IQALUIT - As February drew to a close, Kieran O'Sullivan worked his last shift as operations manager of Iqaluit's NorthMart store.

O'Sullivan, who is taking time off from the job for health reasons, said the staff and the interaction with customers is what he will miss the most after 15 years in the city.

"This is home here," he said. "I've made some great friends here and Iqaluit is a great place. When I do have to leave, I will certainly miss it -- miss the people and miss the excitement.

"I find the place very interesting. There's always things going on; always a sense of excitement, sense of possibilities, of great things down the road. For such a small population, the place has a big impact."

O'Sullivan came to Canada from Ireland in 1971, arriving in Edmonton before transferring to Yellowknife when he got a job with the Hudson's Bay Company. Over the years, he worked in northern B.C., northern Alberta, northwestern Ontario and Labrador City before arriving in Iqaluit in 1995. He began as human resources manager at NorthMart before becoming the general merchandise manager and then the operations manager.

"I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else," he said.

Among the people O'Sullivan said he will remember was a woman who used to hang around outside the store in the 1990s, whom he suspects was homeless.

"She always had a smile when you walked by her and if I was off on vacation, when I came back, she would come up and give me a hug," he said. "She's dead now but I still think about that woman who didn't speak but wrote down what she wanted on little scraps of paper.

"We tend to walk by these people. They can sometimes be a little bit of an annoyance but they all have lives, they all have stories and it would be a wonderful thing if maybe they had better lives."

Since 2007, he has been involved with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps people build and buy affordable homes.

"I wish I was able to repay all the kindnesses that have been done to me," he said. "The first day we were building the house (on Federal Road), that stays with me. There were a bunch of volunteers in the rain, swinging hammers. It was a great day."

O'Sullivan said he will stay in the city probably until the end of the year.

"I have been wondering what to tell people. You know, it's a lot cleaner to say you're retiring. I haven't decided what the best way to say it is," he said.