Exploring Iqaluit...

My first week in Iqaluit was simply beautiful... the sun shone every day (and night), temperature in the mid-teens. I didn't find the midnight sun to be a problem - just closed the blinds when I went to sleep.

The lack of trees on the land is somewhat disconcerting - in Northern Ontario, where I grew up, we had trees, rocks and water (plenty of each). In London, there were plenty of trees... but no rocks or water to speak of. Now, plenty of rocks and water... but no trees... go figure.

I've been settling in at my office, in a building on the shore of Frobisher Bay. I love the view of the bay and watching the tide move in and out.

The tides on Frobisher Bay are variable, from between 7 to 11 m. every day. It seems that high tide occurs in the morning and low tide is in the evening. When I first arrived here, the ice had started to clear (helped by an ice-breaker which had come through the previous weekend). It was interesting to see what the tide would bring in every day - one day it deposited a large number of ice chunks in the bay.

Here are a couple of pictures taken from the back of my office building which illustrate the difference made by the tides in the bay: