AFP has released an article with a title that immediate caught my attention. "Canada's last igloo to be flattened amid Arctic boom" it read, so I read it. I've now read it twice, but my feeble brain is awfully confused.
The gyst of the article is that our far north is suddenly developing, and a good example is the fact our last igloo is being demolished to make room for offices. I'm a city guy, and I don't know much about igloos, but I don't think "our last igloo" is an igloo at all. Here's a quote from the article.
The eatery at the main "Four Corners" intersection of Iqaluit, just 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of the Arctic Circle, is the only extant example of modern igloo architecture, inspired by the igloo shape and popularized in the 1950s and 1960s, in the North.
It was actually built in 1980 by two schoolteachers with the help of local townsfolk out of normal building materials. The couple was fascinated by the "igloo shape," said Suzie Michael, a former student who pitched in, hammering nails and painting the exterior.
Sure, it's shaped like an igloo, but it's not actually made out of snow and ice. It's made out of "normal building materials". The Wikipedia entry on igloo calls it "a shelter constructed from blocks of snow, generally in the form of a dome". Mimicking the igloo shape does not an igloo make!
I'm sure the Kamotiq Inn restaurant will be missed by locals, but it's not "Canada's last igloo", despite what the AFP would have you believe.
