Regional Styles

  • Iqaluit: the new capital

    Iqaluit (ee-ka-loo-eet) is NUNAVUT'S LARGEST COMMUNITY and will serve as the capital. The town, whose name means "place of fish" in Inuktitut,
    was chosen in a Nunavut-wide public vote. Iqaluit is located on Frosbisher Bay's Koojesse Inlet on the southern end of Baffin Island, surrounded by
    the rolling tundra of the Hall Peninsula. The Inuit have been living along the shores of Frosbisher Bay for hundreds of years.The town's modern
    history began in 1942 with the establishment of a U.S Air Force Base.Until 1987, it was called Frobisher Bay, after British explorer
    Sir Martin Frobisher, who landed in the area in 1576 while searching for the Northwest passage.

    Today Iqaluit is a community with a mix of cultures and languages --- Inuktitut, English and French. About two-thirds of its residents are Inuit, compared to 90 percent in other Nunavut communities. The town is a bustling government, transportation and business centre with its small satellite community,
    Apex, eight kilometres to the east. Iqaluit's population has doubled in the last 20 years --- and is expected to continue to boom as it emerges as
    Canada's newest capital.


    Iqaluit by numbers

    Population (estimated) on April 1, 1999: 4,556 (17 percent of Nunavut's total) Percentage of population under 25: 49
    Number of landings and take-offs at Iqaluit Airport in 1997: 16,176, or 44 a day Number of government jobs (territorial and municipal)
    by 2000 in Iqaluit:
    904 Unemployment Rate: 19 percent
    Average Income: $35,636
    Licensed vehicles per 1,000 people: 224
    Number of taxis: 40
    Number of schools: 4 elementary, 1 high school and college

  • A culture of traditions

    Nunavut's Inuit culture is expressed in many art forms. Drum dancing, combining song, dance and story, was by far the most popular. Still practised in many communities, it once played a part in almost every gathering -- celebrations of birth, marriage, a successful hunt and the changing of the seasons. Today, it is more often performed for tourists and in cultural celebrations. Throat singing is another well-known from of Inuit music. It is usually performed by two women facing each other, creating resonant sounds from deep in the throat and thorax through voice and breathing techniques. These sounds interpret such natural forces as the northern lights, the seashore and the wind. Most Inuit art depicts traditional lifestyles, animals, spirits, shamans and mythologies of the North, with local and individual variations.

    Soapstone and ivory carvings in particular are known for the stories they tell or social conditions they depict. Local stone of varying density and colour, from black to shades of green, contributes to regional and community styles. Printmaking and wallhangings are also popular forms of expression.

  • Say it in Inuktitut

    The word Inuktitut (ee-nook-tee-tut) means "in the manner of the Inuit." Seventy percent of Nunavut's people report an Inuktitut dialect as their mother tongue. There are seven dialects and 17 sub-dialects in Nunavut. The most distinctive dialect, Innuinaqtun (ee-noo-ee-nak-tun), is spoken in the western part of the Kitikmeot region. In Nunavut, there are two distinct writing systems. A syllabic orthography, developed by missionaries more than 100 years ago, employs symbols fashioned after secretarial shorthand and is used by 94 percent of Nunavut's Inuktitut speakers. Roman orthography is used in the western part of the Kitikmeot region. The people of Nunavut, the Nunavummiut, are striving to preserve their culture through language. Inuktitut is compulsory for students from kindergarten to grade four and is an option in the higher grades.


     
    A-ngi-raq: home
    I-la-giit: family
    A-taa-ta: father
    A-naa-na: mother
    A-pu-ti: snow
    Piq-siq-tuq: blizzard
    Haa-k:i: hockey
    Nu-na-guaq: map (false land)
    Ta-la-vii-saq: television
    I-ku-ma: spark plug (fire)
    A-qia-rug-nquaq: muffler
    Ki-nau-jaq: money (likeness of a face)

  • Shapes and sizes

    The birth of Nunavut represents the first time Canada's boundaries have been redrawn since Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949. Nunavut, a land of wild rivers, icy seas and open tundra located almost entirely above the tree line, transforms the map of Canada, taking up some 60 percent of theformer Northwest Territories.

