Piviniit thrift store celebrates 10 years in Iqaluit

The Piviniit thrift store in Iqaluit recently celebrated its 10th anniversary last Thursday.

To mark the event, the store held a stuff-a-bag sale—fit as much as you can in a garbage bag and pay just $10—over the weekend, causing the aisles of the little store to be packed with bag-clutching Iqalungmiut.

Despite the higher than usual traffic, the store was still tidy. When Piviniit first opened, that wouldn’t have been the case.

“The first day that I was here, we didn’t have anything on the floor except for tables,” said Linda Ham, who started with Piviniit as a volunteer 10 years ago and is now the treasurer.

“We had jeans on one table, we had sweaters on another table and, you know, within five minutes of people digging through them, it was just like one big pile.”

Since then the store has come a long way, but, much like its creation, it didn’t happen overnight.

According to Ham, the idea for the store was born around 2004 through a group of women, including Yvonne Earle and former chief justice Beverly Browne, who would get together at the old pool for aquafit classes and talk about what they could do to help the community.

Several years later, in 2007, the Piviniit society was incorporated and immediately began looking for a space.

At the same time, a new soup kitchen building was going to be built on the lot that was once home to St. Jude’s Cathedral, which, alongside the kitchen, had an extra 100 square metres of floor space the society could rent.

Around this time the society had two sea cans donated to them that they immediately began to fill with donations, anticipating that when the store actually opened they’d suffer from a lack of donations.

That wouldn’t be the case.

“When the store opened two years later and we moved into this space, we didn’t actually touch anything in the sea cans for two years,” recalls Ham.

“We never suffer from donations.”

Since then, the society has done everything they can to fulfil their mandate—to provide Iqaluit residents relief from the effects of poverty.

Over the last decade, Ham estimates that Piviniit has given out more than $60,000 in financial donations.

This is in addition to the numerous organizations they’ve helped out with material donations, from coffee cups to the women’s shelter to towels for the humane society.

Piviniit has also directly helped individuals.

“When there’s a fire in town, I will reach out—or one of the other board members will reach out—to either the Red Cross or the city and say, ‘Anybody that’s affected by the fire, you can come in and take whatever you need—no questions asked, take what you need.’”

Over the years Piviniit has been recognized for its continued contributions to the community, including most recently by the outgoing mayor, Madeleine Redfern, who presented the society with a certificate of appreciation at the last meeting of the previous city council.

When asked what’s next for Piviniit, Ham responded, “We need a bigger store.”

The society also hopes to apply for grants and perhaps even hire or train a store manager, which, in addition to helping the operations of the store, would also provide someone from the community with a steady income.

Piviniit is open from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays and from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays, and they’re always looking for volunteers.