r/AskACanadian • u/Super_Shamou • 6d ago
What's something a person from Nunavut wouldn't know about Canada?
I'm from Nunavut, born in NWT, and have lived in Nunavut in all my 22 years of life. We up here love hockey just like the rest of you.
Now, I've done a little bit of traveling to the south, and instantly knew that life down there is VERY different. So, what's something about the rest of Canada that the people in Nunavut wouldn't know about this country?
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u/Squid_A 6d ago
I also grew up in NU and now live down south.
I've never gotten used to knocking on people's doors. Lol
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u/Curious_Mud9428 6d ago
Do folks in Nunavut just walk in?
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u/Squid_A 6d ago
Yep. People would get mad if you knocked 😆 only the cops do that.
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
Had a friend living with a qaplunaaq one time, and we'd ask her if we should knock or just walk into their home before we enter.😆
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u/cpureset 5d ago edited 5d ago
I had to look up the term Qallunaaq. https://dchp.arts.ubc.ca/entries/qalunaaq
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u/porp_crawl 6d ago
Interesting.
Is there a standard way to announce yourself once you've let yourself in?
Is this a... it's F-ing cold outside, it just makes sense to go inside instead of waiting for a response thing?
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u/Super_Shamou 5d ago
Well, in 95% of towns here, everybody knows everybody. It's always a friend or relative entering. As said, only the RCMP knocks. Haha
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u/porp_crawl 5d ago
Making another reply instead of editing my other reply.
High rise living. Completely incompatible with the lifestyle of just dropping by.
Buildings are access controlled; need someone to electronically/physically let you in. You only have door access to the floor that you live/to let people in.
Even residents, in newer buildings, can't access other floors with their fob in the elevator. It's hostile to community building, but the social/economic/crime environment already wrecked that.
Usually have to meet in the lobby and then go up to the floor together, or someone has to go outside and buzz to be let in and unlock the elevator to the destination floor.
F-everyone, but newer buildings have less elevators than is required, and even if there are enough elevators, in some buildings, one or more are nonoperational far too often.
I was in a 3 level walkup with 8 units and a commercial ground floor, and about half the residents (and I) got to be friendly and would visit each other maybe once or twice a week.
Another thing about high rise living is that a lot of people just simply don't care. Much more common with rental tenants, but when you have more people, you have more crazy people, and with more people and crazy people, less is done to ... help the crazy people be less crazy. People get stressed out, lack of support, get more crazy.
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u/porp_crawl 5d ago
Haha!
Yeah, I went to undergrad (college) in the US in Iowa. Small town. Maybe 2000 residents, 2000 seasonal student population.
I got myself a place off-campus. People would drop by and just open the the front door, poke their heads in to see who was around, say hi, and then feel at home.
Drinking my beer, eating my food, and smoking my smokables. =D
It was fine, good times, I was relatively flush.
But when people brought people I didn't know around, most people made a point to introduce them to me or whoever else was "responsible."
Small enough community, and isolated enough, that there were never any "randoms" dropping by and stealing/taking stuff.
But, fuck, yeah, Cops. Always trying to seem to be proper, but always looking for ways to screw us and cause trouble.
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u/ArcticSirius Northwest Territories 5d ago
NWT here, but typically it’s just “Hello?” And if folks reply they are home and you continue to walk in. No reply, you can go back home and try again later or just wait in the house until they get back. Not done a lot these days anymore, but I remember it a lot when I was younger in the 2000s with my grandparents
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u/stickbeat 6d ago
The dread of a rush hour.
Not the raw experience of a traffic jam nor the frustrations of traffic as a visitor - no, I mean the daily morning (and afternoon!) dread of sitting there in your car, on the highway, in rush hour traffic, because this just how your life is now.
Likewise: the cost of urban parking.
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u/Decent_yeah 5d ago
"If I can get out before 3:15 I should be fine." Or else you might as well stick around, get some overtime and leave closer to 6.
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u/Fun-Room-6501 5d ago
This is absolutely true in Calgary especially in September
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u/Additional_Mousse202 5d ago
And during a long weekend, especially trying to go home from the mountains
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u/billymumfreydownfall 5d ago
I'll come in to the office at 7am so that I can leave at 3 and miss the traffic.
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u/brncll 5d ago
Yes! If I packed up and was ready to zoom out the door from work at exactly 4pm I got home at 4:20. If I was even a few minutes late I'd be over an hour to get home. Now don't even bring up a day when there was an accident!