    The new territory's landscape ranges from mountains and fiords on the eastern shores of Baffin and Ellesmere islands, through the lakes and tundra of the Barrens on the mainland to the plateaus and cliffs of the Arctic coast. Nunavut is huge: at 1,994,000 square kilometers, it is more than one-fifth of Canada's land mass. Or, to put it another way, Nunavut equals 352 Prince Edward Islands, 28 New Brunswicks, or roughly Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon combined. Nunavut includes seven of Canada's 12 largest islands and two-thirds of the country's coastline. The distance from Nunavut's northern tip to its southern tip equals the distance from Winnipeg to Mexico City. Its east-west distance is the same as from Montreal to Saskatoon.
     
     

  • Into the great white open

    Getting to Nunavut--and then getting around Nunavut can be a costly challenge. The population is concentrated in small towns and hamlets spread across the large land mass. Aircraft move everything from people to food even houses across the territory. Almost every community has an airport or airstrip. There are more than five times as many airline boardings per capita in Nunavut than in the rest of the country.

     
    In smaller communities, standby passengers have lower priority than cargo and there are instances when aircraft are taken off scheduled service to fly as air ambulances. Weather, of course, can also play havoc with flight schedules. The shipping season is limited to 10 to 12 weeks in the high Arctic. There is no rail service and only one government maintained road exists; a 21-kilometre stretch between Arctic Bay and Nanisivik. Given the cost and difficulty of paving over permafrost, most community roads are unpaved. There are only 80 vehicles per 1,000 people (in Canada, 465 per 1,000), and snowmobiles outnumber cars.

  • Weathering the weather

    Always changing, always unpredictable, generally cold. That is the usual weather forecast for Nunavut. And there is no contest: Nunavut has the coldest weather in Canada. Winter lasts about nine months, and with chilling winds and snow even in June, July and August, in some parts it can seem even longer. The coldest temperature ever recorded was -57.8 C at Shepherd Bay, east of Gjoa Haven, in 1973; the warmest was 33.9 C in Arviat, also in 1973. Residents are often "weathered out", a local expression meaning bad weather has set in and thrown a wrench into plans. Precipitation in Nunavut is minimal --- most places receive less than 300 millimeters a year, about the same as southern Saskatchewan --- and the northwestern part of the Arctic Archipelago is a polar desert, receiving less moisture than parts of the Sahara Desert.

     

  • Nunavut by numbers
     

    Population (estimated) of Nunavut on April 1, 1999: 27,219

    Inuit population: 23,136 (85 percent)

    Number of people per 100 square kilometers: 1.3. In Canada: 290. In Ontario: 1,100. In P.E.I.: 2,290

    Number of communities: 28. Most northern: Grise Fiord. Most southern: Sanikiluaq, on the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, is south of Ontario's northern border.

    Largest: Iqaluit, 4,556. Smallest: Bathhurst Inlet, 18.

    Percentage of population under 25: 56. In Canada: 33

    Birth rate per 1,000: 29. In Canada: 12. In Mexico: 28. At the current growth rate the population of Nunavut will double in 23 years.

    Death rate per 1,000: 4.4. In Canada: 7.1

    Average household Income: $31,471. In Canada: $45,251

    Cost of living: 1.6 times higher than southern Canada in Iqaluit, two times higher in Pelly Bay.

    Economy: Proportions of households that rely largely on hunting and fishing for their meat: 59 percent. Rate of participation in the labour force: 66 percent, comparable to the national average. One of the 10 initial Government of Nunavut departments: Department of Sustainable Development, which merges income support services with resource and economic development strategies in order to strengthen self-reliance.

    Most popular organized sports: hockey, softball, volleyball. Nunavut has 3,907 registered athletes in 33 sports (roughly one out of seven people). Three out of four communities have arenas and there are 87 recreation facilities in the 28 communities.

    Hours of Inuktitut television per week: 5.5. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation reaches more than 40 arctic communities in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Labrador and Quebec. Their programs include Takuginai (Look Here), a children's show featuring puppet characters, such as Johnny the lemming, and teaching Inuktitut numbers, syllabics and Inuit cultural values, such as respect for elders.

    Information from Canadian Geographic Enterprises. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.