Rebuilding

Good news for people who crave take-out food. Bad news for those of us trying to watch out weight a bit, but possess dubious will power. It appears the rebuilding of the Snack is back on. I walked out of our apartment building today and much to my surprise construction had resumed.

For those of you not following the drama, the Snack was the favoured take-out for Iqaluit residents. It was also, for years and years, the favoured method of getting your drugs delivered, but that was apparently well before my time. Anyway, it still made the best poutine outside of Quebec and was one of the few places you could get a decent club sandwich.

Alas, it burned down back in February. To the shock of pretty much no one, it was a fat fire related incident. It's good food, but no one every claimed there was much on the diet menu that was good for you.

Anyway, there was much wailing and misery about town because really, when you only have about a half dozen restaurants, losing even one of them hurts. However, the owners promised to rebuild, so people were content to wait a few months.

All appeared going to plan when a crew showed up to clean the rubble from the old site and then began hammering in the pylons needed to set up the new foundation. Then, constructions simply stopped. We found out later the owners underestimated the cost of rebuilding. They were predicting something around $800,000. Turns out it was going to be closer to $1.4 million. So they stopped and went looking for investors.

That was nearly two months ago and frankly I'd pretty much given up that the Snack was going to get rebuilt any time soon. The weather is getting cold up here now. And yes, the hard work is essentially done in getting the pylons driven into the ground. But in about two months you're going to be getting temperatures around -30 on a regular basis. Not many people want to be out in that, let alone be outside trying to do construction.

Still, they've started again. The new Snack looks like it will be considerably smaller than the old. For one thing, I don't think it will have sit down dining. It will just be take-out and delivery. So they might be able to get most of it slapped up before it gets too cold. I imagine there will be much rejoicing by residents.

As for myself and Cathy, well, I rather doubt much good will come from having a take-out literally a 30 second walk from our door step. Maybe out parents can give us some extra will power for Christmas.