Iqaluit

Iqaluit is the capital city of Nunavut, Canada's largest and newest territory, which was separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999 as a homeland for the area's dominant Inuit population. As Nunavut's largest settlement, Iqaluit serves as the administrative center of the territory.

Landscape

Iqaluit is located on the southern tip of Baffin Island in Frobisher Bay, near the mouth of the Sylvia Grinnell River. The sparsely populated island is the largest in Canada and the fifth largest in the world, measuring 507,451 square kilometers (195,928 square miles) in area. The remote location of the settlement means that it can only be accessed by airplane or ship.

Iqaluit lies at an elevation of 34 meters (112 feet), at 60 degrees latitudes. Winters are long, dark, and freezing, with an average low temperatures ranging from –31 to –23 degrees Celsius (–24 to –11 degrees Fahrenheit) in January. Severe winds often force the temperature down dramatically. The short, mild summers are characterized by long hours of daylight, with average temperatures ranging from 5 to 11 degrees Celsius (41 to 51 degrees Fahrenheit) in July.

Treeless, wind-swept, gently rolling hills make up the similarly harsh natural surroundings. Only during the brief summers is there any variation, when hardy vegetation such as wild purple saxifrage, berries, and lichen covers the tundra.

The settlement overlooks Koojesse Inlet, which extends 150 miles into Baffin Island. The shores are steep, and numerous small islands dot the waters. Iqaluit's harbor does not have a dock. Instead, after the frozen waters break up in July, barges transport goods near land from ships anchored in the bay. At neap tide, the water level drops nearly 40 feet, and the barges can then be unloaded.

During the Cold War, the United States military maintained bases and radar sites in and near Iqaluit. Toxic materials dumped into the ground led to serious concerns about pollution in the area. Programs to clean up the toxic waste have been implemented.

People

Iqaluit grew quickly through the 1990s, especially with the creation of Nunavut, and was incorporated as a city in 2001. According to a 2016 census estimate, Iqaluit was home to 7,740 of Nunavut's 35,944 residents. Of the few settlements in the territory, Iqaluit has the greatest ethnic diversity. Roughly 44 percent of the population, consisting mostly of Newfoundlanders, Francophones from Quebec, and Scots, is non-Inuit. Iqaluit is characterized by its young population, with a median age just over thirty-one years old.

Inuktitut, the Inuit language, is one of the Inuit traditions that have been threatened by encounters with modernity and other cultures. Belonging to the Inuit-Aleut language family, Inuktitut did not have a written form until 1894. Since then, a system devised by the Anglican missionary Edmund Peck has been used to represent its consonants and vowels. Some concepts do not have equivalents in the preexisting vocabulary, so neologisms have been invented and glossaries compiled to accommodate spheres such as law, math, and science. In addition to Inuktitut, many Inuit speak French and English, the other two official languages of Nunavut.

Hunting and fishing continue to be a central part of Inuit culture, though these traditions have also undergone significant changes. Whereas hunting used to be done with harpoons, nowadays rifles are commonly used and hunters often transport themselves on snowmobiles rather than sleds. As established in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the Inuit have been given many rights for hunting and fishing. However, animal rights activists have successfully reduced the number of animals that are hunted each year by encouraging governments to restrict the sale of certain animal pelts.

It is estimated that 40 to 70 percent of the traditional Inuit diet consists of meat from wild animals, and they have evolved a distinct cuisine. Popular dishes include arctic char, a pink-fleshed fish that is cooked and dried; the brains of various animals; caribou antler tips and caribou meat, eaten cooked and raw; raw seal meat and seal rib broth; raw whale meat, called mattaq; and polar bear.

They also use the hides of polar bear, seals, caribou, and wolves to make clothing that is effective against the extreme cold. Traditionally the craft of Inuit women, the handmade clothes are intricately stitched and designed, often with beadwork.

The clash with modernity has engendered many social problems, including alcoholism, spousal abuse, and suicide. Before it became the capital of Nunavut, Iqaluit had a reputation for heavy drinking and violence.

Economy

Since it became the capital, Iqaluit has seen a steady reduction in its unemployment rate. In 2018, Iqaluit's unemployment rate was approximately 9.6 percent, lower than Nunavut's 14.1 percent, but higher than Canada's overall 7.7 percent. Three sectors that employ high percentages of Iqaluit workers are construction, business services such as accounting and computer programming, and hospitality, including restaurants, hotels, and tour companies.

Tourism has been increasing as the infrastructure develops and new markets open. Iqaluit is the headquarters for several important organizations that support tourism ventures: Nunavut Tourism, the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association, and the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce. Many Iqaluit businesses showcase traditional arts and crafts, such as paintings, carvings, fur products, and handmade clothing and jewelry.

Continued growth for the settlement itself and for the tourism industry depends on its transportation infrastructure. The Iqaluit International Airport is an important hub for flights to Ottawa and Montreal, smaller Baffin Island communities, other communities further north in the Arctic Circle, and Greenland. The airport also allows for transport to the three nearby national parks. During the summer months, barges and cruise ships can reach the settlement.

Iqaluit is not linked to other settlements by land, and the few roads within the community are made of gravel, due to the extreme difficulty and expense of building and maintaining asphalt roads on permafrost. The population moves around using privately owned vehicles and a network of taxis.

The economic outlook for Iqaluit is generally positive, though high prices and the limited infrastructure have restricted growth. It is expected that the primary business sectors will continue to grow, that Iqaluit will welcome a larger number of tourists and residents each year, and that more investors will be attracted to the region. Exploration for natural resources is currently being carried out on Baffin Island, and the settlement could eventually support a mining industry.

