Art house dome orphaned by Iqaluit bylaw

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT— The enigmatic dome structure that once sat at the Telesat satellite dish site in Iqaluit disappeared almost as quietly as it appeared, carted away in pieces by its maker, Randy Perkison.

“I let it go a week and then I was talking to Matthew (Hough, Iqaluit’s planner) and he said I really had to take it down or they could charge me with violating their bylaw,” said the 29-year-old Perkison.

Relatively new in town, Perkison came here to work and visit family. A veteran construction worker, he decided to build the dome just for something to do.

About 17 feet high, with a similar radius, the dome was constructed out of small, interlaced pieces of 2×4 lumber. If it had been finished, Perkison said the dome would have had glass windows and a veneer made from small stones applied to the side of the dome like a mosaic.

“I just liked the view. It was just a cabin. Sort of a place I could go when I was in the doghouse or whatever,” he said. Three weeks ago the town ordered Perkison to stop work on the project.

No one offered to let him move the structure to a different property so he broke it up and carted it off to his brother’s place where, “the dogs are in it now.”

“They cut me down,” laughed Perkison. He said he didn’t ask for a development permit because it just wasn’t his thing.

“I’m not interested in that bureaucratic stuff. I find it really boring and I don’t understand it.”

Perkison said it, “blows his mind,” that the town would care so much about a site already littered with garbage. The wood that he used was collected from the nearby municipal dump.

He said it makes him feel bad to see good lumber being sent to the dump to be burned with everything else when there is a homelessness problem in Iqaluit.