Hundreds gather at groundbreaking for Iqaluit's igloo church

On a gravelly dirt patch beside the Nunavut capital's elementary school, hundreds of people formed a circle inside the perimeter of a bright yellow string where the walls will eventually go up.

Inuit and non-Inuit, usually divided for English and Inuktitut services, combined to sing hymns and read prayers in two languages.

"We are starting something bigger than a physical building, and that's housing the spirit of God," said Andrew Atagotaaluk, bishop of the Arctic diocese.

Premier Paul Okalik was invited to turn the sod, but was called away to Ottawa at the last minute. Many in Iqaluit thought it fitting that retired bishop Paul Idlout took the shovel instead. As he did so, the sun broke though the clouds.

It's been a year and a half since fire destroyed Iqaluit's only cathedral. On November 6, 2005, parishioners arrived for church, only to find yellow police tape around the door.

The night before, 27-year-old Litanie Pitsulak had broken into the building and set fire to the altar. The flames grew hot enough to melt the Plexiglas skylights that flooded the church with natural light. Fire also destroyed the beams holding up the igloo, so the building was bulldozed last June.

In medieval England, a town could not be called a city until it had its own cathedral. Remarkably, this happened in tiny Iqaluit, then Frobisher Bay, shortly after the Queen's visit in 1970.

The first cathedral was completed in 1972 using volunteer labour and mostly local materials. It housed precious artifacts, including narwhal tusks, a hand-made altar, a silver bowl left by the Queen, and several hand-crafted tapestries.

The altar has since been restored. After the fire, the Diocese of the Arctic, the world's largest, quickly made the decision to rebuild. Plans were drafted for a $6.5-million igloo with twice the capacity and, for the first time, running water.

So far, the church has raised $1.6 million, most of it from national and international sources. But fundraising efforts in Iqaluit have been productive. The community of 7,000 has already managed to raise $120,000, said James Barlow, the dean of the cathedral parish.

After Sunday's dedication ceremony, parishioners were invited into the parish hall for another fundraising event: a $10 caribou stew and bannock lunch, with proceeds going directly to the new church.

Construction will not begin immediately. The sod-turning marks only the installation of thermosyphons, which are self-powered refrigeration devices that are used to ensure the permafrost stays frozen. They look like giant stakes, and are driven into the ground roughly 14 months before pilings are drilled along with them.

The devices allow heat from the ground to rise into the air, leaving the permafrost frozen, and the pilings in the place they were originally drilled.

Climate change has made these an essential item for new buildings in the Arctic.

"Ten years ago we never had to worry about these," said Ed Picco, head of the fundraising committee and member of Parliament for Iqaluit East.

The cathedral was only 35 years old at the time of the fire. In spite of its young age, Heritage Canada listed the igloo church among its four "worst losses" of 2005.

The area around Iqaluit was the site of the first Anglican service on the North American continent in 1578. Bit in spite of its unique history, Nunavut is quickly losing its religious artifacts.

Six months after St. Jude's burned down, arsonists in the western community of Cambridge Bay destroyed an abandoned stone church built in 1954 by Catholic parishioners who used seal oil and clay to bind the rocks.

Eighteen months earlier, an accidental fire destroyed a Catholic church and its seal skin Stations of the Cross in nearby Kugluktuk. Two weeks later, a man broke in and set fire to himself inside.

Only three months before St. Jude's came down, another stone church in Igloolik, 850 kilometres west of Iqaluit, was torn down. This church was built by hand, using dog teams, over five years in the 1960s. But the community had no way to preserve the building and it became a hazard to children playing inside.