Out of order: 2 Nunavut hamlet ice rinks down for the count
Resolute Bay’s rink lacks staff, while Coral Harbour’s arena closed due to fire and safety issues
Resolute Bay’s arena is closed this season due to a lack of staff, according to the hamlet’s senior administrative officer. Those who want to skate can use an outdoor rink. (File photo by Ron Elliott)
Two community ice rinks in Nunavut have not seen action this winter season.
Resolute Bay’s rink has been shuttered for lack of staff, while in Coral Harbour the problem is safety-related.
Ian Duddla, Resolute Bay’s acting senior administrative officer, said while there were training opportunities this fall for staff to carry out ice and rink maintenance, the hamlet saw little interest.
“The pool of [potential workers] is very limited,” he said of his community, which has a population of approximately 200 people.
The rink relies on natural ice and does not operate in warmer months, but the job is labour intensive in the winter months, Duddla said.
Skating is still possible in the community, however, as a pond near the ocean gets shovelled off for kids to skate on.
“There’s no issue having a rink outdoors,” Duddla said.
Coral Harbour’s arena has been closed since fall because of fire and safety issues, according to Cyrone Cabatu, spokesperson with the Department of Community and Government Services.
Cabatu said that while his department is not responsible for the repairs, it is helping the hamlet by providing it with $40,000 through its municipal support program.
The office of the chief electrical inspector is also engaged in work being done to repair the arena, Cabatu said.
Nunatsiaq News was unable to contact Coral Harbour’s senior administrative officer for more information on the state of the community’s rink.
Don’t think that resolute bay arena has ever even been open. Wonder how much it cost to build ,such a wasted space and money(?
Terrible, these facility’s should be maintained the GN should be shamed into helping fix these issues, the young people suffer and some clown in the GN says they are not responsible, where are we going in this territory,
Why should the GN be responsible for municipal infrastructure? That is not a Territorial responsibility nor should it be.
Until these communities stop relying on the GN and the Feds for everything, there will never be self sufficiency or independence.
“Until these communities stop relying on the GN and the Feds for everything, there will never be self sufficiency or independence” is pretty rich coming from Iqaluit, who just uploaded all their water expenses to the GN and Feds.
The rink relies on natural ice and does not operate in warmer months, but the job is labour intensive in the winter months, Duddla said.
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I don’t buy that at all. In the south this job is usually a retired guys gig.
“The pool of [potential workers] is very limited,” he said of his community.
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Nunatsiaq should do an ATIP to find out how many people in the community are receiving Income Assistance with a gross income of $0.
Resolute Bay has the 3rd highest median income in the entire territory. Its residents also collect by far the least amount of income assistance in the entire territory (per capita). There are more jobs than available workforce in Resolute Bay. I am not surprised that they would have difficulty finding an arena maintainer.
Those figures are probably skewed by the high number of transients “living” in resolute bay working for ATCO and federal workers at south camp
Thanks for providing data that both Statistics Canada and the Nunavut Bureau of Statistics do not have.
Maybe 3 as whale cove been closed for a longtime now.
Check the Stats Canada site. It will give you all the info you need on available workers, age, gender , everything you could ever want to know. They do not however have a “I never want to work category” which is unfortunate.
The GN provides arenas to the communities and we appreciate it but the problem is in my personal opinion it once its handed over from the GN to the Hamlet the Hamlet recreation dept budget is way too small to keep running in normal operations we see this time and time again especially in the smaller communities and the GN needs to improve that.