
Grise Fiord, Canada's most northerly community - mykowebhn
https://o.canada.com/travel/a-visit-to-grise-fiord-canadas-most-northerly-community
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hluska
I'm not sure how to word this so forgive me if it doesn't make sense. I was
born 'up north' in a very remote community where my parents had to drive two
hours (down awful roads) to reach the hospital where I was delivered. It is
far enough north from where I live now that I could not drive to that
community in one day.

However, when I look at where that community is located and compare it to
Grise Fiord, it is very far south. Heck, it is so far north of where I was
born that if you went to where I was born and went a comparable distance
south, you would end up in Mexico...

Canada is so big that I have trouble imagining how big it really is.

~~~
na85
My spouse had family from Holland come visit us. They told us they wanted to
see Niagara Falls and the Rockies. When we explained it would take a week to
drive from Niagara to the Rockies they boggled. It's hard to conceptualize
just how vast Canada is when back home you can drive for an hour and pass
through three different countries.

~~~
jfim
What I've found useful to convey the relative sizes of countries is to use a
website that allows dragging country outlines to somewhere more familiar [0].
That way it's easier to say that driving from one end of the country to
another in a few hours isn't really doable because it's the same size as
California or the distance from Zurich to Madrid.

[0] [https://thetruesize.com/](https://thetruesize.com/)

~~~
CobrastanJorji
This is super fun to play with. I was surprised to interactively discover that
South Africa was bigger than the Nordic countries.

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northern_ta
Throwaway account.

I live in northern Canada, have been to most communities up here in both
Nunavut and Northwest Territories. It's GREAT, life is extremely different,
but it's extremely rewarding and fulfilling.

Most people move up and either move away within 2 years, or they end up
staying for a long time. I've found it to be very binary -- either you love it
or hate it.

Any questions, ask away!

~~~
phonypc
How's the internet up there?

~~~
northern_ta
Surprisingly good in larger cities. 100mbit in capitals fed by fibre. DSL is
an option, though many communities are ultimately fed via satellite. So you'll
get LTE, it's just limited to 3mbit and 600ms latency.

Pricing isn't great, and all plans have bandwidth caps of less than 500GB per
month. It's do-able.

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flyGuyOnTheSly
>I’m Canadian enough to know the horror of minus 40, but anything beyond that
is daunting.

I'm Canadian too, and I was surprised to read that line.

I've spent winters in Northern Quebec where the temperature regularly hovered
around -40C and it was glorious.

Everything sparkles. Everything.

In fact, -40C feels warmer than +5C because there is no humidity in the air to
make your skin feel the cold.

If you are unprepared for the weather, trying to get by in shorts and t shirt,
you're absolutely going to have a bad time.

But so long as you're bundled up and your house has good insulation, a -40C
day is usually much more enjoyable than a +40C day.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Haerbin in China is typically at -40C or worse in the winter, and it isn’t
that bad...except my digital camera battery died really quickly. I wonder how
a modern smart phone would fare (that was...2005, we only had normal
cellphones). Of course, Haerbin is a huge city with central heating, so its
quite different from being in a small community or in the wilderness.

~~~
dwohnitmok
Whoa there, did you have an especially horrible winter there? It's been closer
to -20 C in my experience (which admittedly was only a couple of weeks). Maybe
you're thinking of Mohe? Also smartphones don't fare well if you leave them
out. I had to constantly warm up my phone in my pocket, otherwise the battery
would often die if I was out and about and left it out in my (gloved) hand too
long.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Maybe I’m misremembering it? I remember the digital thermometer falling from
-30 to -40 on the bus I was riding on from Changchun, but maybe it was
something like -20 to -30? Anyways m, Beijing felt absolutely balmy when I
finished that trip.

