If you didn’t read the first half, you can find it here. If you don’t read it, you will never know what amazing things we can do with extension cords.
Now, for the stunning conclusion…
6) The 4Ms
Okay, so I’m about to pick on ‘new northerners’ again. I think that is fair, because we deserve it. If you have a problem with it, it is likely because you resent that you resemble one of my descriptions below:
There is a saying here that there are four kinds of people that move here: misfits, missionaries, mercenaries, and the misinformed. This saying is of course unfair because it categorizes people and everyone is a unique individual, and because it is not nice. Also the truth is of course not that simple. But damn, it does a pretty good job categorizing people.
a) Mercenaries are those that come for money.
b) Missionaries are those that come to add their naive good intentions to solve all our problems that we haven’t solved ourselves because we just needed one more missionary.
c) The misinformed are those that didn’t research well on where they were moving to, thinking Resolute is just north of Winnipeg (which it is, if you mean ‘just north, not northwest or northeast’). Some of them get back on the plane, and some don’t.
d) Misfits are those that came looking for a place to fit in better, or a place where their ex and the police won’t find them. Some of these are the best kind of independent and unique individuals. Lots aren’t.
e) There is of course a mythical fifth M: Me. This is the category every new northerner puts themselves in to avoid being one of the 4Ms. Don’t listen to them, they are just too weak to face the truth. The truth is, I’m the only one in this category.
One point for the south, for unloading their money-sucking, emotionally needy, research-challenged, and shady individuals on us.
7) How History Repeats Itself
As a student of history I know that history repeats itself, usually in some generational number, like ever 20 or 30 years. In the north I have learned that history repeats itself every 5-10 years. Our territorial government is our main employer, and it is about 47 percent non-Inuit. The average length of employment for non-Inuit is about 6.5 years. Take away from that group the non-Inuit who grew up northerners and are long-term residents, and I suspect that number goes down. If it was a median and not a ‘mean’ average, it would definitely go down again. If you look at non-government workers that number would go down even further. I’m going to guess and say that for those originally from the south the median term of employment is probably only a couple years. Everyone coming in wants to try out their solutions and so we see things tried that were already tried a few years ago.
Case in point: the Government of Nunavut merged the Department of Human Resources into the Department of Finance in 2013. Now in 2019 it is creating a stand-alone Department of Human Resources again. If they were saying ‘oops, that didn’t work out’, that would be fine, but they aren’t. They are acting like this is a great new idea that will solve all problems. Many government managers probably weren’t here in 2013 and don’t even know that six years ago all the problems of the world were going to be fixed by moving HR into Finance. So here we go again, what is old is new and exciting. It’s the gold fish government: hey, look, another castle!
One point for the south.
8) Commersialism
There is a grocery store in Iqaluit called Baffin Canners. I know this, and so does almost everyone else who lives here. If you got off the plane and started walking around town looking for it, you would likely starve before finding it. There is no fancy sign, and it isn’t even on a road – it is basically around a corner at the back of a parking lot. I love it.
We don’t have people driving through town stopping to shop (for those that didn’t get last week’s joke about angry southerners driving up to set me straight, it is time to point out that there are no roads between any Nunavut communities and any other communities, so no one is driving into town except by snowmobile or boat. People that come into town by snowmobile or boat are more likely to be bringing freshly caught food back to town, rather than coming to do a little light shopping).
Any non-residents in town are usually friends of locals or professionals staying at hotels who only go to grocery stores to take pictures of price tags. At $2000 a plane ticket, people don’t happen by Iqaluit or other Nunavut communities. There is a serious economic problem embedded in this item, but that’s for another day. The upside is we are spared overt commercialism.
No billboards, no flashing neon signs. Also no big box chain stores. Okay, there are northern-specific chain stores like the Arctic Co-ops and Northern, but there are also lots of entrepreneurial places that are part of our community fabric. Unfortunately, it is not as quaint as it sounds, since our post office is essentially the Amazon store. Amazon is gutting some of our small businesses. At least it isn’t a flashing neon sign I have to see repeatedly.
When I travel south, it feels like there are ten forms of advertising shouting into my brain through my eyeballs from every direction. It is sensory overload. Store after store after store, all trying to grab my attention in multiple and not very discrete ways, then even when you aren’t near the stores, there are billboards and endless radio ads.
Southerners have surely learned to tune it out to some extent, but for a change of pace and to support our local economy, I encourage southerners to come to Iqaluit and try our business scavenger hunt. Try and find Baffin Canners. Try and find the new brew pub, which is located in the industrial park beside a pit of reclaimed toxic soil, and at the end of – see if you can see the theme here – a puddly patch of dirt that is apparently a road because it has a stop sign on it, but otherwise bears no resemblance to a road. Try and find Arctic Cotton, which sells baby care products at ‘southern’ prices.
Did I just throw an ad in for my own business while talking about our lack of commercialism? Wow. That really undermines my argument. Minus a point for me, but I’m still giving the point to the north.
9) Stuff
Okay, I’m trash-talking the south a bit. The north is better, sorry. But please, please, don’t stop making and sending us snowmobiles, gas, food, and everything else. We may not be as commercialized, but we need southern stuff. It wasn’t that long ago that Inuit lived on the land here, and there are many very skilled people who would survive if the south stopped sending us stuff. I am not one of them.
One point for the south.
10) Community
Did you think I was going to let the south stage a comeback? Not a chance.
There is a sense of community in the arctic that is special. We have inward focused communities because there are no roads. There are no commuters. It strengthens and more clearly defines our communities.
There is also almost no land ownership – we have 99 year leases for the surface of the land where our houses are. There are almost no fences around properties. People drive their snowmobiles through my back yard. Sometimes I follow trails that go through other peoples’ yards. It is great.
In the south, in many places, all the land belongs to someone. It is fenced, you cannot go there. If you want to access nature, you drive to a park, which is owned and managed by someone for people to visit. Even that land has a sign with a list of rules.
My children don’t understand why there are so many southern fences; why people would want to keep everyone from going on their property. It is a totally different set of rules about how we operate together as a community. I hope my kids learn to understand the southern way, because I don’t want them arrested for trespassing, but I like our way.
Down south people believe they own the land and want to protect what they own, so they put a fence around it. Here we are grateful to the land for having us, and want to protect what we share. So we don’t have fences. Also, fences get in the way when we want to park the old car, the boat, and three snowmobiles out back.
There are lots of great community-focused events and community-minded people in communities everywhere, but there is something unique about the way northerners think about community.
One point for the north.
Total score: 6-4 for the north. Of course, it isn’t about the score, it is about winning.
Mending Fences
To southerners: since you like your fences, I will try and ‘mend fences’ . You have a lot. You have more money than us, partly because all our money rains down to southern Canada pretty quickly. I don’t really think anyone wins or loses, I think most of you wouldn’t trade your south for our north even after this show-down, but maybe you can see the north a little differently.
To northerners: We win, we win, we win! Do I still have to be categorized as a Misfit? Oh. okay.
Canada is a northern nation. Canadians think of themselves as northerners. That’s great. I’m proud of that. We can all share that. Just remember that some of us are more northern than others.
