MARMALADE DROP

Originally published at Nunatsiaq News . It was supposed to be a film about dogsledding but that quickly changed. When Matthew Hood and François Lebeau first flew up to Kuujjuaq for a film shoot in April 2016, the idea was to focus on the adventures of Hood’s childhood friend Conor Goddard, while he worked as a guide and trainer in outdoor survival skills for an Ontario-based outfitting company called Black Feather. But they soon concluded that the real story lay not in the dogsledding, but in Goddard’s little family. “When we got there we realized—it is interesting. but it is not some wild adventure,” Hood says. “It is pretty controlled. It is pretty calm. The idea is to go out and to have a smooth ride. So it is not like some epic adventure every time.” But they started to see the relationship Goddard had with his Inuk wife Tracy Partridge, and his young son Callum—all the activities and adventures they would do. “And then we realized that  that  w...

Originally published at Nunatsiaq News . PHOTO BY COURTNEY EDGAR He stands five feet, two inches tall, with a strong, athletic body, dressed in seal skin and holding a walking stick. Appearing about 40 years of age, he has wrinkles around his eyes and a weathered face which indicate the harsh demands of the life he must have lived. Small hairs sprout from the tops of his hands which emerge from a sealskin coat. Looking proud as he stares into the distance, he stands against an Arctic backdrop and behind a pane of glass. His name is Nuvumiutaq and he is made of clay and silicone. On March 26, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau unveiled to a private group their long-awaited scientific reproduction of the Thule Man—an Inuk ancestor thought to be about 800 years old, and whose remains were found in 1959 near Arctic Bay. The remains, and the artifacts buried with him, have been in museum storage ever since but they are now a part of a repatriation project...

Originally published at Nunatsiaq News . Lily Kilabuk, left, and Emmeline Ipeelie, students at Nunavut Sivuniksavut college in Ottawa, model sealskin coats during a pro-sealing event on Parliament Hill March 17. PHOTO BY COURTNEY EDGAR. Nanuq Kulu never had the courage to wear seal skin in the South. Kulu, who prefers we use “they” instead of he or she, was always fearful of what might happen if they did. And for good reason. Kulu has seen activists in Ottawa singling out strangers wearing fur and slapping neon stickers on them that read “I’m an asshole I wear fur,” the latest from anti-fur activists PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Kulu, isn’t the only person who’s reluctant to wear seal skin on southern city streets. But they and other Nunavut Sivuniksavut students in Ottawa put aside their fears March 17, donned sealskin clothing and proudly gathered in Ottawa for a pro-sealing rally on Parliament Hill. The rally was a way for NS students to...

Originally published at Nunatsiaq News . Oo Aqpik started to make art when she lived in Winnipeg and working on the film, Arctic Defenders, with the National Film Board. She didn’t have many friends there besides her co-workers so she spent a lot of her spare time watching Bob Ross on television and learning to paint with acrylics. But rather than rendering fluffy clouds and trees, she used his techniques to paint Arctic plants and figures from Inuit legends such as Sedna. “It got serious after Bob Ross,” she said. Oo Aqpik, Inuk multimedia artist, was part of the at Kanata 150 art show in Ottawa at Studio Sixty-Six. Her sealskin wearable sculptures were one of the art exhibit's big sellers. PHOTO BY COURTNEY EDGAR. Since then Aqpik, has branched out to other media—sewing and designing accessories. She can’t sit still, she said, explaining that she often gets a “little lightbulb” and then thinks, “Oh, I want to do that,” flitting back and forth between several ...

I sat down with the man behind Ottawa's Birdman Sound record shop, John Westhaver, and asked his tips for starting, running, and keeping alive a vintage record shop. Here is what he had to say. ●  HAS VINYL 'MADE A COME-BACK', AS THEY SAY? “ Resurgences and come-backs don't last for seven years,” Westhaver says. “ Most people still just don't buy records. Most people just steal music from the internet.” ● WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU SEEN IN RECORD-SHOPPING HABITS OVER TIME? When people would buy records back when he worked in shops in junior high, the majority of customers would come in for an album just looking for one specific track from it. “ I had two aunts who bought records,” Westhaver says. “They were into country music. They bought albums all the time. Their record collections, which I inherited when they passed away, were really funny because they were blueprints of one another. It was where those hit singles were, those were the tr...

John Westhaver, owner and sole employee of the Glebe record store Birdman Sound, likens songs to brussell sprouts when he describes the discomfort he notices some customers have when they listen to new music. Throughout his work day, he often hears the line, “The only good song was the single”. He has to disagree. Most of the time, he says, people simply don't like what they don't know. “ It's kind of like the people who say they hate brussell sprouts,” Westhaver says. “What, because you had it once when you were ten years old? Your mom probably boiled them and you got salt and pepper on them. Trust me, man, that is gross. That is not the way to eat them.” John Westhaver, owner of Birdman Sound, an Ottawa record shop in the Glebe neighbourhood, shows a favourite record. (PHOTO: COURTNEY EDGAR) As a man who DJ's for CKCU and has been in radio since 1980, Westhaver says he has an insatiable appetite for music, especially records, and that it is ...