Nunavut day

Today is Nunavut Day, it celebrates the birth of this 11 year old territory. I took part in the festivities at the legislature, where there was a BBQ, games and contests, and music. The music here tends to sound like Scottish or Quebecois folk music, due to the presence of Scottish whalers ancient times. The games played were generally from the artic games. There was one where the contestants lie on their stomachs facing each other and band is place around the two heads. The objective is to flick the band off the opponents head. I played and I found it difficult because the opponents tended to be older heavier men with experience in the arctic games. In another game a string with two bone handles was placed in the hands of two opponents. Like the previous game, you are close to your opponent and you use your bodies to push or pull against each other! I also saw a seal skinning contest. There were eight seals, brought in by the Rangers who had hunted them the last few days, on a tarpaulin, some were bigger then others. The goal was to see who skin the seal first, without ripping, I think. It seemed to me that the smaller seals were easier to handle and therefore were skinned before the larger seals. Also, it seemed that skinning the smaller seals was a less messy affair, if I may use that word, because some contestants skinned the entire seal without spilling its innards. In other cases, it was hard to see how the seal was being skinned because the innards were spilling everywhere. Evidently, it took great skill to do this without ruining the skin. Afterwards, if you had a knife, you could cut some meat off and eat it. I was too shy to ask for a knife but I learned that there was country food, as its called, available indoors. If you have been reading my travelogue you will know that I attended a picnic last week with country food. The meat I ate then was either cooked or raw AND frozen. In this case I was eating raw meat and it was fresh not frozen. When I went back outside I noticed that the fundraising committee for the reconstruction of St. Jude’s cathedral had a booth set up for a draw which included a print and two tickets south. I mentioned earlier how there were often draws in Iqualuit to go south, since I had one a ticket north I decided not to enter the draw for the tickets, though for the print I did. Who knows…maybe I’ll be lucky twice.