Let's hear about the Muktuk!

Seeing as Larry has been posting most of the blogs of late I thought I had best at least attempt to post something. What better a subject than our night of Muktuk tasting. This will be a very short blog. :-)

As previously mentioned Muktuk can either be eaten raw or if you choose cooked. We did the only right thing - we tried both ways and tonight was the night. As soon as we got home the Muktuk was taken out of the freezer and allowed to thaw. I think the dogs knew there was something coming their way because their interest was definitely peeked. They were at the ready.

Larry cut off the first sliver, well really he just picked up a piece and starting in on it as if he had just picked up a rib and starting nawing on the meat. His reaction was neutral until I tasted my piece. I took a bite and immediately made for the sink for a quick discharge. Muktuk and me just don't agree. I couldn't get past the texture, it was like biting into butter, although the taste was not butter. I would say, at this point, it is non-descriptive - I couldn't put my finger on it. So, I asked Larry and he said it tasted salty, and "disgusting." We're really not doing Inuit tradition any favours. That was muktuk raw. Now onto it being cooked.

We put some into the frying pan and added some butter, and garlic to taste. We cooked it well and did the taste test. Muktuk is much better cooked than raw, however it's still suspect. It wouldn't be right to try the muktuk and not get the dogs reaction.

Girls in the house had similar reactions. Holly licked it but wouldn't eat it. Quinn on the otherhand, lapped it up like it was chicken. Then again, Larry thought it wasn't that bad cooked either.

Don't worry friends, we will be bringing some for all to try. Don't let our opinion spoil this opportunity of a life time. We've decided we will try it again but we must be in an environment that will motivate the taste buds. Admittedly we're not sure we are exeriencing it the way Inuit would and we will wait for Iqaluit's Toonik Time festival in April to experience true Inuit cuisine.

Inuit Throat Singing

Lois Locke, the same person that gave us the Muktuk is an Inuit throat singer (katajjag). She was one of the members of the group of Inuit throat singers that went to the Olympics in Vancouver. Also, late this summer she is going to Norway to give a number of concerts with her group.Inuit throat singing is generally done by two individuals but can also involve four or more people.In Inuit throat singing, two Inuit women would face each other either standing or crouching down while holding each other's arms. One would lead with short deep rhythmic sounds while the other would respond. The leader would repeat sounds with short gaps in between. The follower would fill in these gaps with her own rhythmic sounds. Sometimes both Inuit women would be doing a dance-like movement like rocking from left to right while throat singing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9YuVOnbvmo

Below is a picture of Lois sitting at her desk in her office with some beads that go on a head band that she often wears while throat singing. She has a number of songs on YouTube and a more detailed explanation can be found by googling her name.

Muktuk and Caribou

On my trip to Arviat, (Eskimo Point until 1989) I had the pleasure of meeting a number of interesting and amazing people. Two of the people I met were Jimmy Main and Lois Locke. Jimmy is the District Director. He has been in Arviat since he was very young and grew up there. His dad ran the local Hundson Bay company post for many years, retired in 2005 and continue to live in Arviat. Jimmy is fluent in Inuktituk the local Inuit language. Jimmy is also an avid hunter and fisherman. He goes out often to hunt caribou and keeps his family and neighbours stocked up with caribou meat. He gave me 2 large hunks of meat to take back to Iqaluit with me. Jacquie and I are planning to have a caribou stew, which we hear is excellent.

Lois Locke is a program officer for the Nunavut Housing Corporation. She was born and raised in Arviat. She is inuit and speaks Inuktitik as her first language. Her family hunts beluga whales and shares the harvest. Muktuk is the fatty meat that is found attached to the outer skin. Many of the locals eat this raw and it's considered a delicacy. Lois gave me 2 good size bags of Muktuk to bring home with me. Jacquie and I haven't tried it yet and when it was explained to us that it is best descibed as tasting like and having the consistecny of sweet butter, we are taking a few days to psyche ourselves up for the event. We will try it raw, just to say that we have experienced the taste, however I'm looking forward to trying it fried as I'm told it tastes a little like back bacon.

Jacquie and I want to thank Jimmy and Lois for their generosity and for the opportunity to try some of the local cuisine.

