Greetings From Nunavut!

Rae-Lynne Patterson, 29, lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut, where she is the manager of library services for Nunavut Arctic College. She has lived in this capital city of 6,000 for five years. Not only has she made a life for herself in the middle of nowhere, but she feels lucky to be experiencing such a different way of living. Here is her story.

I moved up here originally for a summer job. I'm a librarian by trade so I was just graduating from library school, and I saw a four-month summer position up here to do cataloguing for the research institute. At that time I didn't have any other jobs lined up, and I've always wanted to see as much of this country as I could, so I figured, 'Heck, why not? If I hate it, it's only four months.' I loved it, though, so I stayed.

I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, in the sense that I've lived in small and remote communities before, so I thought I'd be able to adapt quite well and it would be nothing out of the ordinary. I expected it would be somewhat different, but was not prepared for just how different life is up here.

Everday for the first six months here I came across something that would make me realize I was living in a special place, like the Inuktitut syllabics on the road signs. (The language of the Inuit is called Inuktitut and most of the language is written in symbols or syllabics and is in English and Inuktitut together).

Iqualuit is considered 'the big city,' among other places in the territory. I've had the opportunity to travel to about four other communities up here so when I say Iqualuit is the big city, it really is. The next largest is 2,400 people. Over half of the surrounding communities are less than 1,000, towns of a few hundred people with no roads leading in or out and everything is flown in. In terms of ethnicity, I think the split between Inuit and non-Inuit is 60 per cent Inuit versus 40 per cent non-Inuit. Through the rest of the territory it's 85 per cent Inuit.

Much like these other communities, we are equally isolated. We have roads in town but they don't lead anywhere. We can't drive out of Iqualuit; we can only drive within the city. If you want to leave, you have to fly out. We're pretty lucky here because we have two grocery stores and daily flights with two air carriers. We've got a fully-stocked grocery store where you can get pretty much everything you need. The difference is in choice. For example, if you like canned asparagus, there's only one brand to choose from. Not that I eat canned asparagus; that's just an example. The produce is often-ah, not so great. Sometimes it's moldy on the shelves. I mean, they do their best, but it travels a long way to get to us. Basically, you just load up whenever you go down south for a trip. You can always tell when you're on a flight with other northerners because instead of suitcases, we use giant Rubbermaid totes. Don't get me wrong - we can get what we need up here, like toilet paper, but it's crazy expensive. So, you basically make use of every single inch of your luggage, and if there's room to cram in a couple rolls of toilet paper, you do it.

When the ice breaks in the summer, it opens up new ways to get supplies in. They send up barges for those few months when the water is open. We call them "sea lifts" and use them to order a year's worth of certain supplies. Right now I have a year's worth of canned corn sitting in my sea lift room. The thing is, when you're ordering your sea lift, there are things you think you'll need and realize later that you don't. It took me three years to go through a year's supply of pineapple because I thought I needed canned pineapple more than I did.

We also don't have liquor stores up here. Iqualuit is a restricted community, so you can order drinks in licensed establishments but there's no where to buy alcohol for personal use. Once we ordered one year's worth of beer - at that point we'd stopped calling it a sea lift and called it the beer lift. I'm pretty sure I can say I don't ever want to drink Rickard's Red again.

Besides drinking beer in the warmth of our apartments, the place to go here is the Legion. They have legions everywhere in Canada, but here it's our 'dance club.' There's a line-up every Friday and Saturday night, so if you want to get into the Legion you have to go before 11p.m., otherwise you'll be standing in line. I believe we're the number one grossing Legion in the country because everyone goes there. We have a dance floor and a deejay. You'll see elders in jogging pants dancing next to 19-year-olds in tube tops.

The culture here is really amazing, and I think that's why I love it so much and what makes it such a unique experience. The majority of the population is Inuit and their culture is very much alive and tied to the environment. Nunavut came to be as a land claim, and the territory explicitly belongs to the Inuit. Because of this, the government is mandated to incorporate aspects of the culture, like the principals and traditional knowledge of the Inuit, into your work day. Or sometimes you'll have an IQ day where everyone has the afternoon off work to go have tea on the tundra, or play Inuit games or go snowmobiling and enjoy the land.

We have festivals here and a big spring festival every year. In Iqualuit it's kind of a big deal and it's a week-long event. There are lots of activities like igloo-building contests, bannock-making contests and seal-skinning contests. That's another thing I've really come around to - seal hunting. It gets bad press, but it's really a way of life up here. You can't grow vegetables in the land up here. But the land does provide seals, so that's what the Inuit eat. And I'm telling you, nothing keeps you warmer than seal skin fur. I used to be 'Oh it's so bad, it's a faux pas to wear seal skin,' but up here seals and the Inuit are inextricably linked. I've become a huge proponent of seal hunting as a way of life.

During the festivals I've tried whale skin, which is called Muktuk. It's really chewy, eaten raw and some people eat it with a bit of soy sauce. I have to admit most of the times I've tried it, I've taken tiny little bites. Caribou I love, arctic char is fabulous. They call the local food up here "country food." It's good stuff. Also we'll have a community event where there will be drum dancing or throat singing, which is amazing to hear; it's unlike anything. Quite often events are kicked off by the lighting of the quilliq, which is a traditional lamp. Overall, the traditional Inuit life is integrated into daily living up here all the time, which is a great experience.

People always want to know about how cold it gets here. Actually, the winters are not so much colder than, say, the winters in Winnipeg. -30 degrees Celsius, according to the thermometer, but the wind chill brings it into the -40s. The difference is that we get winter most of the year. Right now, I'm hearing other parts of the country are warming up to 18 degrees, but we haven't cracked zero. Our snow won't melt for another month or so, people are still snowmobiling here. The funny thing is now it's warm enough to go outside and so this is the time of year I go out and enjoy my 'winter' sports, like cross-country skiing. As for winter fashion, yeah, there isn't any. Style goes out the window in the winter, big time. My daily wear throughout the winter consists of long johns, pants, snow pants, Sorrells that go up to my knees, a parka that is like a giant sleeping bag with a fur trim - it's crazy heavy. Then my seal skin mitts, toque underneath the parka hood, and a scarf-the whole bit. Every inch of you is covered and then some. Your hair always looks bad and I've given up on wearing mascara in the winter because it will freeze when you're outside and once you're inside it'll melt and drip all over your face.

I don't miss 'fashion' because you're surrounded by the same thing. I mean, some people may have a prettier parka than you but day in and day out you just get used to seeing people clomping around in big boots. You fit in when you look like this. I don't really notice how out of the fashion loop I am until I go south.

At the end of the day, what I like most about living up here is that it's a small town and you can walk to the post office and smile and wave to people along the way because you know them. I also really appreciate the experience of the Inuit culture and being able to gain a familiarity with this way of life and living in the arctic. I can't stress how different it is living up here and it's really special to be able to experience.

Having said that, yes there are some things I miss, like Dairy Queen, paved roads, swimming in lakes... I also miss the accessibility of my friends and family. It costs me at least $2,000 to fly home for Christmas, which is what some people pay to fly across the world so to leave here takes a lot of planning, expense and time. But it's still worth it. I feel lucky to see this part of the world and it's really too bad that not everyone gets to - I know the cost is a barrier but I highly recommend it as a unique experience if people want to get to know their country better.