Kivalliq Region Champions

DSC_0108, originally uploaded by Extended sojourn.

Please see the post below for more information on Baker Lake, Nunavut, and the basketball tournament.
Nunavut was ceremonially separated from Canada's Northwest Territories in July of 1999. While about 85 per cent of the territory's inhabitants are Inuit, there are three distinct geographical regions.
The seven communities of the Kivalliq region are home to somewhere around 8,000 people and are primarily situated around Hudson Bay. The boys in this photo have just won the Kivalliq regional basketball tournament in a home gym packed with hundreds of cheering fans.
They will play the winning teams from Nunavut's two other regions, the Kitikmeot (West), and Baffin (East) on the weekend of Dec. 4, assuming the weather is reasonably good and the planes are able to land.
As a point of interest, Baffin island is said to have greater name recognition among Canadians than Nunavut itself.
Now you know.

Photo: Baker Lake, Nunavut shoreline

Baker Lake, originally uploaded by Extended sojourn.

I spent this past weekend in Baker Lake, a community of less than 2,000 people located in the geographical centre of Canada, but was better put by a reporter friend of mine as "literally the middle of nowhere."
Refereeing a basketball tournament was the reason for my trip, though I was also working on a profile of an Inuk artist.
Two day-long blizzards within three days -- one of which iced up my glasses and caused me to hyperventillate so badly that I couldn't walk the 500 metre distance from the gym to my two-story little hotel -- nearly kept a few teams at home.
Despite the up to 80 km/h winds whistling in between the doors of the gymnasium, the games went on. Elders in fur lined parkas did the wave on the sidelines while dozens of other people watched the action on a large video screen in the lobby.