TRAVEL
Glebe Report February 14, 2020
THE ROAD TO NOWHERE By Anant Nagpur
Hollywood legendary stars Bob Hope and Bing Crosby have done a few road to movies like Road to Bali, Road to Morocco and Road to Singapore. My destination was no such exotic place but it was still exotic from a certain angle. The road sign “Road to Nowhere” actually exists in Iqaluit, Nunavut. This 3.5 kilometre road starts in downtown Iqaluit, goes to Apex and comes back where you started out there in a barren part of the town. However, according to a taxi driver (Naser, from Lebanon), the road sign is so popular, it regularly vanishes. The city council of Iqaluit is so frustrated they refuse to reinstall it, so the story goes, but everyone knows where it begins and ends. As a tourist, the first thing I wanted to see was of course the Road to Nowhere. According to Henry (another taxi driver), it is very upsetting to see the sign vanish and nobody knows where it goes, who takes it away and when. It remains a mystery. Almost all tourists want to see the world-famous road but instead you get to see the stop sign where it begins. I asked Henry to drive the road anyway and he did. It is certainly beautiful but barren. He showed me his home in Apex and where the Hudson’s Bay Company back in 1670 traded furs with ships coming from overseas. Henry, by profession a pharmacist from Montreal, has made Apex his home now. He is a talented gentleman, adding other titles like bartender, host and tour guide. He showed me the sunrise over Baffin Island around 10.30 a.m. He showed me a Christmas tree (planted
every Christmas, by whom nobody knows) overlooking frozen Frobisher Bay and I felt it to be very touching with a simple beauty. I told Henry that he should recommend to the Iqaluit mayor that the Road to Nowhere sign be installed very high so that no one can reach it or walk away with it. Taxi drivers, after all, are the “eyes and ears” open to what tourists like myself have to say. But he said the city council doesn’t normally listen, and that I should do it. So I will. What I admire most is taxi drivers coming from places like the Middle East, Africa and Asia (India, Bangladesh) and adapting to this climate. They have a lot to teach us, at least me. They are happy with what they have and “live and let live” seems to be the philosophy. Naser said his kids live in Ottawa but he makes a good living since the taxi business is good. I guess up north in Canada offers something the mainstream does not. In my encounters, I have noticed more and more immigrants choosing the North. I salute them, for they are the new faces of northern Canada. Anant Nagpur is an Old Ottawa South resident who loves to travel and share his experiences with readers.
FROM TOP: A Hudson’s Bay Company trading station, somewhere on the road to nowhere The author in Iqaluit, where the unmarked “Road to Nowhere” from Iqaluit to Apex begins A mystery Christmas tree that appears every year in Iqaluit PHOTOS: COURTESY OF A. NAGPUR
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