IQALUIT
Nine years ago, Angele Raymond would have characterized her job as fairly laid back. But with the population on Baffin Island steadily growing, she finds herself working non-stop to fill prescriptions.

Ann Varickanickal, Iqaluit Northmart pharmacist, and Angele Raymond, pharmacist manager, are tasked with serving residents in the Baffin region. - Miranda Scotland/NNSL photo

Raymond is Northmart's pharmacist manager in Iqaluit.

She and her co-workers are tasked with serving not only Iqalummiut but also residents living in other Baffin Island communities.

"The biggest, biggest challenge is everything that has to do with shipping," said Raymond, clad in a long white coat and perched on a plastic chair in the grocery store's upstairs boardroom.

The pharmacists have to wait for shipments to arrive in Iqaluit. From there, orders for communities can only be shipped out twice a week.

"Everything is dependent on those airplanes," said Raymond, adding weather and mechanical issues can result in longer wait times.

"For the people who live in the communities, it takes a lot of thinking ahead to make sure they receive their medication on time. So most of the time I'll tell people it's definitely two weeks minimum for most things, but for a lot of things it takes three weeks to a month."

Raymond and her colleagues also have to consider the effect cold temperatures have on the drugs. If products such as pills freeze, it's usually not a big deal. But it is a problem if injections or liquid drugs get too cold.

"It has happened that I've had to throw out medication or get it replaced because it froze on the way here," she said.

Raymond also has to remember to include detailed written information on each drug when preparing community orders since she can't speak with the recipient face to face.

However, sometimes customers use the store's 1-800 number if they have questions.

Similar to many other southerners who come up North, Raymond only intended to spend a couple years in the territory.

Yet having grown up in a small town in northern Ontario, called Kapuskasing, the slow pace of life up here suited her.

Nonetheless, she remembers it being somewhat of a shock when she first moved to Iqaluit. It was not specifically because of the town but because she had to get used to being back in Canada.

She had recently returned from a two-year stint living in Senegal, a country in West Africa.

"I didn't understand the money anymore. Toonies did not exist when I left and they did when I came back and I had no idea what they were," Raymond recounted with a smile. "My challenges were basically reintegrating into my own culture after being away for two years.

"You didn't watch the movies that everybody watched, you didn't listen to the music that everybody listened to, so you're kind of offset. You're odd when you come back."

During her time in Senegal, Raymond, who studied to be a pharmacist at the Universite de Montreal, taught conversational English courses and volunteered at a medical centre, where she did a bit of everything.

She worked with TB patients, assisted with births in the maternity ward, helped in the pharmacy and worked alongside a dentist.

"It was interesting because I got to see a whole different side of health care, plus health care in Africa and what that looks like ? The drugs are a tad different so I got to learn a few new drugs."

Raymond's experience in Africa is what spurred her to pursue a job up North, she said.

After living in a foreign country, she thought it would be interesting to learn about a different culture within Canada.

When she arrived in the North, she said, she noticed some parallels between Senegalese culture and Inuit culture.

"There were a lot of things I could make sense of based on the experience of the previous two years."

One similarity was the sense of community and the willingness to help each other out.

Another aspect of life that seemed familiar was the lack of choice at the grocery store.

"I know a lot of people when they first move here, they tend to complain there is no choice in foods, there is no choice in this, or you can't find that. While I was already adapted to that because for the two years I lived in Africa, if you wanted cereal there were only two kinds on the shelf. You either got Cheerios or Special K. That was it, you had no other choices. In terms of clothing, it was sort of the same thing," she said.

"So when I moved (to Iqaluit), this was like a pot of gold. For me, there was so much choice here."