Want to do business in western Nunavut? Visit the Kitikmeot Trade Show

Vancouver’s 54-40 plays Sunday night in Cambridge Bay, where the Kitikmeot Trade Show opens today. (FACEBOOK PHOTO)

The Kitikmeot Trade Show opened with a bang Sunday night as the Vancouver band 54-40 played a free community concert at the Luke Novoligak Community Centre.

54-40, which first played in an East Vancouver bar in 1981, now have three platinum-selling albums, Dear Dear, Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret, and Trusted By Millions, to their credit and a gold-selling album, Since When.

But the three-day annual trade show is mostly about doing business and introducing the roughly 1,700 people who live in Cambridge Bay to business, under the theme “”The Kitikmeot, Right Time, Right Place, Right Now!”

Members of public will be able to visit booths set up by exhibitors representing various private businesses, companies and government agencies in the Kiilinik High School on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Delegates and exhibitors will hear Wednesday from groups including Inspire Canada, the Office of the Language Commutations, TMAC resources Inc. and Polar Knowledge Canada.

“The Kitikmeot Chamber of Commerce is excited to be at our very first Kitikmeot Trade Show,” said its director, Cynthia Ene.

“We’re having meetings with new chamber members, and are hopeful that many business in the Kitikmeot can come together to drive sustainable economic development for our region.”

During the trade show, the annual Willie Laserich Memorial Corporate Citizen Award will be handed out, and a community feast and entertainment evening, open to everyone, delegates, exhibitors and members of the public, will wrap up the events on Wednesday night.

But the official opening of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station is not on the trade show agenda: that was postponed from July and then to November. There was talk that this would take place during the trade show, but now it’s been tentatively put off again until March.