Nunatsiaq News takes a look inside Iqaluit's ‘scary place'

Maybe you've seen it: a green door halfway up the hill between Federal Road and the Plateau subdivision, not far up from the trailer court.

Venture up there, and you'll find a room not much bigger than a sea can, seemingly carved into the hillside. Open the green door and there's a warning fit for a scene from a horror movie.

Someone has spray painted in rust-coloured lettering "scary place" with a cross underneath. What makes the cross utterly perfect is the creepy way the paint drips down the door.

A rational-minded visitor who doesn't believe in ghosts or the supernatural may want to prop the green door open with rocks and claim it's strictly to let the light in so as not to trip and bump into walls.

Inside, there's a layer of brackish water about an inch deep, with all kinds of garbage scattered on the floor of a small anteroom. Beyond, lies another room with what look like big gray boxes that appear to be attached to the floor, and more garbage. On the walls is typical graffiti: Steve A. was there in '02, according to one scrawl.

So that's what it is. But what exactly is it for?

Bryan Pearson, a former mayor of Frobisher Bay and territorial councillor who moved to the area in 1956, says the structure is likely an abandoned high frequency radio station used to guide the transatlantic flights that once frequently stopped here to refuel. Outside the rectangular building only metres away are a pair of old radio antennae.

"Frobisher used to be a main position on the transatlantic flights, but with new technology that was switched to [Newfoundland]," he says. "Frobisher used to be the place, because I used to have pilot friends who would call me from 35,000 feet on the phone."

Before that, it might have been part of the old Pinetree line of radar defense stations that once stretched from Iqaluit to St. John's to Vancouver Island.

The Pinetree line was the southernmost of three radar networks that covered Canada to protect against a Soviet nuclear attack that never came. It complemented the better-known Distant Early Warning line and the short-lived Mid-Canada line.

"The first day I was here in 1956 I inadvertently walked into one of those buildings freezing my ass off and was met by an armed guard," Pearson says. "It was all hush-hush in those days."

Pearson suspects the building would have been filled with radio transmitters, and likely not staffed, which would explain the lack of windows or other amenities.