I started this blog when I moved to Iqaluit, Nunavut in January 2009 to work with the Department of Health and Social Services – my first real job following graduating from an undergraduate degree in public affairs and policy management, with a focus on social policy. As a new grad, far away from all the people I had learned with and from over the years, I wanted to keep people abreast of what I was up to, and share some of the many things I learned about living in Iqaluit, and the realities of many Canadians, who for all sorts of reasons, live in small, northern communities that are serviced to varying degrees. I also set out to remind myself that learning doesn’t just happen in a classroom, and there is lots to be learned outside of academia’s sometimes ivory, sometimes peachy, sometimes rose-coloured, tower.
After eight months there, I started and recently completed a Masters of Public Health degree in Social Inequities and Health. I have also pretty firmly established gay men’s health as my primary area of focus, and have been volunteering and working in this field since leaving Iqaluit. That said, and as you can see from my blog, it is by far the only area I am interested in. Its a big world and there are lots of things to relearn and rethink about when it comes to creating the kind of world I would rather live in.
I also really, really like baking, quotes and books and as such have interspersed posts on those topics throughout my views on life in the north, public health, international development and many things in between.
everything I learned 