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lhorie
I was curious to see whereabout this was, and while it is incredibly remote,
google maps actually showed me another place that is even farther north:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alert,_Nunavut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alert,_Nunavut)

~~~
daveslash
You are correct: Alert and Eureka are both further north. However, I believe
that they are both research or defense installations. While I believe that
they are both occupied year round, I don't believe that they qualify as
"community" because people are assigned there; nobody is "from" there.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Most residents aren't really "from" Grise Fiord either. Quoting from
Wikipedia:

The settlement (and Resolute) was created by the Canadian government in 1953,
partly to assert sovereignty in the High Arctic during the Cold War. Eight
Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec (on the Ungava Peninsula) were relocated
after being promised homes and game to hunt, but the relocated people
discovered no buildings and very little familiar wildlife.

~~~
daveslash
>> _" partly to assert sovereignty in the High Arctic during the Cold War."_

Just Wow: _" We're afraid that another power might assert claim/dominance over
this_ giant _region, so we we 'll get a few dozen people, who have no real
skin in the game, to form a small hunting/fishing villiage. That'll stop
another power from claiming this WHOLE area."_ ~Humans are weird....

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Blackthorn
This line really stuck out to me:

> Adventure Canada expedition leader Jason Edmunds always works with
> communities to develop a plan that’s about “connections and what they want
> to show us” instead of just what we might want to see. The company only goes
> where it is welcome.

If only more companies would operate that way.

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dblohm7
If you're into winter sports, check out the video of the local snowboarder
that was linked from the article:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlc2G8Zsay4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlc2G8Zsay4)

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notkaiho
Interesting to see this on the same day as the "overtourism" article shared
here too

~~~
wavefunction
Even worse it involves a cruise ship.

[https://foe.org/cruise-report-card/](https://foe.org/cruise-report-card/)

[https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/729622653/carnival-cruise-
lin...](https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/729622653/carnival-cruise-lines-hit-
with-20-million-penalty-for-environmental-crimes)

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randomdata
I was under the impression that Alert was the most northernly, permanently
inhabited, community. It is approximately 800kms from the North Pole, while
Grise Fiord is approximately 1,500kms away.

~~~
na85
Alert is permanently inhabited but has no permanent residents, if that makes
sense. Everyone there is on an overlapping rotation.

~~~
mikestew
It makes sense if one replaces "Alert" with "A hotel". Pretty much the same
difference.

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mmanfrin
I sometimes go on Google Maps and explore remote areas and I always wonder
what life is like in the bleak wilderness; and I think how helpless I'd be if
I lived there. I grew up in the SF Bay Area and the thought of being so remote
scares me. I crave being near humanity, or at least having a good enough
internet connection to pretend I'm near. It's a fault, for sure, but I am what
I've been made to be.

~~~
yummypaint
You might want to check out the nat geo show "life below zero." it follows
people living mostly off the land near the arctic circle. the first few
seasons are quite good before the producers started interfering.

~~~
mmanfrin
I will check it out, also that analysis about producers interfering after a
couple good seasons sounds like 95% of nat geo or discovery channel shows,
hah.

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ilamont
Can anyone give insights into the written language used by the Inuktitut,
which appears in the first photo? Can it be adapted to other
languages/dialects? Is it used in Greenland or Alaska?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It is used in Northern Alaska as well as Greenland. See
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut)
and
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut#/media/File%3AInuk...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut#/media/File%3AInuktitut_dialect_map.svg)
for the map.

See
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut_syllabics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut_syllabics)
About the written language. It seems to have been adopted from Cree by a
missionary, which itself was another missionary devised script with an
influence from India Indian Devanagari.

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chadlavi
TIL that Canadians spell fjord "fiord"

~~~
grawprog
We don't...that's the first time I've ever seen it spelled like that. The name
of the town is Norwegian

>The second comes from Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup and means “pig fiord”
for the grunting sound that walrus herds make and the fact this spot is tucked
between cliffs at the mouth of a gorgeous fiord.

I don't know why the author spelled it like that throughout the article when
talking about the landform.

[https://wikidiff.com/fiord/fjord](https://wikidiff.com/fiord/fjord)

Apparently fiord is a New Zealand spelling? >Alternative forms * fiord (New
Zealand

~~~
ovis
We do! Sometimes. A lot of places in Nunavut use that spelling - just a
historical oddity I suppose.

