Northern reflections

It begins with a three and a half hour flight from Ottawa. You go due north. The seatbelt speech is in Inuktituk.

Landing in Iqaluit you can easily walk to the hotel -- the airport terminal is truly convenient to downtown.

And yet the Territory is changing -- and perhaps that is a partial explanation of the terrible violence of the last month or so (and the ongoing violence that seems endemic). Alcohol is a common theme in most (not all) of the violence but alcohol abuse is a symptom and not a cause of the problem.

When I was first in Iqaluit it was little more than a hamlet. Walking through town last night I realised it is becoming, if it has not become, a city.

There is a genuine building boom. There's a mall (of sorts) going up. Houses are everywhere -- even suburbs. And yet many Inuit have limited skills, at best, to deal with an increasingly urban landscape.

Unilingual Inuktituk speakers are common (my trial in Cape Dorset is with a unilingual Inuktituk speaking jury). The failure of past attempts (residential schools, relocations etc), ham fisted and insensitive though they were, should not be reason to ignore the need for skills training today. And such training has to be available in Inuktituk and be respectful of Inuit traditions.

In fairness the Territorial government is making efforts -- there is a local college and various universities have programs in Nunavut. My sense is a Nunavut based university is only a few years off.
All that said, the jury list for my trial is remarkably consistent -- people are carvers, labourers, homemakers or unemployed. The north needs more than that -- carvering is a honourable skill (and there's no shame in being a labourer or homemaker) but computer techs, salespeople, dental hygienists, doctors, lawyers and architects are needed too.

I am honoured to be in the north -- it is a remarkable privilege to argue cases here. But there should be local lawyers trained locally who live here arguing local cases.