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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Frozen fingers

I am a bit envious of my blogging counterparts in Nunavut. They've created a little community of bloggers from all over the territory. It is fascinating to watch, because they seem to have little or nothing in common except their blogs. This communication tool is bringing people together in a way that you don't see with, say, shortwave radio.

I read a lot of them, but I wanted to point out a few of my favourites. Maybe they'll become your favourites, too.

A Journey Northwards: Jackie's 22 and has just moved to a small Arctic community to take her first real job with the CBC. Sounds familiar.

Adventures in Medicine: Two doctors from Iqaluit blog about Arctic medicine.

Habeus Corpus Under Aurora Borealis
: A friend of a friend is a new Crown in Nunavut.

Jen (and now Aleks): I love the photos on this blog.

Kent: The story behind the story (like several Nunavut bloggers, he's a reporter).

Port Town Ghosts: Kate Nova's funny and smart.

Tales from the Arctic: Kennie's a teacher in Arctic Bay, where they just got the sun back.

The House: Clare (also from Arctic Bay) can tell the temperature just by starting the family snowmobile.

Way Way Up: Those Arctic Bay bloggers have me hooked. I assume this fellow works with Kennie.

If you spend much time at all on Nunavut blogs, you'll discover that they're each a piece of the ongoing conversation. It's truly a web of information. They post comments and write back and forth about local issues. They sometimes have disputes.

We here in the NWT don't even come close. I don't know if this is because we feel less freedom to write about issues that affect all of us, or because we don't have the same sense of community here in the territory.

8 comments:

Clare said...

I think part of the reason for the community is that we are relatively new to the game. Blogging didn't really get going here until broadband arrived. When I started there were really only a couple of bloggers in Nunavut and since then it has grown but it has been (relatively) easy to keep track of who has joined the fray and link to them.

Also most (but not all) of the bloggers here start from a similar place, that is the newly arrived Nunavut resident who starts a blog to detail their adventures in the Arctic.

Anonymous said...

I am not asking this question in any perjorative way, just out of curiousity. Why would someone move to a place as cold and remote as the NWT or Nunavut?

Megan said...

There are two main reasons people come here:

1) To work. There are tons of jobs and most of them pay really well. It's possible to progress really quickly through the career ladder here, too. You don't spend five years holding someone's briefcase.

2) To run away from something in their regular lives. Have you ever seen Northern Exposure?

I came to work.

Clare said...

Well, also people live here, and have for 5,000 years. Many of them wonder why people would live in somewhere as hot and crowded as the south. For myself, I was transferred here (I asked, it does smack of the exotic and adventure) I fell in love and stayed.

Jackie S. Quire said...

Also, can we discuss how those darn Arctic Bay bloggers just keep popping up??

Yeesh.

You'd think EVERYONE in Nunavut lives in AB :P

And anon: Why did I move... well this may be a cop-out answer.. but "why not"? I'm young, eager, and not really scared of the cold. I have traveled parts of Europe, lived in France... 5 of our provinces and so... a door opened to the north and I crawled through. You are right, it is cold, it is remote, but most days I'm also going to say that it's pretty darn cool too.

Pun, not actually intended :D

Megan said...

I will freely admit that I was scared of the cold when I moved to Inuvik eight years ago. I was more scared of my student loan and CBC's tendency to keep people as temps for years, though. I got an opportunity and I jumped for it.

towniebastard said...

There are very few "frontiers" left in Canada, and I think Nunavut would certainly count as one of them. People want to read about your experiences in a new frontier. Coming to Nunavut is as close as you can come to moving to a foreign country and yet never leave Canada.

And I enjoy my fellow Nunavut bloggers. It's an interesting, spontaneous community that has developed through a shared experience of living in a really different part of the world.

NWT might be a little behind simply because it's not as "wild" or "untamed" as Nunavut. Hell, I still go to websites and when I punch in address information don't have the options of including Nunavut. I have to use NT or Other.

Oh, and we moved up for work. My wife landed a teaching job, I followed. And honestly, the cold is nothing. You can dress for the cold. I have friends in the Middle East dealing with temps in excess of +50C. Those are the poor bastards I feel sorry for.

Anonymous said...

Indeed I do work with Kendra at the school here in Arctic Bay. I popped onto the scene after transferring here from Broughton Island in 2005 and Kendra joined our staff last fall. Clare is the veteran blogger here and Kendra is the new kid on the block.....making me the cranky middle child :)