Blue Bathtubs and Caribou Stew

I arrived in Iqaluit on Monday, May 30^th. For those of you who don’t know, which is likely considering until I planned this trip, I had no idea either, Iqaluit is on the Eastern side of Nunavut and is only a 5 hour flight (including a 1 hour transfer) away from Toronto! I woke up early Monday morning (lies actually, I stayed up all night attempting to write a paper…but that’s for another post), and made it to Pearson two hours before my 8am flight. I had never been to the airport, taking a domestic flight on a Monday morning… the airport was PACKED with business people. I felt pretty spiffy in all honesty, ‘cuz here I was in my dress pants, and carry-on bag in tow, also taking a flight for work, but unlike all these “southerner” business folk I was holding my parka-esque winter jacketheading up North.

My flight to Ottawa was a breeze, I fell asleep for the entire hour. Arrived at the airport, walked down the short walkway to my gate, and waited for my 3 hour flight to Iqaluit. Honestly, at this point I was so exhausted I had no idea what to expect, and really had no feelings at all (other than ‘ohhhh man, my paper is not done yet and I’m about to board another plane’).

After three hours of flying our pilot announced that we were preparing for landing. I took a peak outside my window to check out the landscape. All I saw for miles and miles was snow and rock. Surely we weren’t landing… HERE! But, oh yes, we were landing and we did.

Iqaluit is a small port town, although it is the capital city, that hugs the Frobisher Bay (wiki this one). It’s land formation is really nothing I’d seen before, it’s ALL rock, dark brown almost black rocks in hill formation, and snow. Now that the snow is starting to melt there are dirty roads everywhere! It gets pretty dusty.

When I got off the plane a cute girl named Lindsay was holding a sign with my name on it. She works with Jennifer, my preceptor and the Territorial Nutritionist, at Health and Social Services. Lindsay and I made some small talk as we waited for my luggage in the airport the size of my high school cafeteria (the entire airport….. the luggage pick up area was the size of a maybe the principal’s office…). Lindsay is a recent MPH grad from U of A in Health Promotion. She was here about a year ago working with a different organization but now she is the coordinator for the Premier’s special health project (more details about work stuff to come).

We quickly made it to Jennifer’s car (borrowed by Lindsay), and it was WINDY. They weren’t joking when they said to bring a windproof coat (of course I didn’t… nor did I pack my gloves in an easily accessible location). My hands froze… in May… I was not enthused.

Lindsay and I rushed off to my apartment, the “8 Storey” building, the tallest building in town, and arguably the tallest in the Arctic. It’s attached to a Hotel with a pretty sweet set up (Hotel has: swimming pool, gym, video rental, the town’s only movie theatre, and a bar – that serves beer, one of the only places in town where you can get alcohol). We pull my 4 60lbs suitcases into the elevator and find my room on the 4^th floor, and walk in.

Holy smokes! I have a beautiful view! My living room window faces Frobisher Bay, and because the building is located on a hill, I also get a sweet video of the houses and buildings around town. Right infront of my window is a white round building, one of the elementary schools.

View from my living room window. The white building is the elementary school. The white land in the distance is the Frobisher Bay.

My two bedroom apartment includes a TV, microwave, fridge, stove, dining table and two sweet couches. I’m impressed. I mosey on over to the rooms. One has a single bed with a window also facing the bay, and then my room has a double bed with the same sweet view.

My Living Room

Now, the bathroom. Wicked storage space, decently sized everything else, but when I peak into the bathtub it’s entirely BLUE. Like SKY BLUE! It looked as if my entire bathtub was simply painted blue by the previous residents, but this is not the case.

Blue bathtub

Apparently this building (and a few others around town) are so old that they use copper piping and the water carries this copper something into the bathtub (and around the sinks but not as bad) and leaves this lovely blue residue. Nothing to be worried about, we simply had to talk to one of the guys at the office and he would send someone to clean, but it was so peculiar to see a blue bathtub!

Before we left the apartment (within 30 mins of arriving into town), Lindsay hands me a paper bag with some containers. She brought me yesterday’s leftovers as she figured I’d be hungry after our upcoming meeting. So sweet! One container had Artic Char, a fish that is the colour of salmon but is in the same family as trout (?), another had mayo for the char, then a delicious apple crumble, and the last, Caribou stew.

For those of you who don’t know my eating habits well, I don’t eat meat. Maybe in my mom’s lasagna (macarona bashamelle) or grape leaves (warah enab), but really no red meat please. But Lindsay and I had this conversation, she doesn’t eat much meat either, so there wasn’t much in this soup. Instead it was barley, potatoes, carrots and a lot of other tasty herbs and spices.

Caribou is eaten a lot in Nunavut. It’s considered a “country food”, that is a food that is native to the land here and hunted, grown or harvested for food. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_food). The soup was delicious, and I just left the meat on the side when I ate at my home alone (thankfully there wasn’t much so I wasn’t feeling guilty about wasting good food). I know that I will encounter this a lot, particularly since my role here (or one of my primary roles) is to work on the new Nunavut Food Guide, which includes a section on just country foods. I’m not sure that I’m going to try caribou just yet, but perhaps in the coming months I’ll give it a taste… (dad.. I said perhaps.. :P).

Anyways, more post-1:15pm-arrival rush, Lindsay and I skirted off to buy a modem so I could access internet at home (no not a wireless router for home, so yes ladies and gentlemen, this post was uploaded via a cable connection to my computer…). 3G of data or whatever was over 60$!! (plus the rental and start up fees -- just under 250$... was going to cry, but after I realized my cell phone doesn't work in Iqaluit -- sorry Iphone users, you are not welcome.... it was well worth the expense). We then boogied over to a Nutrition Steering Committee meeting for 2:45 where Jennifer and 11 health staff were discussing nutrition programming in the territory.

The meeting lasted until just after 5pm. I was able to meet some of the amazing people who run the show for the entire territory. It’s not common in many health offices that a dietetics student will meet with and sit next to the Territorial Nutritionist (one of 3 dietitians in all of Nunavut at the moment), the Chief Medical Officer Health, the head Public Health Nurse and the entire government’s health and wellness team. I felt pretty (exhausted) but also quite special.

On my way home I stopped at the Arctic Ventures to pick up a few things before going home for the night. I was warned about the northern food prices, but really I was shocked. FOUR small bananas and 2L of milk cost be 9.78$. No joke. More about the food prices and food in general in future posts, but check out Sounds of Iqaluit for more about Arctic Ventures specifically. That night, I slept like a baby; the midnight sun not effecting me (just yet). Again, another posting to come about the midnight sun soon.

Thanks for making it all the way through this lengthy post. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my time here with you soon.