A Bit More Detail

• This MacLean's feature examines how, twenty years after the formation of Nunavut, some Inuit are considering new ways to make governance work in their interests.


• This National Observer article looks at how one Haisla band government sees hope in the construction of a pipeline, one that would provide the community with needed revenue.


• This Toronto Life feature by Michael Lista looks at the struggle by Six Nations-based businessman Ken Hill to avoid paying child support, using Indigenous sovereignty as a barrier.


• This National Observer article looks at the successful campaign, led by student Tomas Jirousek, to get McGill University to drop the name McGill Redmen for their sports team.


• CBC Montreal looks at the efforts to improve Indigenous representation on school curricula in the Gaspésie community of New Richmond.

• In the wake of the disruptions caused by a recent massive winter storm, Le Devoir made the point that the Iles-de-la-Madeleine need better conditions to the mainland.


• The Island Review took a look at the work of Shona Main in Nunavut.


• CityLab took a look at how Vashon Island, in Puget Sound not far from Seattle, has to prepare for disasters in the reality that it might be cut off from support from the mainland.


• The Island Review shares some of the work, prose and art, of Brian McHenry on deserted St. Kilda.


• This OBC Transeuropa report looks at the Romanian immigrant shepherds of Sardinia.

• That the real estate market in Hamilton, Toronto's traditionally more affordable western neighbor, is so strong that some people have been pushed into homelessness is a concern. The Toronto Star reports.


• Iqaluit is acting to deal with the threatened water shortages, but will it succeed in time to hold off this concern? MacLean's reports.


• This Bloomberg View article suggesting the unaffordability of San Francisco came not so much as a result of the tech sector as because of Barry Bonds' sports success is interesting. Thoughts?


• The extended fire season of Sydney, Australia, will force Sydneysiders to adapt to this dangerous new environment. Guardian Cities reports.


• The SCMP looks at how an influx of Chinese investment is transforming Sihanoukville, the leading deep-sea port of Cambodia.

• I entirely agree with the argument of Aluki Kotierk, writing at MacLean's, who thinks the Inuit of Nunavut have been entirely too passive, too nice, in letting Inuktitut get marginalized. Making it a central feature in education is the least that can be done. (Québec-style language policies work.)


• Although ostensibly a thriving language in many domains of life, the marginalization of the Icelandic language in the online world could be an existential threat. The Guardian reports.


• As part of a bid to keep alive Ladino, traditional language of the Sephardic Jews, Spain has extended to the language official status including support and funding. Ha'aretz reports.


• A new set of policies of Spain aiming at promoting the Spanish language have been criticized by some in Hispanic American states, who call the Spanish moves excessively unilateral. El Pais reports.


• isiXhosa, the language of the Xhosa people of South Africa, is getting huge international attention thanks to its inclusion in Black Panther. The Toronto Star reports.

I am geared up: red Mustang float coat, four layers of polyester, waterproof pants, insulated rubber boots and gloves, radio harness and dry bag. I lean carefully through the port entrance, 2 metres above the teal water. Two nautical miles away on the horizon, a meniscus barely rising above the sea forms the low profile of Igloolik.

Cranes lower Zodiacs into the water and expedition staff are hopping in, starting engines, loading gear and readying to bring passengers ashore. A 1980s powerboat is bobbing 50 metres off the portside. Propped over its windshield is a video camera with a microphone in a pop filter, speckled grey, the colour of an Arctic fox in summer. Handling the camera in the chop is a 50-something man in an old fleece jacket and baseball cap.

I am aboard the MV Sea Adventurer, where I work as a guide and lecturer, and we're tracing the Northwest Passage. One week in and we arrive in the hamlet of Igloolik, one of the most isolated communities in the Canadian Arctic.

It's late summer, and we are the first passenger vessel of the season. In fact, we're the first to arrive on these shores since 2011. We navigated Fury and Hecla Strait, which is notorious for being covered ice but was remarkably clear for our voyage.

On the way, we passed the Crystal Serenity, which has been making headlines as the first full-sized cruise ship to navigate the Northwest Passage, and thereby ushering in the arrival of a new era of eco-tourism made possible by thinning ice and rising temperatures.

Talk of sending humans to Mars hit a fever pitch this week following SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s big announcement Tuesday.

