The horror, the horror...

I realize today is Halloween so a lot of bloggers are trying to come up with links to scary sites or list of the best horror movies of all time and stuff like that. And I can't really top any of that. There's some fun stuff out there and I'm as susceptible to a good, meaningless list as much as the next person.

So for Halloween I decided to tell you the scariest thing there is about Iqaluit. It actually doesn't bother me too much, but there are others that, when they get off the plane and realize this fact, it's enough to make them turn around and head back south again.

There is no Tim Hortons in Iqaluit.

Yes, let that little bit of horror sink in. No stopping at the drive-through and getting a double double first thing in the morning. No Ice Cappacinos. No donuts. No muffins. Nada. Zip. Zilch.



You can buy tins of Tim Hortons coffee and the NorthMart and brew it yourself, but I'm told it's not the same.

I can almost forgive people coming out and not knowing Iqaluit is Tim's free. After all, there are Tim Hortons every 20 feet in St. John's. I susppect that if I were in the middle of the woods and lost, I would just have to wait for the wind to shift a bit and I could probably smell a Tim Hortons nearby. Or just follow the litter of discarded coffee cups.

Which is how I was reminded of this fact. I read this story in Maclean's which talks about finding discarded Tim's cups in Iqaluit. So how can there be a lot of discarded Tim's cups in Iqaluit if the city doesn't have a franchise?

Because when we were flying to Iqaluit I noticed that we were in the distinct minority on the plane. And not because we were white; more than half the plane was white, actually. It was that we were among the few that didn't have a large cup of Tim's in one hand, and a plastic bag containing a box filled with either donuts, muffin or timbits in the other.

You take a couple of flights coming to Iqaluit every day coming from the south, with about 75% of the passengers carrying Tim's cup and boxes and yeah, I can see the litter building up in a hurry. Especially since there is a lot of litter in Iqaluit. Kind of reminds me of the way St. John's was about 20 years ago before St. John's Clean and Beautiful got going full tilt.

I have no idea why there isn't one here. I'm sure it would do well. There might only be 6,500 people here, but that's roughly the size of Clarenville and the one they had thrived. Plus this place is the hub of the eastern arctic. There are always people coming and going. Perhaps there are concerns about costs. Cathy tells me there are no Tim Hortons anywhere in the north. Whether that goes for Yellowknife and Whitehorse, I do not know.

So there you go. If you're thinking of coming here...beware.

Last 5 on iPod
1. I wanne be loved - Elvis Costello (Best of)
2. Blow at high dough - Tragically Hip (Live Between Us)
3. Rueben - The Be Good Tanyas (Chinatown)
4. Van Diemen's Land - U2 (Rattle and Hum)
5. Last night of the world - Bruce Cockburn (Anything, Anytime, Anywhere)