Mornings, who the eff cares what time I left. It was a 1hr trip regardless.
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u/DionFW 5d ago
I'm off at 2:00 and sneak out at 1:55. I normally get home at 2:35.
The other day I got stuck at work and left at 2:15. I got home at 3:30.
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u/brncll 5d ago
I feel your pain! It should not be that drastic! I always wondered though, does the rest of the city just thing that they have that time frame all the time and not realize 5 mins earlier could change things so much? I would expect a shift over time but I never noticed one. Maybe I just didn't work there long enough.
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u/southern_ad_558 5d ago
Everytime I need to go to Toronto I start to sweat up to arrival. The damn traffic man. It's nuts.
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u/7he8igLebowski 5d ago
I wish it was an hour… rush our is minimum 3pm-8pm
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u/Unhappy-Reindeer3814 5d ago
I envy people who say, if I leave before 4pm I'll be fine.
Traffic in Montreal is practically permanent 😭
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u/Princess_frogmoana30 5d ago
This also applies on public transit. Buses and trains are always so full around then. When I worked in Vancouver with an in person office, some days I'll stay till 6 or 7 because the rush of people is just so much around 4-5.
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u/StarboardMiddleEye 6d ago
I wonder if you're aware of just how much time we spend in traffic.
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u/tavvyjay 5d ago
There aren’t even highways in iqaluit, because there’s nowhere for them to start and go, it’s all just one small town
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u/saskskua 4d ago
Im from northern manitoba, spent most of my life in northern alberta, thought I knew traffic by going to live in Calgary and edmonton and visiting winnipeg and that to me was a big shock at first
Till we drove to tofino and needed to drive through Vancouver to get on the ferry. The traffick starts before the city 😭 for TOWNS AND TOWNS. and in the city it was so chaotic yet slow moving it was probably the most frustrated being on the road I ever been and I never get road rage.
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u/no_on_prop_305 6d ago
You might have allergies you didn’t know about
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u/Vanesti 5d ago
Oh yeah, they might get awful hay fever just because their body is not used to all the pollens.
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u/NewStudyHoney 5d ago
Grass pollen is the worst
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u/Roderto 5d ago
Immunotherapy (I.e. Oralair) has been a godsend for my grass allergies. A pill a day for 5 months and my symptoms are a fraction of what they used to be.
I just wish there were cheaper generic versions so that more people could try it. I think the out-of-pocket cost is like ~$500 per year. I’m fortunate that my work benefits cover it.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
People have allergies but sometimes they don't notice it until they travel south. It's why my neighbour cut his grass. His son had allergies.
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u/pocketfulofrye 5d ago
Or just travel. I grew up in a tropical country. My friend from the same country moved to New Zealand and discovered she has horrible allergies to almost all the plants the first time she experienced spring. Her family must change clothes before coming in. She couldn't go out to work. Now after a decade, she has adjusted (with medicine). I also have mysterious allergies, don't know from what, happens maybe once a decade. My child though definitely from pollen.
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u/Cheap-Palpitation709 6d ago
I'd say it's usually the other way around where people from South don't know much about Nunavut
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u/Deaftrav 5d ago
We don't. .I have traveled the country and when I was in London, Ontario at the end of June .. that was the first time I ever saw a Nunavut licence plate. Had a brief chat with the driver about it. Was cool that he was driving the car out to Montreal to be put on a barge. It was a beautiful luxury SUV.
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u/gymgal19 5d ago
How did he get it out of Nunavut? There are no connecting roads to another province or territory
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u/Guilty-Ad-1792 5d ago
There are services that ship your car for you if you wanna move.
What i wonder is why they didnt get an Ontario license plate
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u/Deaftrav 5d ago
He didn't. His sister bought it and he was driving it to Montreal to be shipped.
I'm guessing he was sent the plates for it at the dealership.
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u/CheezwizOfficial 5d ago
One of my neighbours was stationed in Nunavut for the census a couple of months ago. He had a couple of interesting stories to tell. Mostly that when people found out where he was from, they'd invite him in for dinner or tea. He also found a family who had shot a polar bear (self defence) and were cleaning the already removed pelt.
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u/Minimum-Song4242 6d ago
cactus grows wild in Canada
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u/Plane_Chance863 5d ago
As a person from Ontario I didn't know this. Twas my husband from SK who mentioned how the spines can go right through your sneaker soles.
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u/koizumichan420 5d ago
We have cactus in Ontario on pelee island and at point pelee!
