Iqaluit’s home away from home

Pitsiula Ashoona looks after the front desk at the new Iqaluit medical boarding home. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

Kitchen workers Geesapee Kanayok, left, and Lena Totalik moved over from the old Tammaativik home into a kitchen twice the size. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

The new Iqaluit patient residence stands just across the Ring Road from Qikiqtani General Hospital. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

Patients from across the Baffin region relax in the front lounge. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

Boarding home residents and staff on break enjoy a chat in the cafeteria. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

On this warm July afternoon the ground floor of the newly-opened Iqaluit patient residence is bustling.

“It just never stops,” said manager Jim Taylor, as medical patients from around the Baffin region — those who are just arriving, those who are just visiting or and those who head off to appointments — fill every nook and cranny of the new hotel-like building across the street from the old Baffin hospital.

With 90 beds – mostly double beds – located in 45 rooms, the building’s never empty and the staff never lack for things to do, Taylor said.

Overall, the new residence is a lot better than the old one,” says Martha Pee, a young mother from Cape Dorset. “More healthy for elders and children.”

Like some other women in the residence, Pee was in town to have her baby at Qikiqtani General Hospital, her third child. She had been living in Iqaluit at the patient residence for three weeks.

Pee’s previous pregnancies had brought her to the old Tammaattivik boarding home, a building originally designed as a residence for Inuksuk high school students.

The new patient residence is a big improvement for her: “It’s like a hotel. They have TVs and phones in the rooms,” Pee said.

The patient home isn’t quite ready, however, for a final spit-and-polish inspection.

During a brief Nunatsiaq News tour, a toilet didn’t work, a fire extinguisher holder needed assembling, and a crack in a window had been taped over, an attempt to repair damage apparently suffered during installation.

Nor are the laundry facilities up and running yet. Staff bring laundry to the laundry room at the former Tammaativvik patient residence until the new building’s laundry room is working.

Such minor glitches should be ironed out by the fall, when the building will get an official ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by a phalanx of politicians and perhaps a new, permanent name, Nunavut’s Department of Health and Social Services says.

Despite the minor flaws in the finish, the cleanliness and warmth of the building — which many out-of-town Nunavummiut call home for days, weeks or months — is striking.

The old Tammaativik residence had only two phones in its lobby – of which only one was for long-distance calling – for the entire 45-bed building.

But in the new residence, every one of the 45 double rooms has its own phone.

And, in the new residence, a computer in the new home’s front lobby provides internet access, with a 20-minute time limit per user.

The door of each suite in the new hostel is lockable with a magnetic key-card, unlike Tammaattivik, where unsecured rooms made theft a constant problem.

Visitors still aren’t allowed to visit rooms for that very reason, but there are public lounges on every floor where patients may socialize with guests.

Kitchen staff are also happy with their new digs: they say their new kitchen is more than twice as big as Tammaattivik’s and includes a walk-in freezer, holding as much country food as they can buy for patients’ meals.

The new residence’s ground floor includes seven rooms designed for disabled patients like elders, each furnished with a double bed and a single bed for a medical escort.

The top two floors feature regular rooms, each with two double beds.

Each patient may get their own room with an escort, but if there are many patients arriving from communities, people may have to double up.