Iqaluit in 2010: smelly inferno and a new mayor

Elisapee Sheutiapik’s seven-year stint as mayor of Iqaluit came to a close this past November when she announced her resignation Nov. 9 to a stunned group of city councillors. (FILE PHOTO)

Iqaluit’s overloaded garbage dump caught fire this past September, casting plumes of acrid, toxic smoke into the air until Oct. 27, when firefighters were finally able to extinguish it. (FILE PHOTO)

This past March, police in Iqaluit made a massive seizure of liquor kept illegally for sale. Police allege that somebody, using legal permits, ordered at least $250,000 worth of liquor from southern Canada to sell illegally in the community. Four Iqaluit men face Liquor Act charges arising from the RCMP investigation. (RCMP HANDOUT PHOTO)

Madeleine Redfern won a by-election this past December to become mayor of Iqaluit, defeating Jim Little, Paul Kaludjak and Al Hayward. Joanasie Akumalik defeated Stephen Mansell and Ed deVries to win a seat on council.

Throat-singers Elisa Kilabuk and Becky Kilabuk entertain at the June 24 opening of the First Nations Bank of Canada’s new branch in Iqaluit, located on the Four Corners at the Kamotiq Centre. (FILE PHOTO)

January

• Nunavut’s hockey-mad capital mounts a bid for the annual Kraft Hockeyville contest, which offers small-town winners $100,000 for arena upgrades and the chance to host an NHL pre-season game. Iqaluit city organizers assemble a bid consisting of photos and stories, but are ultimately unsuccessful: Dundas, Ontario is the eventual winner.

• Iqaluit’s new city council, elected the previous October, starts the year by selecting members for the city’s various boards and committees. New councillor Mat Knickelbein proposes establishing a committee specifically to lobby for a deepwater port for Iqaluit, but the motion is defeated. That project is rolled into a joint committee on economic development and sustainability.

• Police in Iqaluit make a pair of drug busts netting marijuana and oxycodone. On Jan. 27, Joseph Hess is arrested on two drug trafficking charges. Police seize 400 grams of marijuana and 29 oxycodone pills in a raid. Meanwhile, on Jan. 29, Ed DeVries is arrested of drug trafficking and proceeds of crime charges after police seize one kilogram of weed, a GMC Yukon and $7,200 in cash. Later in the year, DeVries mounts an unsuccessful run in a city council by-election.

February

• Hundreds of dignitaries, hangers-on and media, plus finance ministers from seven of the world’s largest economies, descend on Iqaluit for the G7 Finance Ministers meeting. The influx of visitors meant hotel rooms, rental cars and even telecommunications bandwidth was hard to come by. The finance ministers talked at length about ways to help the global economy recover from recession, but at a closing news conference, they were rendered speechless by a question from a local television reporter about the seal hunt.

• City council opts to enforce tough environmental standards on new homes built in phase 3 of the city’s Plateau subdivision. Twenty-eight of 53 units in the new wing of the neighbourhood will have to comply with R2000 standards, which use less water and electricity. Council went ahead with the plan, despite complaints that the rules would drive up costs for contractors.

• Council takes the first step towards the construction of four major new pieces of infrastructure, by rolling feasibility studies for the projects into one. The resulting tender called for the creation of plans for a new swimming pool, rec centre, fire hall and city hall.

March

• City councillors approve Iqaluit’s largest-ever budget, totalling $37 million. The budget includes $11 million in capital spending, $6 million to pay for new residential developments and $20 million in operating costs. It also includes a 0.5 per cent property tax hike.

• Plans for a new $40-million air terminal for Iqaluit’s airport come to light. Peter Taptuna, Nunavut’s Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, tells the Legislative Assembly the building is needed to handle a predicted boom in passenger traffic at Nunavut’s busiest airport. The redevelopment would also see the construction of new airside commercial lots. But Iqaluit city planners express reservations about the amount of construction debris such a project would create.

A Government of Nunavut plan to build a multi-million dollar port and small craft harbour for Iqaluit is revealed through documents obtained by Nunatsiaq News in an access to information request. The documents show the project would cost at least $65 million. The proposal also notes that it is the fifth plan for an Iqaluit port since 1975. Taptuna says the port can’t be built unless the federal government steps up with funding.

• Police arrest 30-year-old Susie Nakashuk in connection with the February stabbing death of 43-year-old Kelly Lucassie. Lucassie was found mortally wounded inside unit 309C on Feb. 19. Paramedics rushed him to Qikiqtani General Hospital where he died shortly after.

April

• Qulliq Energy Corporation starts work on a major overhaul of Iqaluit’s power grid. The power utility was replacing the city’s aging 5,000-volt power lines and transformers with a 25,000-volt system that has become the North American standard. The utility told city councillors the new system should help Iqaluit’s power plant operate more efficiently, while reducing the frequency and duration of power outages.

May

• Iqaluit’s acting bylaw chief tells city council bylaw officers spend “98 per cent” of their time handling dog complaints. Keith Park told a committee meeting that the shorthanded bylaw department was swamped with complaints ranging from aggressive huskies to puppies hit by cars. Park said the city needs tougher penalties for dog owners who let their animals run loose.

• The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports that apartment rents in Iqaluit continued to rise, while housing prices stayed flat. The city’s vacancy rate for rental units dropped to 0.6 per cent in 2009, down from 0.8 per cent the year before. Meanwhile, housing sales in the capital declined.

• City council opts to pave a badly-decayed section of Apex Road between the Road to Nowhere and the Arctic Winter Games Arena, replacing chipseal that had badly degraded since it was installed in 2006. But the decision, which uses up the remainder of $12 million in federal infrastructure funding, means paving a bumpy stretch of Federal Road will have to wait for another year.