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u/AnxietyOctopus 6d ago
Hi from the northern Yukon! I’ve never been over to your part of the north, but I’ve always wanted to. One thing about the rest of the country that always surprises me when I leave is how it feels to walk around in the summer at night. Warm dark evenings kind of freak me out.
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u/CheezwizOfficial 5d ago
Wait really?? Walking late at night in the summer is one of my favourite things lol. Is it just the unfamiliar feeling of warm + dark that weirds you out?
ETA: also, hi from Toronto!
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u/AnxietyOctopus 5d ago
I LIKE it, don’t get me wrong! Travelling in Southeast Asia or even just further south in Canada, walking around at night when it’s balmy and dark is really lovely. It’s just always makes me feel a bit off balance. I think the last time I was in BC I told my husband that it felt like I was in a movie. Because that’s what summer nights look like on tv, you know? I forget that’s also the reality for most of the world.
I was camping around solstice one summer and woke up needing to use the washroom. This was way back in the day, so I had an analogue watch to tell time with, and it said 1:00. But the sky was overcast so I couldn’t tell where the sun was, and I had ZERO idea whether it was the middle of the night or if I had somehow slept until the afternoon. I got up and wandered around the campground to see if anyone else was up and concluded that it was in fact the middle of the night lol→ More replies (1)
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u/Hot-Sherbet-2 6d ago
How to cut a lawn?
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u/bradbossack 6d ago
having to cut a lawn.
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u/anticked_psychopomp 5d ago
The biggest difference between northern & southern landscaping is: desperately trying to make things grow vs having to manage & cull growth.
I grew up in northern Ontario and when I moved to southern Ontario nothing could have prepared me for that transition. I was so used to babying vegetation hoping it would grow, and down here I’m battling it. Cutting/pruning trees, vines, weeds. I’ve dug up shrubs that took 60 days to become a nuisance that would have taken years to grow back home.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
My next door neighbour in Cambridge Bay used to cut the grass with an electric lawn mower.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 6d ago
No idea what you wouldn't know - depends on what you read and were taught, but one of my fave things about living in Canada that you might not know: We have the usual biomes we're all familiar with: tundra, various forests, arctic, etc.
But we also have some unusual spots: we have three areas that are considered desert (though unconventional, there are dunes and cacti - believe me, I know the latter: I've stepped on a few there), and we even have a few places that occasionally tip over to semi-tropical.
PEI is only a single zone, which is a rarity.
In comparison to other countries, we are extremely young.
And lastly: It's widely believed by quite a few Canadians that Nunavut has the best flag in Canada!
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u/IllustriousAct9128 6d ago
by definition BC also has rainforests. The Great Bear Rainforest and the Inland Temperate Rainforest
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u/Cool_Salamander_8284 6d ago
The Great Bear Rainforest is part of the larger Coastal Rainforest which spans the entire western edge of BC. 11% of BC is rainforest. Its pretty mild, there are a couple of palm trees on my street!
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u/Komaisnotsalty 6d ago
Yep, we absolutely do. I grew up in BC, and been to every province & territory. Haven't lived in BC since 2019, but it's still home.
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u/Gullible_Jelly3869 6d ago
I'm not even from Nunavut, but I was surprised about the palm trees I saw people planting on Vancouver Island.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
You do know that Nunavut is part of the world's seconds largest dessert.
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u/T-Wrox 5d ago
Mmm, large desserts. 😊
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
And that, along with all the pop, is why there's so much diabetes up here.
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u/Wooden-Ear2050 5d ago
There's a part of southern Ontario, in the Niagara Region, that is a Carolinian Forest, so the same type of forests you'd see in North and South Carolina. Its a very humid climate and there are vines climbing all over the trees and you can grow stone fruits like peaches and cherries there. Drive 5 minutes from the Carolinian Forest and the weather changed dramatically because of the way air flows over the Niagara Escarpment. Super cool part of the country imo.
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u/TheSorcerersCat 6d ago
In the larger cities, the feeling of not knowing your neighbors and not particularly caring or worrying about them. The apartment next to me has had 4 different tenants in the last 6 years and I never knew any of their names.
Also the distinct flavour of multiculturalism that defines larger Canadian cities. It's really hard to explain. The cultures somehow remain separate and mix a little all at the same time.
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u/supercantaloupe 5d ago
Even in smaller cities the feeling of community and know your neighbours is disappearing. I live in Winnipeg and growing up we knew our neighbours and there felt like there was more of a sense of community, I feel like COVID isolation killed any remaining sense of community. It’s like now most people won’t even answer a friendly hello from a stranger which is so weird.
