'Baker Lake is just going to explode, I think.'

BAKER LAKE – The first snows have fallen, but bright red dust still clings to the side panels of the new trucks driving up and down the main street.

Four-wheelers still rule the roads, especially the 75-kilometre road to the Meadowbank gold mine, which also makes for handy access to the land for hunters. The caribou are close this Thanksgiving weekend, and outbound traffic is frequent, despite pleas to stay off the road from the mine's owner, Agnico Eagle.

Meanwhile, everyone's in a rush before freeze-up comes. The big-ticket project this year is a fuel tank farm just east of town. And the muddy gravel landing where the barges land is a flurry of activity. Freeze-up comes earlier on a freshwater lake, and nearly a dozen barges need to be offloaded before the ice forms.

In Baker Lake the optimists say there's a job for anyone who wants one. And Canada's only inland Inuit community may offer a glimpse of what the rest of the Kivalliq could be like, thanks to Nunavut's nascent mining industry.

"It's been really busy," says mayor David Aksawnee. "Before the mines started here the welfare was pretty high."

Aksawnee says 55 local workers are employed building the road to Meadowbank. Another 25 are working on Areva Resources' Kiggavik uranium deposit, and William Noah, the company's community liaison officer and a former mayor and MLA, says that figure will double next year.

All this and not one single ounce of mineral product from the western Kivalliq has been sold on the market. Yet.

But it seems only a matter of time, because companies are sinking a lot of effort and money into infrastructure alone. Along with the Meadowbank road, owner Agnico Eagle plans to build a fuel tank farm that, in two years, will supply a 20-megawatt diesel power plant.

They're also building a camp that will eventually be home to 350 workers and include a recreation hall and its own sewage treatment plant.

Areva, though now shut down for the winter, is mulling the possibility of a road to Kiggavik, complete with a ferry crossing the Thelon River. (A bridge is too risky, Noah says. "It may not be safe when icebergs are drifting down.")

Noah foresees a time in the near future when the hamlet's current population of 1,500 triples from the influx of workers.

"Baker Lake is just going to explode, I think."

But not everyone is sold on Baker Lake's status as Nunavut's new mining capital. Joan Scottie has been fighting the creation of a uranium mine since 1990 and says many local mine workers have told her they quit their jobs out of frustration with the rough and ready life of the camps.

"Even though there is going to be a lot of jobs, there's also a lot of problems," she says.

A spike in alcohol and drug abuse is feared in newly-minted resource towns all over the North. But Aksawnee says he hasn't seen an increase in substance abuse.

And the increase in activity means a major jump in air traffic, which has its own impacts on the local environment.

Scottie says she can't count the number of complaints she's gotten from fellow hunters about low-flying aircraft scaring caribou. And she says she had her own run-in last year while hunting. After hours trailing caribou, a helicopter flew overhead just as they came into range of Scottie's rifle. The beasts scattered.

"This is how my rights as a hunter are being disturbed," she says. "This is what the elders are concerned about. It happened to me, now I understand."

It could start happening more. Areva wants to expand the airstrip at its Kiggavik site to take the Boeing 737s it will need to ship crews to the site. And Aksawnee says Baker Lake's council is working on a wish list of infrastructure to submit to the Government of Nunavut.

What's on that list, he wouldn't say.

And while the mayor acknowledges that it's still too early to get a complete picture of the impact the mining boom has had on Baker Lake, Aksawnee says he knows one thing for sure.

"It's been good for the community."