exchange for sovereignty in the high arctic.  The offer to return was later withdrawn when the government realized they needed to keep people there in order to maintain their sovereignty.  Oops!  So its now a community of approx 120 people, surviving in the far, far north!

Kamik's contined

So the kamik story has gotten worse.  Today I found out that my friend Janna not only wears smelly boots, she had to chew on the soles so they would be soft enough to sew!  Ewww!  Based on the smell, I can't imagine how they must have been to suck on.  She said she almost threw up and the teacher did the other boot because one was enough.

Here is the house I walk by on my way to work, see the boots hanging?

Kamiks

As the snow continues to fall here and the weather gets cold, more parkas are coming out as well as kamiks (boots)!  My co-worker Janna made a pair for herself last year, they are made of seal skin with several layers of fleece underneath.  They look really cute, many people were grippers over them for walking on ice.  The uppers are made of treated seal skin and the bottoms are untreated and as a result... they STINK!  But my favourite part is that she has to store them in the freezer over night because they would ROT if she left them out.  Ewww!  People usually keep them in their front room where it is cold enough but because she is an apartment she doesn't have one of those.  I saw some kamiks this morning hanging on a hook outside someone's house.  Just hanging there, being kept from rotting!  I know that's what I want in my boots =)

Inukshuk

Igloolik is known for its giant inukshuk.  It was too cold to get up close but here it is from a distance.  Its at the entrance to town on the way from the airport.

Animal Watch

baby huskies

boat trail through the ice

People have been asking me about animals and while I haven't seen anything but the extremely large and scary ravens, since arriving in Igloolik I've heard about more and seen more skins.  

During visit yesterday, someone told me a few days ago there was a polar at the dump.  And today there were a bunch of boats out in the bay because apparently the belugas where in the bay and they were hunting.  I still haven't seen anything though!

I have decided that the smell of country meat (or blood, I'm not sure) is really quite distinguishable and not my favourite smell.  Many of the houses I have entered this week have fresh meat in them and the smell overpowers you when you walk in the house.  I wish I could capture it like a scratch and sniff but I don't think its a smell I will ever forget.  

The Health Centre

I'm very impressed by the health centre, its much bigger and nicer than I expected.  It's new, less than 2 years old but is a great space!  There are 5 nurses, a home care team, a community health worker (who does health promotion), a couple of admin staff and this also the home of social services (although social workers have been cut as of yesterday!).

front door

labour and delivery room

"in-patients"

waiting room

front desk

the ER

radiology

my office - usually the doctor's office

staff room

A white world!

I can't get over how white and clean the snow is here!!   A few pics from inside the health center today... it was too windy and cold to go outside!

The Igloolik research centre

views of the town and the bay

Hours of Light

Prior to coming up here, when I thought of the arctic I thought of cold and dark.  Its been cold (although not really any worse than January in Ontario), but it hasn't been that dark.  Until I got Igloolik.  

The sun rose this morning around 9:30am and set again at 4:45.  So I went to work in the dark (which was a really weird experience) and left in the dark.  Fortunately I had home visits all day so I saw the sun.  The other things that's different is when the sun is up, it doesn't really go up and over head, it just passes over a bit of the sky.   The light feels a bit like the late afternoon sun, never really that bright outside.  I'm not sure I could get used to that!

Traveling to Igloolik

I have decided that air travel in Nunavut (and perhaps the north in general) is quite unique!  My flight to Igloolik was scheduled to leave at 8:15am this morning.  When I asked a colleague what time I needed to be at the airport he said 8:00.  Being a semi-frequent flyer I thought this was a bit extreme (and a joke) so I of course aimed to be there about an hour before (usually normal for domestic flights).  Well, not in Nunavut!  You literally walk in, go up to the ticket counter and check your bags and then you wait for boarding.  There is no security!  

All of the flights were delayed this morning due to understaffing in cargo, so all the planes had to wait for the cargo to load.  Fortunately my friend the dietitian and the SLP were both flying out this morning so I had company for a few hours.  However, I did wait for an extra 3 hours for my plane (with 3 other passengers) to leave.  When our cargo was finally loaded, our flight attendant walked us out to the plane and we took off.  

The perk about flying up here is actually give you meals on the plane (unlike down south) very old school airplane food.  And you get candies when you land and your choice of snacks.  Its not too bad!

Coming into Igloolik really felt like the arctic!  It is so white and flat here!  I can see why every time is snows it turns into a blizzard!  There is NOTHING to block the wind.  We landed on a snow covered runway, literally.  And all around is nothing but white.  Its really neat, but totally weird.  The town apparently has grown to ~ 2000 people (lots of babies born here).  

It feels very arctic like, there are no roads like in Iqaluit, just snow.  People ride snow machines everywhere (even the health centre has one).  And the houses I visited today felt like true cultural experiences.  People eating country food (ie animal meat from the bones), skins drying outside, women sewing.  It feels very isolated and cold!  Very different from Iqaluit, no colourful buildings, no mountains, very few cars. 

the runway

coastline

ocean with ice chunks floating

sea ice forming (apparently this basin has ice almost year round)

Igloolik is also spelled Iglulik

I'm so happy to be here and having this experience!

Community Visit to Igloolik

So, I'm back online again and hopefully that means I will be able to post a little more often again.

This Monday, I am headed out on a week long visit to the community of Igloolik to follow-up on clients, do some new assessments (in person) and hopefully discharge some people!  We try to visit each community (I think there are about 11 total) once/year.  Due to staffing shortages that hasn't happened quite as well as they would like but it means I get to do a visit which I am pretty excited about!

Its hard to tell on this map, but Igloolik is not actually on Baffin Island, and its in the arctic circle which means I will get to see (but not touch) the arctic ocean!  It's not a very mountainous place, but one of the larger communities in Nunavut (1500 people).  I'm most excited to see the big inukshuks in town!    I'll keep you posted on the hours of daylight, from what I can tell online, it doesn't get light until about 9am.  And they have already have 4 blizzard days, so there is a high likelihood that I will get one too!  (I'm not sure if I am happy about that or not)

I hope to be online while up there, but I'll be sure to add pictures either way and I'm sure I have some good stories when I return.

Another weekend, another hike

Yesterday I hiked with our speech language pathologist Michael, his wife Regina and our physio Nancy and her boyfriend Jamie.  We went west of Iqaluit, the pics are cool because snow was threatening all day so the clouds look very dark and ominous!  It never actually snowed and it was a great day.  I was super tired when we got home, we were out for about 4.5 hours.  The tundra is fun because unlike the forest where you need to follow a trail, you can pretty much go where ever you want and now that its cold all the water is frozen so that's no longer an obstacle.  Enjoy!

Northern Lights!

I saw my first northern lights ever this week!  Pretty amazing!  They are almost always green up here (I don't know what that means in other places because I haven't seen them) but it was cool.  Also, the moon seems bigger here, I know it can't really be because I am only a few thousand kms closer, but it seems like it sometimes.  It was really beautiful the other night I was out for a walk!

Apex

So you saw what it looks like past Apex, this is Apex.  Its up the bay slightly and home of the original Hudson's Bay Company trading post!  Pretty cool!

More hiking on the tundra

More skeletons... caribou skull?

ice with the tide out

These are from my hike on Thanksgiving, I went with Meaghan and her dogs past Apex out on the tundra.