Arviat, Nunavut Young Adults Are Learning To Grow Their Own Produce

by Emma Prestwich, Huffington Post, May 19, 2016

Vegetables aren’t hugely popular in the northern community of Arviat.

The hamlet of just over 2,000 people on the shores of Hudson Bay has two grocery stores, and fresh food, which has to be flown in from southern Canada, is pricey.

Many vegetables, like lettuce, also don’t keep for very long, and community educator Shirley Tagalik says this makes them even less appealing.

“If you buy something and it’s wilted and goes bad the next day, [you] don’t want to waste your money,” Tagalik tells The Huffington Post Canada.

Lac La Ronge Indian Band members are traveling across the north teaching people how to garden

The Star-Phoenix, April 27, 2016

Every time Phillip McLeod went boating along the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan, he saw huge cleared areas along the forested riverbank.

Curious about who had once tamed the land, the Lac La Ronge Indian Band member told the elders what he’d seen.

“They said ‘That used to be our garden,’ ” McLeod recalls. They told him stories of using dynamite to blast away rocks and trees and of nurturing a wide range of crops including strawberries, melons, potatoes and carrots.