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| City of Iqaluit |
Every pocket of the city identifies as a different neighbourhood, and it was neat to see the differences between the newer parts of town, in comparison to the older parts. Iqaluit was founded in 1942 as US airforce base, strategically located as a transportation hub/stop-over/refueling site. Original military houses are quite distinctive with their A-frame structure, whereas newer homes have little character and pretty much look like boxes. The older neighbourhoods are closer to shore and are mainly made up of single family homes. In order to keep up with increasing housing demand, multi-family homes make up the newer neighbourhood. As a general rule of thumb, the newer the neighbourhood the more units make up each building. Urban planning doesn't really exist here, and buildings are pretty much just built where there is space. Building codes are also non-existent in the territory, so housing isn't necessarily of good quality... this could explain the whistling in my apartment yesterday! It was raining, so I didn't take pictures of these housing types. I'll add pics later.
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| View of Apex from the sky. The winding road takes you to Iqaluit. |
My tour brought me to the Road to No Where (actual name!) and to a neighbouring community ~5 km away called Apex.
I also got to see the old Hudson's Bay Company trading post which is right on the beach.
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| One of the Hudson's Bay Company buildings |
Distracted by the HBC buildings, it took me a little longer than it should have to notice the iceberg that had washed up onto the beach! Once my excitement wore off, I was informed that the size of this ice chunk was nothing... and that it was probably just "pack ice" and not of glacial origin.
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| Check out that colour! |
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| Me and the 'burg |
I also checked out the StoreHouse tonight for wing night, which is a restaurant attached to the Frobisher Inn, a well known hotel in Iqaluit. Wednesdays are a busy night in the city with wing night also taking place at the Legion... I thought the StoreHouse was the classier choice for obvious reasons! The restaurant was great, but a few things were weird such as "mandatory coat check, for security reasons" and the local Inuit wandering from table to table trying to sell art, mostly rock carvings. I was expecting the latter, but it was still weird, and gave my dinner a displaced mexican-vibe. A carving would be cool... but I would rather see the actual wildlife!
Today's tour happened because of a trip to the Post Office, so I thought it would be appropriate to end the day with a picture of the Post Office on my rainy walk back to my apartment before dark!
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| Downtown Iqaluit - Canada post in the white building, apartments above. |
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