Arctic Food Network The myth of the Canadian North is tied to its unique geography – a territory vast, sparsely populated, fragile and sublime. Yet with a quarter of the globe’s undiscovered energy resources and dramatically changing climatological conditions, the circum- polar region has become a site of economic and development speculation. In the 2006 Census, Canada’s three northern territories – Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut – posted a combined population of over 100,000 people for the first time in Canadian history and Nunavut continues to significantly exceed Canada’s average population growth rate. Some 33,000 people (84% Inuit) live dispersed across approximately 23 communities. Furthermore, populations in the North are remarkably young, adding to the growth rate. Yet with this urgency to expand, there is little vision of growth beyond economic expediency and efficiency, and the people here have typically imported southern models – be it of language, food, housing or education. Development in the North has been intimately tied to the construction of infrastructure, yet these projects are rarely conceived with a long-term, holistic vision. The Canadian North’s unique combination of climate, culture and geography has produced complicated settlements, infrastructures and socio-political negotiations. The question emerges, how might future developments participate in cultivating and perpetuating ecosystems and local cultures, rather than threatening them? Challenges & Food Security Some of the greatest challenges facing northern communities are physical isolation, economic marginalization, youth disenfranchisement, and loss of traditional knowledge. The younger generations of Inuit find themselves caught between traditional and contemporary cultures. To add to this, changes in lifestyle have produced health issues; over-crowding in houses has contributed to high levels of tuberculosis, while changes in diet have increased obesity and diabetes levels. The traditional Inuit diet, which is centred on hunting and fishing, has been slowly compromised by an influx of southern manufactured food products. Both north and south are coping with the health impacts of this diet; but it is amplified in the north, due to the high cost of shipping fresh produce and healthier, perishable goods to radically dispersed and remote northern communities. A typical food basket in Nunavut is twice the cost ($275-322) of the same food basket in southern Canada 1 while at the same time levels of unemployment are much higher in the North – in some communities, as much as a third of families are on social assistance. As a result, the 2006 Aboriginal Peoples Survey showed that in Nunavut, nearly forty per cent of Inuit children aged 6 to 14 had experienced hunger at some point in a given month because the family had run out of food or money to buy food. 2 Nunavut, like much of the Arctic, is also suffering from dramatic changes in climate. Elders, who traditionally have an uncanny knowledge of the land, are less and less able to ‘read’ it, due to the unpredictability of weather patterns and ice formation. As a result, there is increasing need to rely on new technologies. The Inuit have 192 193 The Architects / Urbanists Lola Sheppard and Mason White / Lateral Office The Canadian architects and urban planners Lola Sheppard and Mason White of Lateral Office take up the challenge to develop a modest, small-scale infrastructure for the Inuit in the Canadian North. Their culture and livelihood is seriously jeopardized by changing climatological conditions, increasing exploitation of natural resources and imported southern models of language, food and culture.