My cousin who lives in Iqaluit responded to an email today with this information:
"What else is new? Well, a very sad day for Iqaluit actually. One of our
elementary schools burned down to the ground. I had little or no water this
morning but thought oh well, just a malfunction at the water plant. But as I
drove to work I could see a couple of columns of white smoke coming up from the floor of the gymnasium portion. Well, by about 9 am I think it was out of hand and the decision was made to stand back and BURN BABY BURN. Easier than tearing down. As far as I know no-one was hurt. The real tragedy of it is that there is precious little available building space in this town. School starts up in less than two months and there is no way even the building supplies for a new
structure would arrive (by sea barge) in time. Of course the sealift season is
underway and most of the ships are fully booked already. And I'm told all the
schools were running at overflowing capacity already (although I'm sure the
private french school is not), so it will not be possible to jam these kids in
with others. A real dilema."
A real dilemma indeed. If you can think of any way to promote the city of Iqaluit and help set up an emergency rebuilding project, please let me know. For example, if you live in Vancouver, where there is lots of...LUMBER, you could contact lumber and pulping companies to find out if they can help. If you live in Toronto or Ottawa (or really anywhere), you can get the attention of local politicians (it's an election year in Ontario, people are looking for ways to look good) and see if they can throw their hats in to help. And if you work for, say, a LOGISTICS company, maybe you could see about trying to find a creative solution for shipping things to Baffin Island (that's where Iqualuit is for any of you kids too lazy to get out a map).
I know there's all kinds of things you could be helping with (and maybe you are, but probably you're not), so why not do something to help rebuild a school?
Come on, pitch in.
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