The Globe and Mail

I would plunk two weighty bags of groceries as well as the leg of lamb tucked under my arm on the kitchen counter if Oscar Wilde's head and hands weren't lying there. “Oh, let me get those,” fusses Danny Osborne, rushing to haul away his marble carvings. “Oscar is always getting in the way…” It's my first night back in the Arctic and I'm cooking dinner for friends in the Iqaluit home of the British artist who is doing renos on his 1997 sculpture of the renowned Irish playwright that is usually found lounging in Dublin's Merrion Square.

I schlepped the frozen lamb 2,050 kilometres due north from Montreal since heavy items like this are a pricey treat in Iqaluit. Matty McNair arrives, balancing a pie for dessert, her face flushed after giving a kite-skiing lesson on frozen Frobisher Bay; the feisty redhead's day job is guiding adventurers to the North and South Poles. Other guests amble in, including Isaac Sobol, Nunavut's Chief Medical Officer of Health, whose résumé reveals past lives as a rock-band manager and wild-animal caretaker, a colourful character who stores his vast vitamin collection in his dishwasher.

This quirky crowd is typical of the atypical residents who have made Iqaluit their home. While about half of the booming population of 7,000 are Inuit, the balance are an eclectic international mix of “southerners” who found their way to this no-frills frontier outpost seeking an escape from a conventional life or following a dream of northern adventure. Many are driven away by the harsh lifestyle; others become hooked on the culture, wide-open spaces and sense of freedom, and never leave.

As I prepare dinner on my 18th trip north since 1992, I count myself among those Arctic junkies who can’t stay away. With all the interest in climate change and the melting Arctic, more folks are interested in heading north and Iqaluit is a convenient and comfortable place to start a northern prowl. It is Arctic Easy – hiking, boating, dogsledding and fishing start within town limits, making it a great base for exploring the North with the luxury of returning to modern hotels, restaurants, shops and galleries at day’s end; things get considerably more rustic and costly the farther up the globe you travel.

As usual, the first thing I do when I arrive is walk the streets of “downtown,” an awkward collection of glass and metal government buildings, military structures from the 1950s and a couple of space-age, round-windowed schools that would look at home on Mars. There is one main intersection, Four Corners, but this territory has yet to see its first traffic light. Some streets are paved, but it’s still a dusty bustle of ATVs and pickup trucks. Teenagers in hip-hop bagginess ride mountain bikes alongside girls wearing traditional amoutiq parkas, babies snuggled on their backs. Walk into suburbs with names like “Tundra Valley” or the colourful cube townhouses of “Legoland” and it’s not uncommon to see sealskins stretched on racks in the front yard or a polar bear pelt drying over a balcony railing. Be prepared for possible walrus tusks stashed in the trunk of your jitney-style communal six-bucks-gets-you-anywhere taxi.