Trip to Arviat

Monday January 16th, I had a scheduled trip to Arviat. I was going there for work, to review some mortgage files and conduct a meeting with front line staff to get some feedback on the development of a Collection policy.
On Sunday the 15th and Monday morning Iqaluit was under a Blizzard warning. It was cold and windy. There was some talk of the plane not taking off. At the scheduled flight time, 5:00PM, the visability was 1 KM, the minimum needed for take off.
The flight was delayed for about 45 minutes and eventually we took off. There were about 50KM winds and visability was questionable. The Schedule was to fly to Rankin Inlet, change plans and then on to Arviat. When we arrived at Rankin it was -48C with a windchill of -60C. It is the coldest weather that I ever remember experiencing. We had to walk from the plane to the airport and my nose was completely numb by the time we got inside the terminal. The terminal itself was cold and everyone had their coats, hats and mitts on.

Again, there was some question as to whether the conditions were safe enough for the plane to take off to Arviat. We got on the plane and waited for about 15 minutes. I think it was for the captain to gather enough courage to actually attempt the takeoff? Anyway, we managed to get off the ground in about 60KM winds. The difference here is that the plane from Iqaluit to Rankin was a large jet. This was a smaller short communter aircraft.
As a side note, the plane from Ottawa to Iqaluit on Sunday got to Iqaluit and couldn't land because of the blizzard, so it went back to a landing strip in Northern Quebec. There it waited for about 3 hours hoping that the blizzard in Iqaluit would ease up. Eventually the plane went back to Ottawa. The poor passengers were on it for a total of 9 hours.
Arviat is a very interesting town of about 2500 people located about 150KM north or Churchill Manitoba. This is a web link to the town> http://www.nunavuttourism.com/index.aspx?l=0,2,4,9,29
I stayed in a little hotel that was part of the co-op in town. It hosted the only restaurant in town. I thought the food was pretty good. The picture below is my room at the hotel.

Arviat is a dry community. There are no bars and alchohol is not allowed, even in personal residences, although I'm told that the odd beer or glass of wine does get consumed in some of the residences in town. Luckily, January is my non-drinking month, so a dry town in January worked perfectly for me.
Although there are vehicles in town, most people get around on snowmobilies as can be seen by the picuture below.

The land is very flat in and around Arviat. The local saying is that if your dog runs away, you can "see him go for 3 days." The terrain probably explains why there are so many blizzards in Arviat. The town closes quite often do to blizzards. Before Christmas there was one blizzard that lasted over 3 days and I'm told that's quite common.
The district director took me for a tour of town. He took me out to the dump, because there had been Polar Bears out there until about 2 weeks prior to me getting to town. My camera was at the ready but unfortuately no bears this trip. We did see some dog teams tied up out on the tundra. A number of people in Arviat still use dog teams for transportation out on the land. The teams from there always do very well in the Arctic games that run every two years and are in Whitehorse this year.
All in all, I had a wonderful trip, met some great people and had the opportunity to experience cold, like I've never experienced it before. Below are some pictures of the town.

Larry Ditches the Jeep

I know, it really sounds kind of ominous and I think the first thing that most people would picture is a vehicle driving down the road, going out of control and sliding into the ditch. And of course wonder whether there was any damage to the vehicle or if anyone was hurt.

Well, that's not exactly how our vehicle got into the ditch. Jacquie and I had appointments to get our hair cut on Thursday evening, January 12th right after work. After the hair cuts (which cost over $90 freaken dollars) we got into the jeep to drive to the club. Both of us had squash games at 6:15 and it was about 6:12 so we were in a bit of a hurry.

I drove towards the road and all of a sudden, there was a let-down as the jeep slipped into a ditch that was filled with snow. Admittedly, I hadn't taken the same route out of the driveway as I did into it and if I was paying full attention might have thought twice about exiting the way I did.
At first I thought, no problem, I will just put the jeep into 4 wheel drive low and drive out. Wrong choice!! As we got further into the ditch it got deeper and then the jeep was really stuck. We rocked it back and forth to no avail.

There was a young Inuit lad that was walking by and offered to help. We noticed he had no gloves and no hat. He simply said that he was used to it. The temperature was -28C and we just couldn't understand how he was able to stand the cold.

Jacquie tried driving and the young lad and I tried pushing, again with no result. We borrowed a shovel from the hair salon and tried shovelling the jeep out which helped since we were able to move it around in the ditch a bit, however couldn't seem to get it out. At one point I had the jeep on a very precarious angle with only 2 wheels on the ground. Jacquie went down to a garage that was just down the street to see if they had a 4X4 and a tow rope. There was no one there. We called the cab companies since we were told that they had a 4 wheel drive vehicle with a tow rope to remove their cars from the ditch. We were both getting a little frustrated and my feet were freezing. We had a bit of a break to get warm in the hair place and then went back at it. At this point we had been in the ditch for about 40 minutes. We were considering options like leaving the jeep there and taking a cab home to come back in the morning to try again. We assumed the towing company would be at work then.

