A Divided Nation

I was in Iqaluit the last time I watched a movie on VHS. It was mid-December 2014, and while I was a whiz at downloading and streaming content back in Toronto, Nunavummiut didn’t have access to broadband internet service. What they did have was the local Northmart and a bin of used videotapes. My hosts were on a Kevin Costner kick at the time, and after a day of dogsledding in Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park, we picked up a copy of Dances with Wolves for $1.

In tech time, six years is about as long as Dances with Wolves is in movie time — an eternity. But even that hasn’t been long enough to make a material difference when it comes to internet service for much of rural and northern Canada. Consider Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the lone MP for the largest electoral district in the world. Despite some modest upgrades for Nunavut’s twenty-five communities in 2019, the NDP’s northern...