February 17, 2016 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Nunavut’s a dangerous place to be a baby: Its youngest residents are more than four times more likely to die before their first birthday than babies elsewhere in Canada.
Greenpeace protesters hold up a banner to disrupt the second day of hearings into four proposed nuclear reactors in Ontario.
(Photo by Anand Maharaj/The Canadian Press)
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Nuclear energy operators should prepare to face greater scrutiny and meet higher demands for safety precautions after the crisis in Japan, according to one of the industry’s major Canadian players.
“I would expect some changes; I just don’t know what those changes are,” says Alun Richards, a spokesman for Areva Canada, the nuclear developer whose operations range from mining uranium ore to building reactors and storing spent fuel.
Areva is preparing a feasibility study into Nunavut’s first uranium mine, at Baker Lake, even as community consultations this month reveal mounting opposition to the proposal.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
It took a photo of two boys sleeping on the pavement in Iqaluit to show Canada the face of a young population in crisis.
But the problems behind that crisis, and the steps needed to remedy them, were painstakingly laid out in a 92-page document released in 2006.
Three years later, little has changed. The problems the report outlines as urgent concerns are still prevalent. The steps it recommends to address them are in the early stages, if they exist at all.
Anna Mehler Paperny
Monday, August 17, 2009 – Globe and Mail
Billions of dollars have been pledged to develop Canada’s North, but in much of Nunavut, the most basic needs remain unaddressed, leaving the territory with ‘stone-age’ infrastructure
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper visits Pangnirtung, Nunavut, later this week, he’s sure to get a warm greeting. After all, his government is contributing $25-million to the 1,300-person community to build a new small-craft harbour aimed at bolstering the local fishing industry.
The harbour, whose designation as a “priority project” in the federal budget in January came as a welcome surprise for Pangnirtung, is an important plank in the Harper government’s commitment to building much-needed infrastructure in Nunavut.
But Monday, the Prime Minister arrives in Iqaluit, where the welcome may be a little cooler. There has so far been no infrastructure money to replace a gravel wharf in the 7,000-person territorial capital, where it takes up to a week for the most basic goods to be offloaded from boats bringing them in – “stone-age” infrastructure, as the territory’s transportation planning director calls it.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND SARA MINOGUE
TORONTO and IQALUIT — RCMP had seen the boy before. Many times, in fact: Sometimes his parents would call the police and report that their son was missing; other times police would find the 10-year-old wandering the streets of Iqaluit at night, just to avoid going home.
They were used to bringing him back to his parents night after night, said Iqaluit RCMP Staff Sergeant Leigh Tomfohr.
“He just doesn’t like to stay at home. … He was just basically a runaway, if you want to call it that. They have a hard time containing him and keeping him at home.”
A photo of the boy, curled up asleep just a few feet from another 10-year-old, has sparked outrage in the Northern community, as well as a debate on just how extreme the region’s social problems are.
Saturday, August 1, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Aaju Peter laughs when she recalls the sight confronting her when she moved to Iqaluit in 1981: Houses. A landing strip. A few stores. A school.
Then she pauses. Almost 30 years later, not much has changed.
“We have more houses and more stores. But I don’t think we have very much of a longer-term plan.”
There are inukshuks in Paris and Inuktitut script on federal government websites – once again, Canada’s northern residents are at the forefront of Ottawa’s Arctic sovereignty campaign.
But Canada’s final frontier is also its most development-starved: Between the contested underwater continental shelf and the Radarsat-2 satellite lie dozens of largely isolated communities that lack the transportation, housing and communication infrastructure needed to back up Ottawa’s claims of an inhabited Canadian Arctic.
a business of misfits 