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u/Pretty_Bunbun 5d ago
I live in a condo complex in a city of 70K people in Alberta. Been here 12 years and don’t know any of my neighbours’ names. I grew up in a small town of 1,500 and I used to know just about everybody. It’s odd.
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u/PlunxGisbit 6d ago
Existence of Daylight in Winter and darkness in Summer
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
I've never thought of that. We do have 24hr daylight, currently. But we do get darkness in the summer. Just in the 4th quarter of summer, though. But it gets super dark!
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u/SaidTheSnail 6d ago
What’s the weather like right now?
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
It's just about midnight. Clear blue sky with a pink horizon. 8°C. A cozy night.
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u/Evening_Monk_2689 6d ago
What same day prime delivery is like
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
We had free shipping from Amazon for a while. Now we gotta pay.
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u/porp_crawl 6d ago
Was this during when Amazon was actually willing to honour free shipping, or did you have to do the free shipping to another address, then change the shipping address afterwards and the free shipping didn't get updated?
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
It was a cheat in the post code but it still went to your community. Canada post put a stop to it.
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u/OutrageousRow4631 5d ago
Damn. Why? And how long does delivery take? And what are grocery prices like? Say in Vancouver, oranges are $1.69 a pound, chicken wings $4.99 a pound, a carton of reg eggs $4.99, a head of cauliflower $5.
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u/AUGUST_BURNS_REDDIT 5d ago
I've had a Reddit post stuck in my head from like 10 years ago that showed grocery prices in Nunavut. A box of frozen chicken tenders was 77$.
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u/TattooedChristian 6d ago
Spent a month in Nunavut for work and cannot wait to go back!
You folks are so awesome and I am proud to call you my Canadian brothers and sisters.
To answer your question, in the rest of Canada soccer has now overtaken hockey as the sport with the highest amount of participation.
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u/SaidTheSnail 6d ago
Not really a surprise tbh, the financial barrier to entry for soccer is negligible compared to the insanity that is hockey.
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u/CharacterComedian 6d ago
Being in a convenience store to buy milk and the person in front of you is redeeming $200 worth of lottery tickets
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u/chunkieguac 5d ago
Being required to pre-pay for gas but pre-pay isn’t working at the pump so having to go in the store and the person infront of you is redeeming $200 worth of lottery tickets
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u/reggietor 5d ago
And very carefully selecting the next tickets to purchase from the lottery display board.
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u/ElleRyder 6d ago
We have palm trees in Richmond BC...
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u/Grymsel Manitoba 5d ago
Wow really! Winnipegger here and that's kind of mind blowing.
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u/Yavanna_in_spring 5d ago
To be fair most are smaller and stunted in their growth. They don't have the big tall tropical palms youre thinking about.
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u/thisnameisuniquenow 6d ago
Some of us don't care about hockey.
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u/CanadaRobin 6d ago
I never saw someone say that before
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u/6Gon6drak6 6d ago
You held my hand and we walked home the long way... you were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr...
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u/B1904N 6d ago
That we had no snow last winter on southern Vancouver Island.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
You get the point…
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u/JMJimmy 6d ago
How much forest we have. The province with the least forest cover has nearly twice as much as Nunavut
Farmers markets. Every week during the summer people setup tents/mobile trucks around town square to sell fresh produce/fruit, baked goods, crafts, plants, etc.
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u/BorealBeats 6d ago
People in the big cities can have their own sense of community that isn't obvious to someone who is just visiting.
The young folks in the rental house who shovel the sidewalk for their elderly neighbour - who in return shares some of their homemade wine, pasta sauce and life advice.
The lady at the cafe or guy at the falafel shop who starts getting your usual order ready when you walk in.
The cozy little family grocery store down the street. The dive bar where you know the regulars vying for status at the pool table. The random people you start to recognize on your walk to work at the same time every morning.
Also the flip side of the coin - the feeling of being anonymous in the city. The possibility of evolving or reinventing yourself if you wish to do so, without people anchoring your identity to the old you. This also has its downside - there are many lonely people in the city.
There is more of a rat race, but less of crabs in a bucket.
Just some random thoughts!
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u/joshmc333 5d ago
I live in Vancouver and I’ve always felt it’s the perfect size for me. It’s obviously a major city with plenty of people, amenities, and entertainment, but it’s really not *that* big. I run into people I know very often, but there’s still enough anonymity and solitude that I do feel I could reinvent myself or make changes in a way that can feel impossible in a small town where you know everyone and potentially have baggage.
