Iqaluit Bound

(Photo credit: R. Glenn Jewers)

Ice
Your only rivers run cold
These city lights
They shine as silver and gold
Dug from the night
--U2

My alias is Shamrocks and I am moving to Iqaluit, Nunavut in the near future. I have set this blog up as a log of my adventures in a new land (a new land to me, that is).

So far, the process and research for this move has been exciting. I'm leaving early in the new year and the employer in Nunavut has made the whole business of moving extremely easy.

I will not bore you the reader with the details of my job or type of work, etc that I will be doing, but I will say that I have been considering a move to Nunavut since shortly after I graduated from a certain west coast university and only now have had a real opportunity to do make the move. Nunavut appears to be a centre of increasing importance to Canada because of a combination of factors including the improvement in certain sciences and infrastructure (allowing more and more comfortable conditions to those living in extremely cold weather), the race to secure scarce resources, and the onset of global warming making the north more livable and accessible.

Naming Iqaluit, a capital on the largest island in Canada, was a stroke of genius. This instantly secured Baffin island's sovereignty in long run, and kept a huge portion of Canada's landmass out of territorial disputes with neighbours (Denmark, I'm looking at you!). This mirrors the move of the BC government in moving the capital of the most western province from New Westminster to Victoria to secure sovereignty over Vancouver Island.

Here is Bjork's ode to that northern phenomenon, Aurora Borealis:

Treading
The glacier head
Looking hard for
Moments of shine
From twilight
To twilight