Nunavut beer, wine stores to close for 5 days over Easter weekend

Closures to start Thursday, end Monday, in Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit

The beer and wine store in Iqaluit, pictured here, as well as Rankin Inlet’s location, will be closed over the Easter weekend from Thursday through Monday. (File photo by Jeff Pelletier)

By Nunatsiaq News

Beer and wine stores in Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet will be closed for five days, starting Thursday.

The stores will not open Thursday or Saturday while their employees check inventory. They will also be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday, which are public holidays in Nunavut, and on Sunday as usual.

Beer and wine stores in both communities will reopen Tuesday for regular business hours, the Nunavut Liquor and Cannabis Commission announced earlier this month.

Import permits can still be purchased on inventory days, the NULC said.

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(36) Comments:

  1. Posted by Purchase Stock on

    Do Bootleggers Inc. trade on the TSX?

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    • Posted by 😂 on

      Crack dealers here comes the $$$ 😂

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  2. Posted by Kivalliq Resident on

    Wow, real party poopers…

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    • Posted by Inuki on

      Plan ahead

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  3. Posted by Name Withheld on

    I am starting Tuesday positively with some exceptionally good news.

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  4. Posted by Northerner on

    Only in nunavut. Countless and pointless holidays. I’m not saying that Easter is pointless.

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    • Posted by Baffin on

      All these ‘pointless’ holidays you are referring to are all over Canada. The only holiday that isn’t the same as rest of Canada is Nunavut Day. Get your facts straight

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      • Posted by 867 on

        Easter Monday is not a holiday in the rest of canada

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      • Posted by Northener on

        Ya but you can buy beer during the holidays everywhere else in canada. Nunavut is the only one that closes on every holiday

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  5. Posted by hermann kliest on

    Family time,,,,Get to know your families instant pf your bartenders. Take them out for lunches and dinners…

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    • Posted by Not the Easter Bunny on

      Go to church?
      Remember what Easter is?
      Thank God for His Son, Jesus Christ.

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      • Posted by Easter is pagan on

        Go to Church if you wish. My family will recognize that Easter, or Eostrae, is named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. My children will learn that the holiday was celebrated for centuries, arguably millenia, before Christianity purloined it in the same way the purloined Christmas from pagan solstice celebrations.

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        • Posted by ᓇᚠᚱ on

          This notion is as grossly incorrect–more so, I’d say–than Christians who assume Easter started as a Jewish holiday.

          So, the name. It is related to an old Germanic word meaning “to shine”. But, it doesn’t go back to our heathen forebearers, but to Bede, who wrote in the 8th century. Which we mean that your theory is based on incorrect Christian historical accounts. Rather ironic… To the point: some historians go so far as to think that it was Bede’s invention. The thing that is certain, is that the Germanic fertility gods were many–like Frigga, who gave us “Friday”, as well as the curse-word “frig”; and Freya, who was certainly more important (and maybe just another name for Frigga).

          As for the holiday itself–well, simply, we have no documents establishing what the heathen calendar would look like. Any ideas are theoretical; and any practices, reconstructions.

          Finally, speaking as a útiseta-sitting, Odin-worshiping tundra wildman, true heathenry is not in historical facts (and even less, in historical fictions the like Sir James Fraser and Margaret Murray, though inspired, invented). It is in the land and in the self.

          ᚼᛅᛁᛚ ᚦᛁ ᚬᛚᛏ ᚢᛅᛁᛋ ᛁᛏᛁᚱᚾᛅᛚ

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          • Posted by Easter is pagan on

            Amazing amount of bluster here. You did make one especially interesting observation though.

            “As for the holiday itself… we have no documents establishing what the heathen calendar would look like. Any ideas are theoretical.”

            So what you’re telling us is, you don’t actually know. “Ironic” indeed.

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            • Posted by ᓇᚠᚱ on

              Thank you for finding my blustering amazing, “Easter is pagan”. I do like to share morsels of knowledge, especially on esoteric history – but seeing at least one innocent bystander in the hallowed halls of the Nunatsiaq News comments section be amazed is a perky plus.

              Yes, I am saying that there being no written record, or even archeological, no one indeed knows not that Easter is based on a heathen holiday (in modern language, “pagan” is usually reserved for either Greco-Roman traditions, or Celtic ones; Ostara being apparently Germanic, heathen is what would be used–though etymologically, they do mean the same thing).

              But, what I am more so saying, and especially as a general caution, is that current notions of the pagan origins of Christian culture is mostly a 19th-century phenomenon, and this is the basis of such tropes. Sir James Fraser gave the greatest push to the basis for the theory, but it was Margaret Murray’s book “The Witch-Cult in Western Europe” that popularised it, especially since it gave inspiration (from among other sources) to Gerald Gardner’s founding of “Wicca” as a revival of paganism, establishing the 8-“sabbbat” calendar that Neopagans and Neoheathens use, along with fanciful theories to support it. Easter, Halloween and Christmas have all been subjected to this weird(or is it wyrd?)ness, being declared fundamentally pagan by layman and newsman alike.

              The question I have and would direct to any so-called pagan who settles upon some abstract historicity is: why? Spirituality isn’t about ancientness or lineage. It’s about connections. Humble, curious, wisdom-seeking connections.

              Finally: Easter is as pagan as anyone wants it to be–or not (and pagan or not, it’s been made “not” by many, and over a very, very, very long time). To say that Christians the world over are celebrating a pagan festival unbeknownst to them, while you and your family revel in such pagan “truths” is – how did you put it? – BLUSTER.

