It's summer

Who can believe it the Summer weather is here,the last of the ice disappeared off the Bay about 2 weeks ago. Flowers are blooming on the hills and the Sea Lift ships have started to arrive.

The Sea Lift will bring us all our major supplies until next summer except for what can be flown in throughout the year. An example is that for the last four weeks I have not been able to purchase any Club Soda in a grocery store here, it's all gone until the next shipment arrives.

Everybody is waiting for things to come on the Sea Lift. Building supplies for homes, groceries for the stores, groceries for individual home orders, new cars, etc. As well the tankers are bringing enough fuel to run the town for a year. Enough to supply vehicles, run the Electrical Generators for the town,keep the water pumps working, the boats, skidoos and ATV's moving.

Lots of people are going out on holidays,either to the south or out on the land if your Inuit.

The temperature has been running at about 16 degrees which can be very pleasant or cool if you get a wind from the northwest.

I have linked another batch of pictures, you will see the shoreline around Iqaluit when the tide is out (look at all the exposed rocks that are below the tide line), summer flowers and pictures from a foggy day . Hope you enjoy!!

Iqaluit Summer 09

It's spring at last summers coming fast

Hi folks,

It's been a few weeks since I last communicated with you. Lot's of things have been happening. The snow is mostly all gone in and around Iqaluit, but there is still snow out on the hills and ice in the bay. Two ice breakers arrived this week to break up the ice, which is still 5 feet thick in the deep water, to allow the sealift ships to get in over the next few weeks.

It's getting warmer, plus 13 degrees this week with only a light breeze. It can still get cool at night but with sunlight from 3:00 am to 11:00 pm and dusk the rest of the time it never gets really dark and cold.

We've taken some pictures of some of the wild flowers that are coming up quickly with the long daylight hours. Hope you enjoy them.

The work crews have started to prepare some of the remaining dirt roads for paving, they are to finish the last 17 km this summer. Habitat for Humanity has started to build a new house and the church is to put up it framing this summer so lots of construction is going on.

I have been asked to work with the Air Cadets and will start training Cadets for a drum line in the fall, as well as instructing a course in Animation Basics so lots of prep work to do over the next 8 weeks.

Leslie has a new OR Manager at work, there hasn't been one since she arrived, so her presence is very welcome.

I guess that's all for now, so enjoy the photos!

Iqaluit spring 09

It's been 6 weeks

Hi everybody,

Know it's been a while, longer than I certainly thought it would be. The weeks go by quickly with both of us working. Sometimes we just get home and collapse on the couch until bedtime.

Leslie has been on call all of the last month, so her beeper can go off at the most unexpected times, most likely when visiting, out for supper or getting ready for church.
She's had to deal with frostbite, c-sections and other unpredictable emergencies.

We are slowly adjusting to the way things function here. Lots of taxi rides to get around town. We had no internet for over a week, the signal tower and our mobile antenna didn't line up. I have now changed providers and things are working much better.

Click on the photo and it will take you to this posts collection of images which include the hospital, downtown Iqaluit and the Frobisher Inn. To put things in perspective, downtown is on the bay, the Frobisher Inn is on a hill behind downtown and the hospital is further up the hill behind the Frobisher.

More Iqaluit

We just did our first order of Food Mail this week. On Monday, we called a grocery store in Quebec to place our order, the food being priced at southern rates. The store then put together the order, packed it and took it to the Airport, today we went to the First Air Cargo building by taxi to pick up our boxes and take them home. Food Mail can only include healthy foods, no pop, chips, cookies or breaded foods but will be shipped at a discounted rate, to encourage healthy eating.

We are learning to shop on line from companies that will ship north and we now know that to buy fabric locally we must go to Baffin Electronics. We've also learned that if you don't know where to find something ask a taxi driver.

More pictures and life stories soon...

We've Arrived

On March 20th, at 9:05 am, we left Ottawa for Nunavut. At 12:15 we landed at the airport in Iqaluit, On the Monday the 23rd, Leslie started working at the General Hospital and by Thursday I had been hired by OutCrop Nunavut, a marketing and advertising firm as their Senior Marketing Strategist.

On Monday the 30th the Government showed us our first Townhouse, which we didn't feel our furniture would fit into, most specifically our Queen size bed. On Tuesday they showed us a second one and on Wednesday we took possession.

Since we had no furniture yet, we were able to obtain some Government furniture, that you can see in the first of our photos.

(Click on the link below to go to our photos and then click on the Slideshow to see the photos. After the Slideshow starts you can click on the + symbol to increase the viewing time for the photos)

Our First Photos

The next Monday our own furniture arrived and with furniture in and pictures hung it is quite comfortable.

We are located on the top of a hill that overlooks Iqaluit and when you walk down to the end of our street you can look out of over the community.