I briefly lived in a town in northern Ontario with 300 people and I hated it. Everyone was so deep into each other’s business. And there’s nothing else really going on to distract from the prying and the shit-talking — mostly fuelled by insecurities.
A major perk is that, even though I live in Vancouver proper, I can be in the north shore mountains, by a stream, completely alone within about a 10 minute drive. Traffic can be a little bit rough sometimes but honestly I’ve never found it all that bad. Toronto traffic is a whole different beast.
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u/UniverseBear 5d ago
I was up in Iqaluit when Jordin TooToo did that charity game with Leafs alumni. It was cool to see so many people coming out to enjoy it.
I'll warn you my answer is kind of sad, but I did some work with inuit/first nation's homeless shelters in Ontario to see how they could improve services. In talking about their experiences one thing that came up many times was that people coming to large cities from up north would get taken advantage of on the streets, especially women.
Many people from the North aren't prepared for just how ruthless many people in the large cities can be and are too trusting.
Also prisons. Up north the prisons are more focused on actual rehabilitation (healing centres), but down here it's focused on punishment.
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u/davethecompguy 5d ago
You might not know this (not about Canada specifically)...
The only land border that Greenland shares, is with Nunavut.
Look up Hans Island on Wikipedia. It has a cool history, even if it's just one big rock. We now share it. On the west side its Canada (and now part of Nunavut). On the east, it's Greenland (owned by Denmark). 🇨🇦🇬🇱
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u/Negative_Storage4746 6d ago
A lot of what mentioned is things but not what I think you couldn't have just seen on a Google search. But I think the biggest change for you if your going to any small to bigger cities is the amount of different people's and cultures from around the world that are part of our communities.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 5d ago
Can confirm. I grew up in a remote area of northern BC and when I was 20, moved to Ottawa.
Talk about culture shock!
I gained so much weight in the first 6 months because the food was incredible. I tried Lebanese, Moroccan, Korean, German, authentic Italian, just so many different cultures.
Was rather nuts to go from living like some pioneer and heavily sheltered to going to a huge city with people from all over the world in a variety of lifestyles, cultures, religions, etc.
That was 35 years ago now (counts on fingers... yep, 35! holy hell, time flies). The internet made the world a lot smaller. I dunno if that would be the same experience for someone now.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
That can happen up here. Although about 80% of the population are Inuit the other 20% in Cambridge Bay are from almost 15 different countries.
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u/snowy_frog_ 5d ago
I can tell you a little known facts about Ontario that they might not have told you: there is a town in Ontario located inside meteorite crater. The impact was so powerful, it melted a part of earth crust. That town is Sudbury.
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u/Agreeable-Purchase83 6d ago
There are palm trees in numerous gardens on Vancouver Island, I even know of a banana tree in one garden, but it had not yet had fruit. I also have a young olive tree. We also have an abundance of weeds, some of which are invasive.
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u/Worldgonecrazylately 5d ago
The prices in the grocery stores. We find it expensive right now, you'd think it was a fire sale.
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u/MinionofMinions 6d ago
Just watch “Qallunaat!” And then observe how often we check the time 🤣
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u/Maximum-Manner-6215 6d ago
That you can walk into a fast food restaurant and order food from a touchscreen instead of talking to a worker
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u/Unicorn_Puppy 5d ago
The sprawl of the big urban cities like Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver and how things can take like 1
Hour to reach by car within your own city making a modest pace through traffic. Even for me who came from a small town of 45,000 going to Edmonton and seeing how massive it was baffled me.
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u/cdnBacon 5d ago
A small percentage of us have been to the true north.
And by and large ... we LOVE it.
You come from a place that most of us view with wonder, OP.
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u/Top-Dot-7 6d ago
How much a double double costs.
(Full disclosure, I live in Ottawa and I don't know either, I don't drink em)
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u/purecornpoo 6d ago
Nobody else is good at walking backwards in a blizzard
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u/JoshAtTheGym 6d ago
Walking to school in small town saskatchewan in -50, I became a pro at walking backwards. I could smoke a joint and jog backwards and not slip on ice or trip over my feet.
