Northern Life
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What Desert?
It has been raining all day. One of those steady, never letting off, rains. It actually has been raining on and off since Sunday. My fault really, we washed the truck for the first time since last fall. Arctic Bay is part of the High Arctic desert, averaging less than 6 inches of precipitation a
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Purple Saxifrage
The snow around town has pretty much disappeared. We are in a bit of a solar oven here, and tend to lose our snow earlier than much of the area around here. My in-laws just snowmobiled to Hall Beach and back last week, and they were still able to travel over the land portions of
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Ikpiarjuk
In inuktitut Arctic Bay is Ikpiarjuk, which translated means “pocket”. It is an apt description of Arctic Bay. Arctic Bay is in a bowl or a pocket, surrounded by hills.. It is by far one of the most picturesque communities I know. The entire area surrounding Arctic Bay in this part of the north Baffin
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Guacamole
Surprisingly, we have pretty good produce in our stores up here. We are fortunate enough to have jet service twice a week from Ottawa. First Air flies 727’s here on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They leave Ottawa in the morning flying direct to Iqaluit, from Iqaluit they fly to Resolute Bay and then to Nanisivik. They
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Chasing Down The Wind
I’m on a kite kick these days. It started a few days ago, when Travis picked up a kite belonging to one of the neighbours. We flew it for awhile and I think both of us were hooked. Travis really enjoys flying the kite. Well, what he really enjoys is flying the kite for a
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Water water everywhere
Drywall has begun going up inside the house. The water tank room has been drywalled in anticipation of bringing in a mechanical sub again. In Arctic Bay, indeed in much of the north, there are no sewers, or water mains. Water comes to your house in a truck, and the sewage gets taken away in
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Fire is inspirational
Stop, drop and roll! I set myself on fire last night. It is amazing, when there is so many things to think about and try and keep organized, how incredibly stupid one can get. After work, I started on supper, and put a pot of turnip on the stove to boil. Gary came in and
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Sealift
Our grocery Sealift catalogue arrived in the mail today. (We generally get mail twice a week on plane days, Wednesdays and Saturdays). If you’d like a challenge sometime, sit down and make a grocery order for as much of your drygoods that you’d use in a year. Oh, and you need to order everything in