Northman's Fury

I can't imagine what kind of system they'll come up with. Stars won't work, because the fractions would just be too small.

Nunavut's tourism bureau wants to bring in a rating system this year for hotels and other accommodations to encourage them to meet basic standards.

Like anywhere else, Nunavut offers a vast range of rooms in hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, and homestays across the territory. But visitors have complained of varying quality and service, with some finding dirty rooms and poor service in places that charge about $185 to $200 a night.

And the really nasty part about that is that in many places, the charge is for the bed, not the room. Meaning if there are multiple beds in the room, you could wind up sharing it with others paying $200/night for the other beds.

To be fair, some of the communities have pretty decent places to stay, but some others are the subject of true horror stories, and in most, the level of amenities aren't what some people apparently expect,

"Someone who was trying to book a room up here … he wanted to make sure that the room had a hot tub and a fireplace," Richer said. "I said, 'Well, first of all, we have no trees to burn wood in the fireplaces.'"

Heh.

This should be pretty cool to watch, even if I'm unlikely to find myself in Cambridge Bay next year, Iqaluit will get a pretty good show.

It's still more than a year away, but avid skywatchers from as far away as Japan are already booking flights to Nunavut to see next summer's total eclipse of the sun.

The moon will cross the sun on Aug. 1, 2008, creating the eclipse. In North America, the best places to see the event are the Nunavut hamlets of Grise Fiord, Cambridge Bay and Resolute Bay, as they will see total or near-total darkness.

Arctic Bay and Pond Inlet will see partial darkness during the eclipse, while Iqaluit will see about 80 per cent of the sun eclipsed.