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Kangiqsualujjuaq gets $1.5-million hotel

Avalanche in 1999 sparked construction boom

JANE GEORGE

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
To celebrate the opening of the new co-op hotel in Kangiqsualujjuaq, the co-op federation offered this new snowmobile as a door-prize. (PHOTO BY BOB MESHER/ MAKIVIK CORPORATION)

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On a bright but bitterly cold afternoon last week, nearly the entire community of Kangiqsualujjuaq, along with many visitors from Kuujjuaq and the South, turned out for the opening of a new hotel, owned by the local cooperative association.

The chilly outside ceremony was followed by tea, cake and drawings for door prizes in the new community centre.

Since 1999, when an avalanche slammed into the community's school on New Year's Eve, Kangiqsualujjuaq has been transformed. As a result, more than 20 per cent of the community's buildings were relocated or rebuilt.

As well, millions of dollars of new construction have given the community an entirely new look, which includes a new school, daycare and an affordable housing complex. There's also a new dock infrastructure for the community, with a beach access ramp, access road and two breakwaters.

The hotel is intended to assist the community's tourism industry, which is expected to increase even more when the nearby provincial Torngat mountains park, le parc des Monts-Torngat-et-de-la-Rivière-Koroc, officially opens within a few years.

The new $1.5-co-op hotel, which replaces an older transit, was built last year by FCNQ Construction, a division of the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec.

The new hotel, a smaller version of the co-op hotels in Inukjuak, Puvirnituq and Kuujjuaq, has 11 rooms with two beds each and one room for access by disabled people.

To raise money for construction, the co-op brought in several other institutions as investors.

"The participation of all involved in the project made it possible to achieve something collectively that could not be achieved individually," said FCNQ general manager Rob Collins.

The local Landholding Corporation invested $300,000, Makivik Corporation, $250,000, and Garantie-Québec, $200,000. Tourism Québec through the Nunavik Tourism Association supplied $100,000 and Quebec's department of regional development, the Ministère des régions, gave another $190,500.

The Desjardins credit union, the Caisse d'Économie Desjardins des travailleurs et travailleurses du Québec, provided mortgage financing of $404,500.

The FCNQ plans to replace or expand all other remaining old hotels in Nunavik's co-op hotel network, starting with Kangirsuk next summer.

The George River Co-operative, the first in Nunavik, was established 45 years ago as a producers' and consumers' co-operative.

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