              “Ironic” also comes to mind – in its proper theatrical sense: “a situation the audience or hearer was meant to recognise, but where the character, comedically or tragically, does not.” Amazing!

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        • Posted by Keeper of Secrets on

          Most culture is syncretism. We stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, and there is not much new under the sun. Wasn’t Jesus in Jerusalem for Passover? Most cultures have seen a need for festivities around the time of spring equinox and will cobble one together with whatever stories are handy. Now I’m going to go consume a Cadbury secular cream egg.

      • Posted by Hunter on

        You seriously want to send people to church?

        Most of the abuse Inuit have suffered over the past 150 years is at the hands of the Catholic Church. Which I consider to be a cult. All high and mighty they can do not wrong eh because everything they do is in the name of god.

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  6. Posted by 😂 on

    Y’all don’t like what I have to say eh if u really want a story I got about 500 😂 true facts

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  7. Posted by Homer Simpson on

    Hope bootleg “shops” are warming up their engines and ready to rumble.🤘🤪

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    • Posted by Northerner on

      My bootlegger delivers

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  8. Posted by Maq-Pat on

    Isn’t consistent access to low % alcohol billed a harm reduction tool? Wasn’t this store deemed an “essential service” during COVID?

    Do we expect this will push people to the bootleggers mostly hard liquor? On a weekend already know for too much drinking?

    I expect Iqaluit’s largest drinking establishment (newly privately owned) will also see a significant boost.

    Is this week long inventory a new practice? Is it necessary? I don’t see any other retailer doing this.

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    • Posted by Succotash on

      The bean-counting scribe guild has been observing the sacred rite of year-end inventory-taking since ancient Sumer when they tallied beer supplies on cuneiform tablets 5,000 years ago.

      Who are you to stand in their way just because it coincides with a long weekend this year?

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  9. Posted by Steven on

    Having 1st hand experience with sharing house and home with binge drinkers I think it is a fair move. Giving the rest of us a little break from the party-on people/crowd. Much appreciated by us and speaking for the innocent children that are caught in the bingers’ nightmare/life.

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    • Posted by Changes. Changes. on

      Changes have to happen to people and not policies. There will always be a means to find alcohol or some sort of intoxicant substitute (hair spray, aftershave, hand sanitizer, gas + propane, and the list goes on). Desperate persons with no obligations will do nothing but seek out ways to find these substances. Reducing the hours or the purchasing rates at the B & W will do very little, change has to occur within the person.

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      • Posted by Policy helps on

        Yea people need to make the effort but policies help too, the right policies help or mitigate possible issues, that’s why policies are there. You can’t ignore the rules in place. If you don’t have it then yes you can do whatever you want, such as drink in public.

  10. Posted by True North on

    Stock up

  11. Posted by Ahlupa on

    But Jesus himself that your celebrating over so called Easter turn water into wine. Think about it

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  12. Posted by Eskimo Joe©️ on

    Some bearded guy turning water to wine. April fools day, Easter, and Nunavut day rolled into a dry dubbie party.

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  13. Posted by Name Withheld on

    I was surprised to see a colleague reminding colleagues that the B&W store is closed starting Thursday.

    It’s not appropriate to discuss religion, but is it acceptable to talk about alcohol?

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  14. Posted by Thank you!!! on

    Thank you! This place adds fuel to the fire with all the social issues that we have in Iqaluit and the surrounding communities.
    We see so many drunks throughout the day since this place opened up.
    I wish our GN had the same priorities to making things better up here with more support programs and mental health services to how quick they decided these beer and wine stores would be funded and opened , which happened at light speed when our government can’t do anything meaningful in such great speeds,
    The cart before the house and way too many functioning alcoholics in key positions and decisions being made in Nunavut.

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    • Posted by Define “quick”… on

      The only think quick about the Beer and Wine store is its service.

      If I remember right, the GN – along with NTI, RCMP, etc. – ran a 2-year all-community consultation in 2012, published a bunch of harm-reduction options the next year, held consultations and a referendum about an Iqaluit store in 2015, opened the store in 2017, waited three more years to decide whether the Iqaluit store would stay open, and then waited two more years before opening a second store in Rankin Inlet after that Council asked for it.

      I’m not sure what “quick” or “light speed” means to you, but that timeline doesn’t seem too rushed for me…

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      • Posted by Prematurely quick on

        That is very quick considering how the GN works, look at all the other projects they have been sitting on for decades, such as the elder care facilities, if the GN worked on this as the same as the beer and wine stores they would of had new elder care facilities in Iqaluit, Rankin a long time ago. But then again t wasn’t a priority as it’s not alcohol. 🙄

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    • Posted by Name Withheld on

      I couldn’t agree with you more, I’ve work with so many people who have dependency on alcohol and it really sucks!!

      I don’t understand how they keep their jobs as on more than one occasion I have smelled alcohol, missed work to due to on going excuses that just keeps adding up.

      Government of Nunavut created these individuals alone!! Got worst during covid lockdowns

  15. Posted by John WP Murphy on

    So publicity announcing on Tuesday that the B&W stores will be closed from Thursday to Monday is accompishing what?
    The lineup on Wednesday with folks maxxing out their entitlement, won’t quiet the weekend a bit, if that is what the ultimate reasoning is.

    Ing

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  16. Posted by Confused on

    Must’ve been a nightmare.

  17. Posted by John WP Murphy on

    So does anyone have any stats to share, due to the closing
    Less drunks on the street, less violence, number of alcohol police calls

Comments are closed.