He outlined an ambitious plan to begin sending cargo missions to Mars by 2018, with the first manned missions leaving by 2022 or 2023. Along the way, he hopes to improve the cost of trips by “5 million percent”, and establish a colony of 1 million souls there within 40 to 100 years. Let’s just say people had questions — The Verge’s Loren Grush outlined a few of them.

How will humans survive? What about radiation? How will they get around? What happens to the waste colonists flush down the toilet? We didn’t get a clear answer form Musk, but these are the kinds of questions that NASA scientists have been working to answer for two decades in one of the most remote, empty places on earth: Devon Island.

Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island on the planet, and it’s about as Mars-like as it gets. It’s home to the 14 mile-wide Haughton Crater, which is cold, dry, rocky and extremely isolated. Since 1997, Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the Mars Institute and the SETI Institute, and director of the Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center, has led missions every summer from a small research station there to prepare people and design technologies for a trip to the Red Planet.

On the island, researchers have tested robots, spacesuits, drills and other tools that would aid future Mars explorers. It’s also a proving ground for would-be Mars colonists. Devon Island is isolated, the environment is brutal and the area is poorly mapped, which makes it the perfect place to get a taste of what might go wrong out there.

• The BBC notes a study suggesting that the bombardment of the early Moon by comets gave it water.


• Bloomberg View criticizes red tape in Greece, and notes that the salts of Australia will be drawing solar cell manufacturers to that country.


• The Guardian notes Jeremy Corbyn's claims of BBC bias against him.


• The Inter Press Service examines the vulnerability of young women in Africa to HIV.


• MacLean's notes the struggles of a prominent Inuit family, the Tootoos, with alcohol.


• National Geographic notes an exciting archeological dig into the heart of Roman London and reports on signs of activity on Pluto.


• New Scientist notes that, among the orcas, evolution is driven by culture, with culturally distinctive groups also being genetically distinctive.


• The Toronto Star reports that Mossack-Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers, is shuttering offices.


• Wired notes Switzerland's Gotthard tunnel and warns that Flint is not the worst bit of American infrastructure in decay.

• Africa is a Country looks at how Ethiopians interpret the 1966 visit of Haile Selassie to Jamaica.


• The Building Blog depicts how a California town is literally being visibly distorted by seismic forces.


• Bloomberg considers the import of Beyoncé's debut of Lemonade on Tidal.


• Bloomberg View notes how the China-Venezuela money-for-oil pact is failing and looks at the risks of being a Russian media mogul.


• The Globe and Mail looks at the very high cost of internet in Nunavut.


• MacLean's looks at the Iran-Iraq War and examines Beyoncé's Lemonade.


• Universe Today notes how spaceflight apparently acts to accelerate aging.


• Wired notes how much of Venezuela's electricity shortage is the consequence of booming consumption in the good years.

Photographer Michael H. Davies said the whole photo shoot was planned after he saw a similar photo elsewhere and decided he could top it.

"I went through the science of it," he said. "I figured, 'OK, I need 40 below, I need calm winds, I need the sunset in the background so it lights up my fog when I film it.'"

Davies and Siivola travelled by snowmobile into the mountains about 45 minutes out of town.

It was a race against time to catch the setting sun. The community, which is only a few kilometres below the Arctic Circle, gets about 2½ hours of sun this time of year.

They were carrying five or six thermoses of hot water, each with different amounts so they could experiment to get the right shot.

Slave workers in factories are reportedly behind Thailand's shrimp industry, yet many restaurants and grocery stores in Canada carry this shrimp stock instead of the shrimp harvested by Nunavut's Inuit-owned sustainable fisheries.

A feature story this week by The Associated Press paints a disturbing picture of how victims of human trafficking have been used to fuel Thailand's shrimp industry, which provides peeled shrimp to many American and Canadian restaurant and supermarket chains.
"It's unfortunate because it taints the entire shrimp industry," said Chris Flanagan of the Baffin Fisheries Coalition (BFC). "Any seafood that is harvested under these kinds of conditions should not be imported into Canada."

With four vessels that fish for shrimp and turbot, the BFC is the largest harvester of shrimp in Canada's North. Half of all BFC employees are Inuit.

"I would just advise anyone who's buying shrimp, especially if it's wholesalers or restaurants, to be sure they know where it's coming from," said Flanagan.