13. 867 📲

There’s only one place in Canada where people call you by your first name before they ask who you’re related to.

Where you walk into a house and stand in the storm porch to see if they’re home.

There’s a rhythm to the North you can’t teach in a workshop or put in a policy binder. It’s not Southern time. It’s not “let’s stick to the agenda.” It’s Northern Time — where conversations drift, tea boils slow, and the whole world moves according to things you can’t schedule:

• the weather
• the sea ice
• who you ran into at Northern
• who stopped by
• who needed a ride
• who brought fish
• who needed to talk

The North is the only place where “no wifi” isn’t an inconvenience but a relief. A place where your phone is just a phone and not your whole life. A place where silence has weight, comfort, memory, and meaning.

It’s the only place where you don’t have to explain why you’re quiet.

Or why you’re laughing.

Or why you need to get out on the nuna.

The nuna has never once asked me to pretend to be someone else.

When I worked with someone years ago — talented, brilliant, a good person — they wanted us to run on “southern time.” Everything tight, fast, and predictable. And that’s fine — for the South.

But the North?

You can’t make it southern even if you tried.

The land doesn’t move that way.

The people don’t move that way.

The stories don’t move that way.

And honestly, I don’t move that way either.

Maybe that’s what 867 means to me — a reminder that there’s a place in this country where people still talk to each other like people, not tasks.

Where the day is shaped by who passes through your door, and not by the clock on the wall.

Where names have meaning.

Where my feet feel less heavy.

Where the world feels less sharp.

Where I can breathe.

867 isn’t just an area code.

It’s home.

It’s where I once told a ghost, “At the very least, you can have the rest of Canada — leave Nunavut for me.” 👻😂

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Chelsea Singoorie
ᓯᐅᓯ ᓯᖒᕆᖅ
Founder & Artist, The Qujanaq Project by Nunabox