• The RCMP opens its new headquarters on Federal Road. The massive new building replaces the dilapidated old location on Astro Hill and features state of the art facilities for communications and forensic examinations. The new building also features a residual heating system to reduce power consumption.

June

• The City of Iqaluit gets ready to ship out nearly 8,000 tonnes of crushed waste metal, including hundreds of cars, snowmobiles and 4-wheelers. The scrap, which also included industrial waste metal from the North 40, was supposed to be shipped out in 2009, but high winds and menacing sea ice forced the sealift ship, which was to haul the scrap, out of Iqaluit sooner than expected.

• The Government of Nunavut holds a public meeting in Iqaluit to showcase possible designs for an Iqaluit port. Engineers propose four options, but prefer a $65-million facility that would connect to the existing road at the Causeway, plus anywhere from $3 million to $21 million in small craft harbour upgrades. But once again, officials from the city and GN admit there’s no money to pay for the project without assistance from Ottawa.

July

• Air Canada Jazz’s Iqaluit-Ottawa appears to be doing less damage to competing northern airlines than originally feared. Passengers report mostly-empty planes, and several mechanical glitches force flights to be cancelled.

• Iqaluit city council votes to spend an extra $108,000 on the long-delayed development of a new cemetery on the Road to Nowhere after crews dig up far more rocks than expected. City officials are forced to reduce the number of burial plots for the new graveyard from 400 to 140.

• Well-heeled homeowners from the Plateau subdivision shout down a proposed two-storey mixed-use development in their neighbourhood that was to feature commercial space and apartments. But some residents objected to the introduction of commerce into a “nice, peaceful environment.”

• Delinquent property tax payers owe the City of Iqaluit more than $1.5 million in back taxes, the city reveals. Four taxpayers account for $1-million of the back taxes owed.

August

• Iqaluit’s director of finance, John Mabberi-Muydoni, complains the city is losing money on large credit card transactions thanks to a two-per-cent service fee charged by credit card companies. Between the fee and the city’s two-per cent discount for early payments, Mabberi-Muydoni says the city loses thousands of dollars every time a corporation makes a large payment by credit card.

• Two men, Michel Gilbert and Martin Plante, successfully convince city council to return Plateau lots they won in a city-run draw, after staff revoked the win because the men bought property elsewhere in the city. Michele Bertol, city’s director of planning and lands, had reasoned the men were no longer first-time homebuyers when they bought other property, but councillors voted to return the lots to the pair.

• Crews load 6,500 cubic metres of scrap metal onto the MV Aivik. The material, culled from dump sites and old vehicles, is bound for a recycling plant in Quebec.

September

• The City of Iqaluit nets a$158,000 grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to fund a “sustainable community plan” to manage its high rate of growth.

• Iqaluit city councillor Mat Knickelbein accuses Michele Bertol, the city’s director of planning and lands, of misleading council over a proposed light industrial area in the Upper Base area. Bertol and councillors can’t come to agreement on what sort of business would be allowed to go ahead in the proposed zone. Council approves the proposal, but Knickelbein says he’ll it bring it back for another vote later.

• Iqaluit’s dump, long over capacity, catches fire Sept. 24 and quickly turns into a flaming pile of trash 15 metres high, sending plumes of acrid smoke into the air. A thick crust of ash helps shield the fire from air, causing temperatures inside the trash pile to reach thousands of degrees, and making it hard for firefighters to battle the blaze. Crews decide to let the fire burn.

• City recreation officials hold a public consultation to gather ideas for new recreation facilities. The number one suggestion: a new swimming pool.

October

• City councillors vote to hike garbage collection rates. The new rates for businesses start at $200 per month, and rates for homeowners start at $30 per month.

• After letting Iqaluit’s blazing dump burn for a while, firefighters step up efforts to extinguish the fire, with limited success. Meanwhile, smoke from the fire blows into town a couple of days, causing schools and government offices to close.

• The sound of skates carving up the ice at the Arctic Winter Games Arena returns after a seven-year absence. Politicians, city staff and skaters alike celebrate the result of a $2.5-million project to repair the concrete pad beneath the arena, which had sunk into the tundra.

• City councillors vote for a second time on a light industrial development in the Upper Base area, this time rejecting the development. This despite pleas from planning and lands director Michele Bertol that the city is running out of land for industrial development.

• On Oct. 27, after burning for more than a month, the fire at the Iqaluit landfill is extinguished.

November

• Elisapee Sheutiapik stuns onlookers at a city council meeting Nov. 9 by announcing she’ll resign as mayor, effective Dec. 13. Sheutiapik, who served seven years as mayor, didn’t give reasons for her decision to leave barely a year after being re-elected.

• At the same council meeting, Coun. Natsiq Alainga-Kango, who had a spotty attendance record, announced she was also stepping down to take a run for the presidency of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

• City councillors appear to reverse a longstanding moratorium against new development in Apex when they vote 4-3 to allow Kirt Ejesiak and Madeleine Cole to subdivide their lot near the old Hudson Bay Company post. Michele Bertol, director of planning and lands, says the moratorium doesn’t apply to the subdivision of existing lots, and despite complaints, the motion passes.

December

• Candidates running for mayor and council in a city by-election square off in a debate hosted by Nangminiq Angiraliiit Iqaluit Ratepaters Association. Economic development, municipal services and a host of non-municipal questions dominate the event at the Parish Hall.

• Madeleine Redfern wins a by-election to become Mayor of Iqaluit, defeating Jim Little, Paul Kaludjak and Al Hayward. Joanasie Akumalik defeats Stephen Mansell and Ed deVries to win a seat on council.

• Revellers see out 2010 with a fireworks display on the Road to Nowhere.