It was another beautiful day, though this time the temperature was a little less so. Apex is a small community about 5
kilometres outside Iqaluit. That's where the road ends in this area
of Nunavut; but it's not just a single road, it's an impossible
tangle of gravel roads traversing hilly barren land. That made
walking out of the question which worked out well because of the
temperature. It was another gorgeous day but what the photos do not
show is a cold wind blowing off the ice and snow of the frozen bay
dropping the temperature to minus 6 or 8 degrees. It felt even colder
than that when we were in the open.
Apex was the place most Inuit lived
when Iqaluit was a military site and was off limits to anyone not
working at the base. Officially Apex is part of the City of Iqaluit
but many residents reject any affiliation with Frobisher Bay asking
for territorial representation with the south Baffin Island community
of Kimmirut.
The village got its start in 1949 when the
Hudson's Bay Company moved its south Baffin Trading Post operations
from Ward Inlet to Apex Beach to take advantage of the increased
activity near the new US Air Force Base and landing strip.
Our visit to Apex Beach was well worth
the somewhat uncomfortable weather.
On the beach a red fibreglass lifeboat
sits permanently grounded, abandoned and belonging to no one,
alongside a series of equally abandoned Hudson's Bay Company
buildings. Iqaluit folklore has it that two lifeboats were acquired
from the MV Minna, a Norwegian-built vessel that had run aground in
Brewer Bay at Resolution Island, NWT in 1974. An entrepreneur had the
lifeboat shipped to Apex somewhere around the turn of the millennium.
The village beckoned as we arrived at the end of the beach. From there we walked into and all around the village. The housing was respectable, all of it on
stilts. The high hill covered in snow and ice obviously becomes a
threat as summer approaches.
Karen wanted to see the cemetery and
though we did not see it on our way in we did manage to find it on
the way out. The Apex Cemetery is a uniquely beautiful, tranquil site. Overlooking Frobisher Bay, an enormous pair of bowhead whale rib bones serves as a gateway to the fields of white crosses adorned with green wreaths and colourful flowers.
Karen noticed there were an unusually high percentage of very young people at rest. From infants through teenage and into their 20s and early 30s. That seemed odd because if it were death from disease or natural disaster one would expect comparatively similar numbers of adults. Upon our return to the hotel I checked and discovered a comment from a local, "It is heartbreaking when a cemetery is filled with more people who took their own lives than those who died of natural causes."
Stay with us...tomorrow is our last day in Nunavut before our return to Ottawa Sunday morning.
😎
The Apex Cemetery
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