Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Apr 23/01) - David Halpin began playing with rocks as a small boy.
Decades later, he turned that childhood interest into a bustling and rather unique career with the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation.
A biologist by trade, Halpin has ventured into the world of stone fabrication at Iqaluit Stone Works, a business venture of the Baffin region's birthright corporation.
Involved in fashioning everything from kitchen tiles to boardroom tables for Nunavut executives, Halpin's latest accomplishment with stone is perhaps the most interesting.
In a shop tucked away in Iqaluit's industrial section, Halpin turns enormous slabs of Iqaluit granite or Kimmirut marble into memorial stones.
Nunavummiut now have more choice when it comes to marking the graves of their loved ones.
"We've had some interest, but it's mostly still in the development stages," said Halpin.
When a customer approaches him, he takes down their information and e-mails it to a business in the south. That business then cuts a rubber stencil with the client's appropriate information -- including birth and death dates and often a comment about their lives -- and sends it back to Halpin.
"It gets stuck to the stone and then we sandblast it to the stone," described Halpin.
"That's how we get the nice picture and the proper writing," he said.
Customers can also choose to go with smaller, less expensive plaques. Halpin said both options, or whatever else clients can dream up, will be readily available by the summer.
"We can do plaques for all occasions," he said.
Building jobs
Halpin explained the reasoning behind QC's push to get into the stone fabrication market.
"QC is an economic development corporation. This shop promotes works in stone and the wider ability to work with stone in the North," he said.
"That creates jobs and broadens experience. We want to show people there's more to stone than carving soapstone," he said.
As QC continues to promote the marbles and granites and other assorted rocks found on Baffin Island, Halpin said they were working to get to the point when they had a big enough stock to aggressively enter the market.
"We've got world-class stone here.
"This is a resource that's definitely exportable," said Halpin.
He also said he wanted to train people in all communities to fabricate stone as a means of developing skills and options for Nunavummiut.
