The 10 most popular online Nunatsiaq News stories of 2015

Natan Obed responds to questions after his pre-election speech to board members at the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami annual general meeting Sept. 18 in Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Iqaluit’s Happy Valley neighbourhood in April 2015 during the lockdown which saw many people restricted to their homes and others away. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

Armed police in white camp-outfits search around houses in Iqaluit’s Happy Valley neighbourhood, which was locked down from April 28 to April 30. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

In 2015, Nunatsiaq Online recorded more than 5.5 million page views, according to Google Analytics.

And of the hundreds of stories that kept readers coming back to the site day after day, week after week, the most popular
was an unfolding news story about the late April standoff in Iqaluit’s Happy Valley neighbourhood.

The standoff started shorty before we heard about it, in a tip-off from a reader, in the late afternoon of April 28, just as the work day was winding down.

Police and bylaw officers erected barricades around the Happy Valley, kicking off two days of escalating police action, evacuations and uncertainty about what was going on inside the locked-down area.

In the absence of organized communication from police and the city, the Iqaluit-based Nunatsiaq News team — senior reporter Jane George, with reporters Peter Varga and Thomas Rohner, offered a round-the-clock, up-to-date coverage of the standoff.

You can read more here:

• Nunavut RCMP clear residents, pets from Iqaluit lockdown area

• Life during armed standoff full of worry: Iqaluit man in Happy Valley

• Life for Iqaluit residents inside and outside the lockdown zone

• Iqaluit standoff ends April 30, barricades come down

• Iqaluit man faces five charges following armed standoff

• What worked, what didn’t, during the Happy Valley standoff

The second most-read online story: reaction to comments made by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. President Cathy Towtongie to Natan Obed at the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami annual general meeting on Sept. 17 in Cambridge Bay.

After Obed’s speech at the AGM, Towntongie twice asked Obed, who does not speak Inuktitut fluently, about how he would communicate with elders.

“The fact that I don’t speak fluent Inuktitut is just part of who I am,” Obed told Towntongie, who also wanted to know if the university-educated Obed had lost his identity while studying in the South and whether he had learned any “ancient customs” during his childhood.

In a letter sent to Nunatsiaq News, which received more than 100 online comments, Iqaluit resident Jesse Mike said Towtongie’s remarks were “hurtful and discriminatory”

“We are Inuit regardless of how others choose to identify themselves or us,” Mike wrote.

AGM delegates elected Obed as ITK president anyway.

The other top 10 Nunatsiaqonline.ca stories are:

• A Russian pilot tells an extraordinary tale of survival in Nunavut waters. “Of course I must finish what I started. And I can do it again,” said the globe-trotting Russian pilot Sergey Ananov, whose helicopter, a two-seater Robinson R-22, went down July 25 over Davis Strait. Crew members from the CCGS Pierre Radisson rescued him and took him to Iqaluit.

“If you consider each element of Sergey Ananov’s unimaginable story — surviving a crash landing in Arctic waters, fighting off polar bears on an ice floe, a searcher’s fluky glimpse of Ananov’s last, dying flare — every part of it seems impossible,” the story by David Murphy reads.

• Three former Government of Nunavut employees say they were bullied out of their jobs by managers and other senior bureaucrats who ganged up on them. As a result of the harassment, all three claim serious health issues that persist until today, in this story about workplace bullying by Thomas Rohner.

A second story in the two-part series reports how fear, favouritism, and a clash of cultures fuel high GN staff turnover rates.

• A notorious Iqaluit murderer dies in prison — Mark King Jeffrey, 34 — is found dead June 29.

• Iqaluit RCMP quickly quell a second standoff on May 2, with Iqaluit resident Tommy Josephee charged in relation to that incident.

• Three die in a plane crash near the Nunavik Ungava Bay community of Kangirsuk on June 11: Residents said they saw a plane dive, then heard an explosion.

• Sudden illness wrecks an April hockey tournament in Nunavik: Nitrogen dioxide from refrigeration system may have poisoned young players at the Nunavik Youth Hockey Development Program tournament in Kangiqsualujjuaq on Ungava Bay.

• Ottawa police review a second Nunavut excessive force allegation, in which police laid “false” assault charge to cover attack on prisoner, a defence lawyer alleges. An investigation later determines that Nunavut cops “did not exceed the use of force necessary.”

• A search ends for an Iqaluit man missing after April 6 seal hunt: Ground-based search crews call off a search for 44-year-old Sandy Oolayou, who failed to return from a seal hunt sponsored by the city’s Toonik Tyme spring festival, which later honours the deceased hunters and raises money for Oolayou’s family.