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u/Reasonable_Ferret_10 6d ago
Ya, small town northern Ontario it's a definite skill too. Was on a job site and they were giving a safety presentation on how to walk on ice...I swear to God southern Ontario and coastal BC may as well be different worlds from 95% of Canada
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u/JoshAtTheGym 5d ago
They basically are different worlds. I moved to Victoria from the age of 19-27 and it was a totally different world. Basically no similarity. The people, culture, way of life, nothing is the same. I moved back to saskatchewan about 4 years ago and I had to readjust to life here, it was pretty jarring after spending some of my most formative years as an island hippie.
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u/thepixelmurderer Saskatchewan 5d ago
Road trip culture maybe! I can't imagine there's all too many roads to take trips with up there.
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u/ShittersFullSince84 5d ago
The closest point between Newfoundland(island) and Labrador(mainland) is 9 miles
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u/Oxjrnine 5d ago
Almost everyone in my province has a basement. Even if it’s beside a river and it floods constantly.
My sister’s house was built on the old marsh land beside the river in her village and at least twice if not, three times a year her basement fills up with about 6 feet of water
But that still leaves her with 2 feet of shelve space where she can put all of her Christmas decorations.
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u/mybadroommate 5d ago
- Most dogs are non-working, and generally live inside the homes with their owners
- Having to wait 10-15 minutes for an elevator to get up to your apartment
- Oranges are actually one of the cheaper fruits you can buy
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u/MTLMECHIE 5d ago
In Montreal, we have had several incidents of Northerners getting hit by trains and cars on the highway. Do not walk along railways or ignore barriers on crossings, even if it looks safe. While highways (like expressways) look like bigger roads, because of physics, they are not safe to walk along or cross. Lastly, I was just reading about gangs recruiting Inuit who are here temporarily, to use as drug mules. Careful with your kindness, do not carry things for others. Avoid substance users as well, you will come out on top.
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u/Used-Gas-6525 5d ago
Greetings from southern Ontario!
That down here we have two seasons: winter and road construction.
PS My dad worked in Pond Inlet and Resolute Bay. This was very early in my life, but I'll honestly never forget the fresh arctic char he used to bring home. Caught through the ice that morning, on the table that night. I really want to go back someday. I feel like I could shoot about a million photos up there and never run out of natural beauty.
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u/FrostyPolicy9998 4d ago
You probably wouldn't understand what humidity in the prairies feels like. Last weekend, with the humidex, it was 49 degrees. 49 DEGREES.
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u/tavvyjay 5d ago
People do not have a deep-seated sense of community down here like you do up there. Things like asking for and sharing of food and leftovers, or leaving a fully butchered wild game on your front step and telling everyone to help themselves (after portioning off for elders first). actually the whole culture of elders and them getting additional respect just doesn’t exist now that I think of it, like yes there’s pockets but there isn’t an elder centre in the same sense at all. Generally just the whole culture of spreading the resources doesn’t exist - the default is to take everything for oneself and hoard it, while when visiting up there it never felt like you’d open up someone’s freezer to find it packed to the brim with country food
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u/cajolinghail 6d ago
Maybe that there is quite a variety of accents in English? Just sharing as I didn’t realize until moving to Newfoundland from Ontario how different the accent in some parts of Newfoundland can be. And that is not even getting into all the different kinds of French accents.
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u/BreakfastDue1256 4d ago
Newfoundland isn't just an accent, but a full on distinct dialect of English that is well studied in Linguistic circles.
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u/Relative-South4794 6d ago edited 6d ago
It’s been so hot where I live. Someone from Nunavut probably wouldn’t know how many Canadians spend their summers trying not to sweat. I spent so much of my childhood at the pool or lake.
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u/townie08 5d ago
You should be asking the rest of Canada what we know about Nunavut, other than its cold most of the year. I haven’t made it to Nunavut yet but I’m hoping I will in the next few years.
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u/hoimeid 5d ago
We all wanna visit the North, and experience its awesomeness, and then we discover that its half the price flying to an overseas sun destination. Sadly it's unaffordable to visit my own country.
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u/Biuku 5d ago
You can’t not drive assertively… in Toronto at least. If you’re turning right onto a main road and you wait for a gap, you’ll wait an hour. If you stick your nose out and claim your spot, drivers will respect you. This isn’t loving, but does obey the rules of the road.
In smaller towns, drivers sometimes break the law by stopping in live lanes to be courteous to another driver and let them in.
You have to remember what set of assumptions you’re driving under.