We were just about to give it one more try, when all of a sudden a van with 6 or 7 strapping young guys stopped by. They got out and had the jeep pushed out of the ditch in less than a minute. You have never seen 2 more appreciative people in your whole life. We were very grateful that the guys stopped to help us!! We were also very grateful to the young guy who hung in there until the job was done.

There was no lasting damage to the jeep and only a few sore muscles on Jacquie and I from shovelling and pushing.

Iqaluit Water Runs.......Out

The one thing that Jacquie and I have come to understand is that every day in Iqaluit seems to bring something new and unique. Apparently sometime over night on Thursday January 12, the water main to the city reservoir broke and the water in the reservoir started to empty. Before the city workers could get the flow stopped almost all of the water in the reservoir had been lost. There was so much water that flowed out onto the ice that a snowmobiler almost drowned when he inadvertantly drove into it.

About once every two weeks, I decide to stop into Tim Hortons to have a coffee and today seemed like a good day to do that. As a side note, Jacquie has a Timmy's coffee everyday partly because the coffee shop is right across from where she works. I want you to know that I'm not jealeous or anything, that's just the way it is. :-)

Anyway, when we went into Timmy's we were told that there was no coffee because there is no water. That is the first time that we even knew there was an issue.

We both went to work. Jacquie's work building was without water, whereby my work building has water trucked on a daily basis so we had water. Shortly after we got to work the GN (Government of Nunavut) closed all Government buildings because of the water problem. We learned that 20 million litres of treated water were lost from the city reservior in only 20 minutes.

Shortly after that the Government issed a statement asking all businesses to close to conserve water and asked the whole city to use water sparingly. I stopped back and picked Jacquie up and she went home. Since our building had water we were given the option to work if we wanted to and I stayed at work to catch up(Jacquie is sure I was just being a "brown noser").

Anyway, I went home for lunch and heard that the GN had issued a boil water advisory for the city. Our home is on the eastern edge of town and for some reason we had water throughout the ordeal.

We were told afterwards that there are two main water sources in town. The main one that services all of downtown, the hospitals and schools was the one affected. However there is a smaller one that services the area of town that we live in.

So it is now Friday evening and we understand that there is still no water downtown and we are not sure when it will be turned on. In the meantime, we are drinking our water from our brita water filter. We have heard from a number of people in the south that have heard of the Iqaluit water issue on CBC.

It really hasn't affect Jacquie and I that much, and it just seems to be an other ordinary day in paradise!!

Weather its Right or Weather its Wrong

Tonight (Jan. 10th, 2012) the temperature is -33C with wind gusts up to 70km, making the wind chill -52 or lower. So lets face it, in this case the weather is definitely wrong!!! This is what we get dressed up in to go outside when its this cold!!

So, what I have on is: Sorel Boats, heavy socks, lined jeans, tee-shirt, sweeter, Canada Goose down filled coat, balaclava, toque, goggles and heavy gloves. The funny thing is that the dogs and I are only out for 3 minutes at the most.

Last night we got home after work and could not get into our house. The door was frozen shut! I'm not talking about the dead bolt or the door handle, I'm referring to the door itself! After analysis the situation, we realized the bottom of the door was frozen to the sill. It took a number of well placed forceful blows with the bottom of my right boot to finally open the door. It took us 10 - 15 minutes to get inside. We were getting concerned that we were going to need to break down the door somehow. Of course we have another door on the other side of the house, however it has been frozen shut for a month and because it is in an unheated porch, there is about a 1/4 inch of frost on it. We didn't think much of it until we couldn't get into our regular door, now we think it might be a bit of a safety hazard.

Frost on the door handle

Snow at the bottom of the door and frost on the door

Anyway, we did get in. The dogs got to go out to "do their business" quickly and all ended up good. It is freaken cold though!!

My Job

I work at the Nunavut Housing Corporation and my current job title is the Manager of Mortgages and Investments, however it is about to change to the Manager of Mortgages and Collections!

