Get your skates on!

Yesterday the whole school - the students and staff, as opposed the building itself - took a trip to the arena for an afternoon of ice skating. Most, if not all, of the communities in Nunavik have an arena, and the arena here is called the Nurraujaq Forum; nurraujaq is the Inuttitut word for goat and before you ask no, I don't understand either. Now, whilst the idea of building an ice rink in the North might at first seem akin to building a swimming pool in the middle of the Pacific, these arenas are well used and provide a focal point for the community in a land where skating in general and hockey in particular are part of the national psyche.

Hockey tournaments are held regularly in the North, and each community has its own teams, male and female, which are proudly supported whenever they play. I'm not quite sure who named the team here - maybe it was the same person that named the arena - but they either lacked a basic knowledge of geography or were simply highly sarcastic:

I'll leave you to ponder that for a moment...

I didn't skate yesterday - skating's just not my bag, baby - but I had plenty of vicarious fun watching everyone else glide, stutter and stumble around the rink, and although I've now lived in Canada for over four years I don't think it's ever going to be something that I take to. I have tried in the past, but I decided that the bruises weren't worth it so now I'm the one who looks after the shoes and coats.

Somebody's got to.