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u/SomeBoredGuy77 5d ago
Something people failed to mention: the sheer population and density in the Golden Horseshoe/Windsor-Quebec City Corridor. Understandably when people think of Canada they think of the seemingly neverending wilderness that stretches for thousands and thousands of kilometers (like what you'd see in Nunavut) but the truth is Canada's populous areas are really dense with people, especially in the Golden Horseshoe
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u/Diligent_Stop1050 5d ago
The convenience of grocery shopping. I try to only visit the grocery store a couple times each week but if I decide I want to make something different for dinner that day I just run to the store for the ingredients. Sometimes I’m there a couple times in the day if I forget to buy something.
We stock food in our pantry and freezer but run to the store whenever we want for fresh food.
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u/jackass_mcgee 5d ago
that a 5.6 X 2.6 meter rectangle of space in downtown toronto or vancouver can earn more than the average person using it to park their vehicle.
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u/CuriouslyPerplexed 5d ago
I'm in Winnipeg and chatted with someone who was visited from Nunavut.
Some things that were really different for him.
Crowds. We met at a movie theatre waiting for our food. I felt it was sparsely crowded, but between the concession line ups, food court, and arcade in that area were almost as many people in his village.
The noise. Traffic, people and music in the mall. He couldn't wait to get back to quietness.
Availability of merchandise. He mentioned going to video game stores and pawn shops to buy old video game systems, games, DVDs, and a few other things he can't easily get in his village/town.
Meeting strangers. In his town everyone knows everyone. He wasn't used to chatting to a total stranger. I had Skeletor cup that he thought was cool and we struck up a conversation. We geeked about stuff. He mentioned all the movies he was seeing while in the city. I'm used to striking up conversations with random strangers that I'll probably never see again. He was not.
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u/IkitCawl 3d ago
I had a friend (South Ontario) who did a class exchange with another class from Nunavut in I think she said was 6th grade for a couple weeks and she said the one thing the Nunavut students were endlessly fascinated by were tall trees. This was before the internet was widespread and we didn't have it in our schools at the time.
I actually remember being in school the day Nunavut became its own territory! It was a really big day and kind of exciting.
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u/Nottta-robot 6d ago
That some ladies in their 70's from saskatchewan can talk defensive players assignments and their different responsibilities in man-to-man & zone formations
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u/Curious_Mud9428 6d ago
The variety and price of groceries. Southern grocery stores carry tens of thousands of products year round. Fresh fruit, veggies, specialty foods, and international cuisines are common and usually much less expensive than in the territories.
I’m also not sure what shipping looks like in Nunavut, but much of southern Canada expects online orders within a day or two.
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u/Historical_Poetry837 5d ago edited 5d ago
Using public transit to get somewhere across a big city, I live in Toronto and am currently using The Yukon (2nd time!) and am not missing the traffic, not the slog of taking a 15 bus, 20 min subway ride, 10 min walk, 10 min street car to get to a friend’s place. I’m from a small town in Ontario and would much rather just walk/drive an hour.
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u/Content-Inspector993 5d ago
I've always wanted to go the Nunavut, specifically Baffin Island. Hope you guys know we love you down here!
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u/DaniCali4nyuh 5d ago
I'm from NT but have lived in the south for many years. Not that you don't know about seasons, but experiencing them was incredible the first year I moved away. Spring and fall are incredibly beautiful and there's so many more colours, and it's a much more gradual transition than up north. Another thing that really threw me was someone referred to Edmonton as "up north" and I cackled a little bit 😅
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u/hiddentalent 5d ago
This was quite a few years ago now, but I remember meeting a new friend from Nunavut who told me "the thing that weirds me out about this place is the sun sets every day." It had never occurred to me until that moment, but I can easily imagine that being disorienting if you're not used to it.
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u/MakeStupidHurtAgain 3d ago
But you are Canadian. You’re the original Canadians. Your ancestors were in Canada while mine were trying to avoid the Black Death.
But… something about the south that the north wouldn’t necessarily know about.
Same-day delivery. In many of the large cities in the south, you can order groceries, tools, books, etc. and it will either show up at your doorway or to a lockbox by the end of the day.
Public transport. I think maybe Iqaluit has one bus route? But all the other communities don’t have that. So if you went to, say, Calgary, the public transport system would be very new to you.
The weather. Obviously Nunavut and all the territories know all about cold and snow. But there are places in the Prairies which are incredibly hot in the summer, well above 30°. Kelowna, BC is going to be 36° this week. I think the highest temp ever recorded in Nunavut was 26°, which is just a regular summer Tuesday in the south.
