Nunatsiaq Online’s top reads: trouble brewing at Iqaluit city council

Nunatsiaq Online readers were hungry last week for news about what’s been brewing inside Iqaluit’s municipal council chambers.

For the final full week of June, our most-read online stories flowed from a June 23 Iqaluit city council meeting, as tracked by Google Analytics pageviews.

1)In our top story of the week, Iqaluit councillors spar over proposed new conduct rules, councillors barbs over a proposed code of conduct bylaw, essentially a rulebook governing how councillors behave both inside and outside council chambers.

The war of words involved Mayor Mary Wilman, Coun. Stephen Mansell, and Coun. Kenny Bell, who’s been vocal lately about his dissatisfaction with city staff and colleagues.

2) But councillors — and Nunatsiaq readers alike — were also drawn to the idea of the potential launch of a brewery in Iqaluit.

Our second most-read story of the week covered a presentation by the Nunavut Brewing Company Ltd., who took their idea to city council June 23.

“We’re representing a group of investors who have thought about, and are actively pursuing, the development of a business plan to open a craft brewery in Iqaluit,” said Sheldon Nimchuk, of the would-be brewing company, in a presentation to councillors.

Five investors are interested in starting the brewery in Iqaluit, he said, and it will require about $3 million in capital.

3) The young parents of Makibi Olayuk Akesuk, who died in 2012 at just three-months old, are demanding a full coroner’s inquest their son’s death.

Nunavut’s chief coroner’s office initially determined the cause of the infant’s death to be sudden infant death syndrome, but an autopsy performed later on the child found he died of a viral lung infection.

4) Inuit suicide rates are rooted in historical trauma, a veteran researcher told a Montreal conference last week.

Researcher Jack Hicks presented research to the Association for Suicide Prevention’s 28th congress in Montreal that traces the beginning of high suicide rates in Nunavut to the early 1970s, following the relocation of Inuit into settled communities.

5) The Nunavut Law Society is expecting five articling students — sort of like law apprentices — to soon become fully certified lawyers, and local practitioners.

Not since the Akitsiraq Law School graduated 11 fresh legal minds a decade ago have so many students been called to the bar at the same time.