Landmarks

Iqaluit is home to the same services and infrastructure of any Canadian city, but on a much smaller scale. It has a theater, a cinema, research institutes, a library, an indoor swimming pool, an ice arena, hotels, restaurants, Catholic and Anglican churches, public schools, and government offices as well as a hospital, a college, and a museum and arts center.

The Baffin Regional Hospital and health center run by the Department of Health and Social Services are the only hospitals in Iqaluit, and each region in the territory is connected to medical services in southern Canada, in the event that the local health services are unable to provide care.

Iqaluit is also home to the Nunavut Arctic College, which offers postsecondary training and courses; it also offers degree programs through the universities of McGill and Dalhousie. Courses such as jewelry-making and timber craft reflect the central role of arts and crafts in the local economy. The Nunavut Research Institute at the college is responsible for helping collect data to generate statistics about the entire territory.

Inuit arts and crafts are on display at the Arctic College Arts and Crafts Centre and the Nunatta Sunaguttangit Museum, which features prints, sculptures, paintings, and clothing. At the Unikkaarvik Visitor Information Center, there are exhibits dedicated to Inuit culture and history.

Several tourist attractions lie near Iqaluit. The settlement serves as a gateway to the three nearby territorial parks and a group of ancient Thule ruins, and also to the region's three national parks. In recent years, tourist companies offering adventure travel, hunting trips, and ecotourism have sprouted up.

One festival celebrated in Iqaluit is called "Toonik Tyme," held in the spring and based on local folklore about the coming of the season. The tradition includes Inuit musical events, such as drumming, dancing and throat singing. Hunting is another part of the festival, with rabbit, ptarmigan, and seal as the quarry. There is also an igloo-building contest, the winner being the first person to build an igloo that will not collapse under the weight of a man.

History

The archaeological record is still being pieced together from sites around Baffin Island, but evidence suggests that the history of the Inuit's most direct ancestors dates back about one thousand years to the people of the Thule culture. Older remains from the Dorset culture, which preceded the Thule culture, have also been discovered in the area.

It is thought that the Nordic explorer Leif Eriksson visited the southern tip of Baffin Island some one thousand years ago, circa 1000 CE, but concrete evidence for this event does not exist. Thus, the recorded history of Iqaluit begins in 1576, with the arrival of British explorer Martin Frobisher.

Frobisher was searching for gold and the Northwest Passage when he arrived at Koojesse Inlet, and in 1578 he established a small settlement at the site of modern-day Iqaluit, naming it Frobisher Bay. Neither the gold nor the passage was found, however, and the region was not considered economically viable to Europeans for another two hundred years.

With the advent of commercial whaling and the fur trade, the Inuit began to experience more sustained contact with the wider world. However, it was not until 1914 that the first Europeans settled at Frobisher Bay.

The Inuit continued their nomadic lifestyle on Baffin Island until World War II. During that period, several military projects were based at Frobisher Bay, and local Inuit were employed in their construction. In 1941, the US Air Force built a weather station there, called Crystall II. This was followed the next year by a large air base, where supply planes could refuel on their way to Europe. The base was sold to the Canadian government after the war.

In the 1950s, the US military erected "distant early warning" radar stations across the Arctic as part of its Cold War strategy. Frobisher Bay's population, both Inuit and non-Inuit, grew as a result of these projects. By 1959, the Canadian federal government had brought doctors, administrators, and teachers to the settlement.

From 1960 to 1963, Frobisher Bay was home to a US Strategic Air Command unit. Once the Air Force pulled out, the settlement developed into the Eastern Arctic's center for communication and transportation.

It took more than twenty years for the Inuit to realize a self-governing territory for their people. Negotiations with the Canadian government began in the 1970s.

In 1993, negotiators signed the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement in Iqaluit. It was one of the largest native settlements in history and granted the Inuit roughly 2.1 million square kilometers (810,000 square miles) of land, and broad rights to the region's natural resources. In a 1995 territory-wide referendum, Iqaluit was chosen as the territorial capital over the second largest settlement in Nunavut, Rankin Inlet.

As laid out in the Land Claims Agreement, Nunavut officially became a territory on April 1, 1999, ushering in unprecedented growth for its capital.

Iqaluit cohosted the first joinitly hosted Arctic Winter Games with Nuuk, Greenland, in 2002.

In 2010, Iqaluit hosted the finance meeting portion of that year's Group of Seven summit.

Trivia

• The Iqaluit International Airport boasts an airstrip measuring 8,000 feet, the longest in the Canadian Arctic.
• The houses in Iqaluit are built on stilts so that their heat does not melt the permafrost and cause the houses to collapse.
• Sir Martin Frobisher, for whom the Iqaluit settlement was formerly named, believed that he would find the route to China through the Kojesse Inlet.
• Catholic and Anglican missionaries began working in settlements throughout Baffin Island in the early 1900s.

Bibliography

Bennett, John R., and Susan Rowley, eds. Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut. McGills-Queen's UP, 2004.

Ford, James, Marie-Pierre Lareau, and Will Vanderbilt. "The Characteristics and Experience of Community Food Program Users in Arctic Canada: A Case Study from Iqaluit, Nunvut." BMC Public Health, vol. 12, no. 1, 2012, pp. 464–74.

Ford, James, et al. "The Dynamic Multiscale Nature of Climate Change Vulnerability: An Inuit Harvesting Example." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 103, no. 5, 2013, pp. 1193-1211.

Kikkert Peter. "Nunavut." Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 8 July 2021, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/nunavut/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.

Newberry, Nick. "Iqaluit." Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 7 Mar. 2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/iqaluit/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.

"Nunavut's 'Ugly' Double-Digit unemployment Rate Must Come Down, Says Main." Nunavut News, 23 Feb. 2020, www.nunavutnews.com/nunavut-news/nunavuts-ugly-double-digit-unemployment-rate-must-come-down-says-main/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2021.