Local Eating in the Arctic
APRIL 20, 2007
An interesting story from the 100-mile trail:
A twentysomething man moves from Calgary, Alberta, to Iqaluit, the capital of Canada's newest territory, Nunavut. When he arrives, he's relieved to see that he can continue to eat vegetarian food, despite the fact that he's now living just south of the Arctic Circle among Inuit people whose traditional diet is dominated by meat. It's just that all his veggie food comes from thousands and thousands of miles away, and almost all of it by plane. Meanwhile, the far north is one of the areas already hard hit by climate change, with the Inuit observing rapid changes in flora and fauna, some of them subtler but even more alarming than the publicized risk of polar bear extinctions.
The young man asks himself: Is my choice to eat a vegetarian diet an 'environmental' choice in Iqaluit?
He answers the question by telling us about what he's eating these days. "Apparently beluga whale is high in vitamin C," he says thoughtfully. "I'll never be able to look at the belugas in the Vancouver Aquarium in quite the same way."-JBM
