The tourism mirage

Many Nunavut residents know about the phenomenon called the “Arctic mirage,” that visual trick that sunlight creates when it passes through frigid air, making non-existent objects look real to the careless observer.

These optical illusions sometimes fooled explorers like Robert Peary, who duped...

Sorting out land use in Iqaluit

As Iqaluit’s population expands year after year, it’s to be expected that growing numbers of people will compete for shrinking expanses of open space.

This includes open space that once accommodated many types of informal, traditional and unregulated uses.

As of this year, the city’s population...

NAM revives the mullet

Like ugly fashion trends, bad ideas often rise and fall in cycles.

So it’s to be expected that sooner or later somebody would resurrect Nunavut’s public policy version of the mullet: regional health boards.

Enter the newly-revived Nunavut Association of Municipalities. In a resolution this past...

How to make tragedies preventable

On June 7, 2011, a young Iqaluit family of four was annihilated.

A woman and two children died by homicide. The fourth, a 44-year-old man who was the apparent perpetrator of the first three killings, died by suicide.

The dead cannot tell us why or how this happened. That’s how death works. It’s...

Against the evidence

In the appalling rant he gave this past May 31 in the Nunavut legislature, Tagak Curley, the health and social services minister, opened his remarks by claiming that the press “continue to try and undermine the integrity of the Inuit leadership.”

Unfortunately, Curley’s words undermine him to a...

Nunavut likes a winner

When political leaders and senior bureaucrats across Nunavut woke up May 3 to contemplate the previous night’s election result, it’s a fair bet that most were smiling from ear to ear.

Given Nunavut’s utter dependence on the federal government, stability and predictability are crucial. The...

Nunavik: where fear reigns supreme

Ordinary people are dying in the streets as you read this, in countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen, for the right to choose who will govern them in free elections.

But this past April 27 in Nunavik, a majority of voters said no to that very idea: an elected government leader and an elected...