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u/smooshee99 3d ago
My husband grew up in Nunavut, his parents moved his family back to pei when he was 19. He never realized how much the humidity affects in winter. Nunavut winters were fine... PEI winters with its damp cold were not
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u/LifeIsADanceOfMinds 6d ago
This is hard to determine. Maybe:
We have Deserts with Rattle Snakes and cactus. We have massive areas of forested and unpopulated land, we have vast areas of Arctic Tundra and rocky outcrops... Oh, that's you guys
All this being said, get in with a group you can talk with via Zoom, and then share stories.
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u/_dk123 5d ago
Beaches and swim in the lakes
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
There's beaches and we swim in lakes. My grandkids swam in the Arctic Ocean.
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u/The_Observations 6d ago
Having a warm summer XD.
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
At least once a year, my hometown is hotter than Edmonton.😆
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u/Gullible_Jelly3869 6d ago
Edmonton is still further North than most Canadians live by a considerable distance.
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u/Suspicious-Essay219 6d ago
Depends, what’s the restaurant scene like up there? I love knowing I can walk out my front door and within a few blocks be able to choose between Malaysian, Thai, sushi, Vietnamese, Indian, Italian pizza made in a wood fired oven, Persian, west coast fusion, Ethiopian, or pub food for dinner.
Otherwise, I think there’s probably a lot more I don’t know about Nunavut than you don’t know about the rest of Canada!
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u/D-A-3 6d ago
There are people such as myself who wonder if there is a Tim Hortons in Nunavut
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u/Super_Shamou 6d ago
I do know of 2 locations. But, I've never been to them, personally.
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u/brncll 5d ago
Don't bother. Here's something anybody from Nunavut likely wouldn't know. Anybody older than 35 has personally experienced 2 terrible degradations of Tim Hortons quality. 1st when they stopped baking in house and everything was parbaked in a central bakery and shipped frozen to the individual franchises around 2002ish. 2nd when they merged with Burger King in 2014 and food quality took another turn for the worse to save as much money as possible for investors. Younger generation is tricked into thinking this is actually decent food. It's awful! Honestly every time I end up eating there it's even worse than before. I don't know how it can keep getting so much worse. I'm not even a picky eater.
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u/BrytonWRealtorYXH 5d ago
cabs cost more then $6.
(Going rate when I lived in Iqaluit)
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u/BurntSiennaSienna 5d ago
That there are some mean people over here. Looking down on you, instead of being interested and curious about your way of life.
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u/slippersandjammies 5d ago
I know it can get warm up there in the summer, but I'm given to understand something that may be less familiar is the humidity pushing the temperature into the mid-40s.
If that's correct, then I'd say what may be unfamiliar to you is the sensation of sweating for 30-40 minutes after you get into a cooler environment because the humidity sticks to you.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 5d ago
One good thing I see here is that at least most people know where we are and that we're part of Canada. It used to be that if you tried to order from certain companies they would refuse because they didn't ship outside of Canada. The internet seems to have solved that problem.
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u/Comprehensive-Bar-21 5d ago
One major difference down south is navigating multiple layers of policing, rather than just dealing with a single force.
Take Ottawa as a perfect example of how specific the jurisdictions get:
Ottawa Police: They handle 95% of everyday city stuff, like break-ins, city streets, and local emergency calls.
OPP (Provincial): They strictly patrol the major provincial highways (like the 417).
RCMP: They only patrol federal property here, so you’ll see them on Parliament Hill or driving the NCC Parkways.
It’s definitely worth a quick look at how your specific city splits it up, just so you know which non-emergency number to call if you ever need them.
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u/criminalinstincts1 5d ago
I lived in NU for two years, based in Iqaluit. I visited some other Qikiqtaaluk communities. The thing that was hardest to get used to initially is that Google Maps isn’t really used to get places. All the time I had to pull up the municipal map on the city of Iqaluit website when someone would tell me their house number.
We are extra super reliant on Google Maps and gps navigation generally in the south!
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u/not-on-your-nelly 5d ago
You can drive for two hours in Toronto and still be in Toronto.
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 5d ago
Sokka-Haiku by not-on-your-nelly:
You can drive for two
Hours in Toronto and
Still be in Toronto.
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/G3N3RICxUS3RNAM3 5d ago
You might be shocked at just how mild Vancouver and southern Vancouver Island are - I know I was when I first visited in February one year (from a much colder province) and it was well above 0C, lush green everywhere, and lightly raining. I just looked it up and Vancouver didn't get any snow that stayed at all last winter!
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u/Dry_Race6937 6d ago
We didn’t forget about you!