The Nunavut Housing Corporation provides housing for 60% of the families in Nunavut. There is a mortgage portfolio of approx. 20 million dollars and a rental portfolio of approx. 30 million dollars. The vast majority of our clients have subsidized payments for their homes. On the "public housing" side all rents are geared to income and every "land claim resident" over 60 years of age gets free housing. The same for the mortgage portfolio. Most of our clients have subsidized mortgage payments, based on their income. Again, once the client turns 60, if they are a land claim resident, their mortgage payment is fully subsidized. The only difference between the mortgage clients and the public housing clients is that if a family owns their own home they are required to pay all of the utility costs, whereas public housing the rent is the total cost, including heat, hydro and water. Interestingly, the cost to the corporation for one house in our rental portfolio, for the utilities is $23,000 - $25,000 per year.
In the 1990's there was a push by the Federal and Territorial Governments to encourage families to own their homes. There was a host of programs developed to encourage families to build and buy their own houses. From my perspective the idea was very good, however the implementation and follow through could have been better. The result is that many clients are behind in their payment, however in many cases not entirely because of anything that they have done wrong.
There are three districts in Nunavut. The Baffin district which is primarily made up of Baffin Island and has the greatest number of hamlets and communities. The Kivalliq district which starts at the Manitoba boarder and goes strait north to the North West Passage and the Kitikmeot district which is the western part of Nunavut. Each district has it's own housing office with officers that travel to the hamlets.
My job is to assist the Districts in administering mortgages. Also, one of my primary tasks over the next 6 months will be to write a comprehensive collection policy for the mortgage and rental portfolios. To accomplish this I will need to travel to the district offices, Cape Dorset in Baffin, Arviat in Kivallliq and Cambridge Bay in Kitikmeot and get input and feedback from the district directors, managers and front line staff on what methods are the most successful. I am travelling to Arviat in 2 weeks, which is on the west shore of Hudson Bay and to Cambridge Bay in early February which is almost directly north of Yellowknife. Along with doing file reviews, I will be hosting meetings. The goals of the meetings will be to get information that will assist in the development of principles to set the foundation for the development of the collection policy.
Other than that, I'm assisting districts in the registration process of mortgages, helping train district staff and looking at ways to make the mortgage processes more effective and efficient.
The powers that be have decided that I need an officer that will assist me in my tasks, so shortly there will be advertised a Mortgage and Collection officer in my department and together we will ensure that the corporation moves forward with new, creative and effective mortgage and collection processes.

My work station

I work with a number of wonderful people at the housing corporation. I report to John Connor, the Corporate Controller. The CFO and Executive Director of the corporation is the driving force in moving the mortgage and collection initiative forward. The President of the Corporation is a very personable gentleman, who I would characterize as a visionary and extremely capable in running all the facets of our organization.
The Mortgage and public housing administration falls under the corporate finance department which is a major part of the organization. However, the building and maintenance departments are quite large too. Further, we have a policy department which looks at all of our policy's and procedures and helps establish processes and controls to ensure that they are being adhered to.
The Nunavut Housing Corporation get's funded by the Government of Nunavut, however there has been significant Federal funding for housing programs and new construction.
Our organization is a very important part of Nunavut providing housing for the majority of its citizens. I'm very much enjoying my job and like the people I work with. Although I haven't had the opportunity to travel yet, it is part of my job description and I am looking forward to seeing the smaller communities and being part of the system that brings affordable housing to the people of Nunavut.

Our Office at the Nunavut Housing Corporation

The Iqaluit Post Office

There is no home postal delivery service in Iqaluit, so all mail must be picked up at the post office. Until recently, there wasn't enough post office boxes, so many people had their address simply as General Delivery, Iqaluit.

The Iqaluit Post office has been a focal point for the last couple of weeks, with all of the Christmas cards and packages that have been sent up to family and friends that live here. I was talking to one of the post office employees and he was saying that the Iqaluit Post Office should have 7 full time employees and there are only 4 at this time. Needless to say, the staff have worked very hard and put in many long hours to ensure that as many packages as possible were received by all of the families looking for Christmas Presents from their relatives and friends. The post office was even open on Saturday, December 24th (Christmas Eve)to process as many parcels as possible before Christmas. In fact Jacquie and I picked up 2 parcels on Christmas Eve that helped make our Christmas. The Iqaluit Post Office is not normally open on Saturday, so we thank the staff that worked Christmas Eve to help make many Christmas's including ours a little better.

The shortage of staff, may also explain why at lunch hour, when the post office seems the busiest there is only one clerk on duty, making waiting in line exacerbatingly long! We have waited over 15 minutes in line on a couple of ocassions and other times actually gave up waiting altogether.

