Nunavut III

The snow here isn't as 'snowy' as all that, really. I wouldn't really describe it as 'snowy'. "Snowy" is kind of like how it was last winter in Ottawa, or how it was during the TO storm of '99. Yes, there's a lot of snow here, but it just kind of is brushed onto the rocks. So you kinda see the rocks jutting out here and there in the snow, or, at least, the snowbanks look kind of jaggedy, but there's not really a lot of snow, per se. The locals have told me that there's actually not that much snow up here at all (?What??? But everything's white!). This is problematic for me, as it hurts just that much more when you slip and fall. It's a good thing I'm not a little old lady, otherwise, I'm pretty sure I might've broken something by now...
A few facts about Iqaluit and Nunavut, as I've noticed sommmmme people (not to mention any names... :) ) thought I was going to the Yukon, or Yellowknife or close to Alaska... I thought most of us took Gr. 9 geography, right? though someone here reminded me that Nunavut didn't exactly exist when most of us went through Gr. 9...
The territory of Nunavut was created on April 1, 1999, after years of negotiation with the feds. With the creation of this territory, the Inuit have forever relinquished the right for any further land claims with the Canadian gov't. Which is not too bad, really, as the Inuit had negotiated land development claims, etc, giving them the lion's share of diamond, gold and silver development in the north. (Which, as a side note, d/t some gov't funding changes, etc etc, the price of Canadian diamonds mayyyyy shoot wayyyy up in 2005 (maybe, maybe), so if you were thinking about getting one, 2004 might be a better idea to purchase one... just FYI...) Nunavut takes up a grand total of 20% of Canada's land mass, but only has about 28,000 people in the territory, approximately 85% of which are Inuit (or Inuk), the rest, I'm presuming, being gov't workers.. :P Although really, most of the jobs requiring an education do belong to those from outside of the territory, as there aren't that many Inuit who have enough education to hold the higher-ranking jobs (there are a lot of social and political issues here wrt how they're planning on being able to deal with that now and in the future, but that's not primary to this discussion today). There is a total of 20km of highway in the entire territory, which is not even in Iqaluit... it's actually up north from a small community that leads up to an abandoned mine... (Don't ask me why. I betcha nobody really knows why either... it's not a terribly useful highway). And, I've also learned, very few to no Inuit actually lives on the land 100% of the time at all; mostly everyone lives in one of the housing communities built and stretched out over Nunavut. So no iglus, unless someone's got a hankering to go hunting far far out... Iqaluit itself has about 6000 people in it, of which only about 60% are Inuit. There are two gas stations, three banks, one post office, one KFC and one Pizza Hut. There's other things too, but I just thought I would give you the general idea :P So there you go, a bit of Canadiana for y'all...
On a 'cool!' kind of note: I'm going to be helping lead a children's choir for an Easter service out here, which I find terribly exciting! (So see, guys, kind of in a REALLY oblique way, I AM kind of doing the Messiah, kind of, uhh, yeah.... :P )
Hope you are well!
julia