Working from home

So, the first post of 2010 and the blog goes into its third calendar year of operation. Quite what the new year will bring is anyone's guess, but for the time being I'm enjoying an extra week at home. I have a further appointment with the dentist on Friday and I am not now due to fly back North until Monday, all of which is something akin to a late Christmas present (except the dentist part). I recently found out that my colleagues in Kangiqsujuaq got snowed/fogged in before Christmas, and some of them didn't get home until the 23rd; as a result the start of school has been put back a few days, so I won't be the only one returning to work a little later than planned.

Much of this week has seen me sorting out a variety of financial paperwork, the type of stuff that makes you wish you were an ostrich with a suitably deep bucket of sand nearby, but it has to be done and it's much easier for me to do it whilst I'm still in the south. Melanie went back to work on Monday so my house husbandry is also extending to washing, cleaning and cooking, the latter of which is currently inspired by Julie & Julia, a film which I was reticent to watch when Melanie rented it on Monday but that I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed. Speaking of movies, my other favourite of the holiday has been Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which must be as cinematically removed from Julie & Julia as Amy Winehouse is from sobriety; if Christoph Waltz doesn't get an Oscar nomination for his role as Colonel Hans Landa then there is simply no justice in this world.

For now though it's back to the finances, and an impending walk in the snow to the bank. Tim Hortons is inconveniently at the other end of town, but fortunately I feel in the mood for taking the scenic route today...

What's mine is yours

We had an unexpected visit from representatives of the Raglan Mine yesterday, which eased the boredom of what would otherwise have been a mundane, regulation (but far from manic) Monday. Raglan is a huge nickel mine northwest of here, and as one of the larger employers in Nunavik they regularly send teams around the schools to pass on information about the work opportunities there. At the moment only 17% of the workforce is Inuit, but the aim of the mine's owners is to increase this figure to 20% in the near future.

The mine operates a profit-sharing initiative with Nunavimmiut (people of Nunavik), and last year $6.8 million was distributed amongst the 14 communities here. This sounds like a lot of money - and it is - but it is only about a fifth of the $32.4 million that was handed out in 2007. It seems that the bottom has fallen out of the nickel market in the past twelve months, a state of affairs that wasn't mentioned in the presentation at school, but despite this drop in profitability there is still a great deal of money floating around, and each community has its own method of using their share of the pie.

Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq receive the lion's share, being the nearest communities to the mine geographically, and here in Kangiqsujuaq much of the money is pooled and we now have a beautiful new community gym (the building where the Bowhead Feast was held earlier in the year) as a result. Some communities simply distribute their entire share on a purely individual basis though, and as a result, in the words of one of my students, it is often drunk away in a very short period of time. Many Inuit travel to Montreal in order to spend their windfall, and they are increasingly being targeted by local thieves who know that they have money to spend; the results are sometimes tragic, and you can read more here.

Consequently, the role of Raglan is a matter for constant debate in these parts, centering mainly on the level of Inuit employment there and the use of its profits, and with the mine having around fifty further years of potential use left in it, the debate is unlikely to be concluded any time soon.

Obama's millions

What would you do with a million dollars?

What would you do if you had a million dollars to spend every day?

What would you do if you had a million dollars to spend each and every day for a whole year?

The mind starts to boggle, doesn't it?

Now imagine being able to spend a million dollars, every day of every year, from the birth of Christ right up to the present day.

If you did that, you'd have racked up a ludicrous amount of air miles, but you still wouldn't have spent as much as the U.S. government is spending on its financial bailout package.

Suddenly my credit card bill doesn't seem so bad.