One thing that J and I did notice is that the Post Office itself take on the persona of being a positive community gathering place, especially prior to Christmas, since everyone in town must go there to pick up their mail. You get friends, neighbours and aquaintances greeting and chatting with each other, with big smiles on their faces.

Jacquie and I were lucky to get a post office Box a few days after we moved to Iqaluit. The Post Office had just opened an annex, out back that houses another whack of post office boxes. These are separate from the main post office boxes, that are accessed through the front doors. It's hard to say exactly how many post office boxes the Iqaluit Post Office has, however if I were to guess I'd say 2500 - 4000 boxes.

You do hear some grumbling about the Iqaluit post office. Things like the wait times are too long, they are inefficient and sometimes have a hard time finding letters and parcels. However, other than waiting in line for extended periods of time, our experiences have been quite positive. We had friends and a family member post parcels on Friday December 16th and they both made it here before Christmas, which we thought was amazing. We have also found the staff pleasent and accomodating.

Jacquie and I pick our mail up 2 to 3 times per week and have got into a routine of going prior to lunch at 11:45ish to beat the rush making the mail pick-up experience less time consuming and actually quite pleasent. We are always exited to see what the post man has broght us!!

Our New Years

The last day of 2011 turned out to be wonderful for the Pepper/Journal union. I can only describe 2011 as a bi-polar year, with a mixture of significant highs and a few lows. The year ended on an amazing high!!!

After our regular morning routine, I went to the club around 11:30 AM to play squash with a number of the guys. Darrell had organized a pick-up match and 10 of us got together and played three way squash for about 3 hours. I like that format, since you get a chance to play everyone and get a little rest while playing the game between points.

Jacquie took a cab to the club around 1:30 PM and had a match of her own. She played for an hour or so and then we had some lunch and a celebratory beer. Jacquie had played Suzanne and Bonnie in her own 3-way match. Afterwards, Suzanne, her husband Scott, Jacquie and I were sitting around talking. Scott and Suzanne are very interesting people. Scott has been in Iqaluit for 30 years or so and Suzanne for nearly as long. They have been out on the land many times. Scott tells a story where they were almost caught in an avalanche. Scott described how they were able to miss the avanlanche and how fortunate they were in being able to keep their snowmobiles upright and "ride it out". Once they realized all was going to be okay, Scott went back and checked the snow (from the avalanche)and he told us it was just like touching concrete. He also went on to say that if they had of fallen off the skidoo's or the machines toppled, in his words, "that would have been it". Suzanne talked about another snowmobile incident where the machine toppled backwards. The person on the back was able to jump clear, however it almost landed on top of her. She is a very fit lady and explained that laying on her back, with her legs up, she was able to kick the running tracks on the machine which caused it to go over top of her and ultimately land behind her, without her getting hurt. It all happened so fast that she still can't explain how it happened, however needless to say the outcome could have been much different.

Jacquie and I invited Scott and Suzanne over for dinner. It was now about 4:00 PM and they were coming about 6:30PM. I'll let you in on a little secret. We had purchased some lobster tales, scallops and steak and we were going to have that for dinner and sometime during the dinner, I was going to propose to Jacquie. With Scott and Suzanne now coming over, I decided to alter the plan somewhat. So, in the midst of preparing this lovely New Years Eve dinner, I got down on one knee and proposed to Jacquie. I was very nervous because although we had talked in generalities of our desire to get married at some point, we had never discussed any details and this was the "tipping point". Jacquie had to make a decision!! I was ecstatic when she not only said "YES", however did it with enthusiasm!! She made me the happiest man in Iqaluit, maybe Canada!!

Between then and 6:30 when our friends were coming over, we called family and let them know of the news. Scott and Suzanne had many more stories for us, however to be honest, I was riding a wave of happiness and can't remember most of the stories they told.

We had a wonderful dinner. The lobster tales were cooked perfectly and the steak, scallops and ceasar salad were also execptionally good.

At 11:30 PM, we all jumped in the jeep and headed out to Dead Dog Lake which is located on the road to Nowhere and watched a wonderful fireworks display. It seemed to go on forever! It was at least 1/2 hour long and included 3 stations that were lighting off the fire works at the same time. There were also, some rogue fireworks that people were lighting off around the same area. All in all, New years was brought in with a "bang".

So, although 2011 had some difficult times, it ended on a very high note and Jacquie and Larry are destined to be married. The exact date has not been determined, however it looks like sometime between mid April and Mid May.

Thank you Jacquie for making me a very happy guy!! I love you!!