Court finished on Thursday February 14th just
before lunch, and the flight back to Iqaluit wasn’t until 6:45. This meant that I had a chance to see a
little more of Pangnirtung than just the community hall where court was held.
The first stop was taking a closer look at the Old Blubber
Station. It was a beautiful sunny day.
One member of the court party left for a quick snowmobile trip to Akshayuk
(or Pangnirtung) Pass in Ayuittuq National Park. Myself and two others decided to check out the
Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts & Crafts instead.
The centre has two buildings, one
for printing and one for textiles. Below
are a couple of pictures that I took inside the print studio. The first picture was taken on the ground
floor where the artists work. The second picture was taken from the balcony
where prints from all of the collections are stored. A fair amount of money was
spent that afternoon. There were far
more works that I admired than I had money for that day, so I foresee many future
visits and bank account depletions.
Another place that I went that day was the Pangnirtung fish
plant. Turbot fishing had just started shortly before we arrived and there was
no turbot yet processed for sale. I did
bring home some tasty arctic char fillets though.
It was a little after 4 p.m. when I headed back to the hotel
from the fish plant. It was getting a
bit dark, but I managed to take these two pictures.
During the circuit, the court party stayed at the AuyuittuqLodge. John Thompson, co-counsel on the circuit, already
described the hotel in his blog but I’m going to throw my opinion out there too. It would be hard not to write about the hotel
when writing about Pangnirtung.
Incredibly, the food was mostly delicious. This is a very surprising thing for anyone familiar
with the typical deep-fried-with-a-side-of-frozen Inns North dining
experience. Even though I’ve been pretty
disciplined about what I eat lately, Chef Louis’ food was tempting enough to
lure me off plan a few times. I’d say
that the food was better than any of the places in Nunavut that I’ve stayed at
so far.
The rooms are pretty terrible though. I think that my room was almost the worst
room that I’ve stayed in so far in Nunavut.
My tiny room had no desk or chair or place to work other than sitting on
one of the two single beds. The rooms also
had no private bathrooms so it was necessary to use a communal one down the
hall. One night my room had no heat. I think it was actually colder than the 13-degree room
that I experienced in Sanikiluaq.
Fortunately, unlike Sanikiluaq, the heat was fixed right away so I only
had one miserable sleepless night.
(Also, unlike Sanikiluaq I don’t think I was in any danger of carbon
monoxide poisoning once the heat was turned on again.)
Overall, I had a great experience being in Pangnirtung. This was what my walk to work looked like
even on a blah low-contrast kind of day.
Hard not to love that.
Songs:
I'll Fall With Your Knife - Peter Murphy
Visoko -Yulia Savicheva
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