Four of a kind: Nunavut stories that drew your attention

Nunatsiaq News followers love to read about crime and punishment — and that would have been a clean sweep of our most popular online stories last week were it not for a piece about ongoing problems with this year’s sealift.

According to Google Analytics pageviews, our readers flocked to stories about current and past court cases and also, what may have seemed like a crime to many Nunavummiut and Nunavimmiut—having to keep waiting for sealift goodies delayed by ice and Coast Guard logistics.

So here, in order of popularity, are our list of top stories from Nunatsiaqonline.ca from July 19 to July 25, 2015.

This short story, about two Iqaluit men busted in Rankin Inlet with four pounds of marijuana, received thousands of pageviews on our website last week.

The two men, who were not named, are scheduled to appear in Rankin Inlet court in December.

Our second most popular story, about a man whose guns were seized by police, involved a court ruling on whether those guns should be returned or forfeited.

The man was suicidal when police arrived at his house and officers noticed that he had several guns which were improperly stored and seized them. But since he was never charged with improper firearms storage, the judge ruled that the man should get them back, once a firearms ban imposed on him expired.

The third most popular story, which broke the crime sweep last week, was a piece on how thick sea ice, and federal logistical priorities, have hampered this year’s sealift attempts.

Spokespeople from NEAS and NSSI, Nunavut and Nunavik’s largest sealift companies, were left stranded last week because of compromised Coast Guard ship capacity this year.

Ottawa pulled two Coast Guard ships off sealift duty this year to redeploy them to the High Arctic for seabed mapping to claim sovereign territory for Canada during one of the Arctic’s worst years for ice in recent memory.

The next most popular item last week again came out of the Nunavut Court of Justice.

This was a sentencing judgment from Judge Sue Cooper in which she gave extra credit for time already served in custody because it was served at the notoriously overcrowded and unsanitary Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit.

The man, who had been repeatedly getting into trouble at BCC, seemed to settle down after he was transferred to an institution in B.C., further indication that harsh conditions at BCC can contribute to unrest among inmates and guards.

The last story in our top five list was a short update on what’s happening with the man who held Iqaluit hostage during an armed standoff in Happy Valley from April 28 to April 30 this year.

Jamie Mikijuk, 26, was denied bail and will have to remain in jail while he awaits the outcome of his five firearms-related charges.