#32 Just Out of Sight of Stag Island, NU: A Nunavut Breeze

Our visit to Canada's largest territory on Sunday was almost as brief as my visit to Sanirajak a few years ago.  I was on my way to Igloolik for work and had to make an airport stop in the community which used to be known as Hall Beach.  Sounds kind of tropical right?  It's not.  It's a cold, exposed strip of gravel without a single Tiki bar.  


Sanirajak has two claims to fame.  The first is it's local cuisine. I noticed the proud sign on the airport wall describing the preparation of igunak.  Aged walrus meat is buried in the gravel beach in July.  By Christmas time it has attained its full pungency and flavour, at which time it is exhumed and consumed.  The Sanirajak equivalent of a turkey.  While wandering around the airport (it didn't take long), I enjoyed seeing the mothers wearing their amoutuit.  With big hoods like kangaroo pouches ready to hold a sleepy baby.  I love these celebrations of Inuit culture.


Sanirajak's other claim to fame isn't quite as fun.  When I went through in 2019, this tiny hamlet had the highest suicide rate per capita in Canada.  I was grimly reminded of it as I chatted with an elder on the airplane.  She was carrying a bouquet of flowers and coming back for a funeral.  "My niece took her own life," the elder told me with a resignation in her voice that seemed to accept that's just the way things are.  I was so saddened by the hopelessness in Sanirajak that when I got back home, Patty and I considered for awhile if we could move up there.  Just to provide a place for young people to hang out and where they could learn that they are loved and valued by a God who has given them a pathway of Hope. 

Our prayer for Nunavut - 'Our Land' - last Sunday was similar.  We had driven to the closest point where, if it wasn't for wildfire smoke, we might have caught a glimpse of the southernmost island of that vast territory.  May Hope and Life blow through 'Our Land' with its warm, transforming, tropical breeze.  Carrying with it the intoxicating fragrance of fermented walrus meat.

 

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