Baby, It's Cold Up Here

The name of the town reads like the bottom of an eye chart as it sits nearly on top of the world. The town, Kangiqsujuaq is in northern Quebec, Canada and if you go there you can get a demonstration on how to build igloos. And then you can live in one.

It is not the latest destination hotel or travel gimmick. It is an actual town of nearly 800 people, with some buildings and snow-covered roads that Google Earth seems to have only viewed from above. You are very much on your own for directions, but like San Francisco, it is a town on the bay. In this case, Hudson Bay.

Thursday's NYT did a story on the town and Adam Sakiagak, a 57-year-old Inuit whose parents were born in an igloo, and who now shows the younger generation how to build them. If you're out there on the ice hunting and fishing, the igloo is your tent.

There is no mention of cable, Wi-Fi, or any other form of electronic connectivity. When Mr. Sakiagak has finished building an igloo you are able to stand up in it and sleep on what is really an upper level on the inside where the temperature gets to be 40 degrees Fahrenheit, while it is 30 below outside. A relative sauna. If 40 degrees above zero is still not warm enough for you, you are stuck. There are no pipes to bang on and no super to complain to for more heat.

The landscape around the igloo can look like a frozen version of the surface of the moon with a bluish tint. In the photo above that accompanies the story, it is easy to see there are two igloos side-by-side, looking somewhat like Brunhilde's giant breastplate buried face up in the snow.

Development. There goes the neighborhood.

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