Building for bragging rights
Inuvik government workers take up gingerbread-making challenge
Shawn Giilck
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, December 12, 2013
INUVIK
There might be such a thing as too much Christmas spirit.
Staff at the Inuvik Municipal and Community Affairs office including Dana Moran, left, Lorraine Lokos and Donald Kuptana took up a challenge from their Yellowknife counterparts Dec. 5 and entered this gingerbread masterpiece into a contest for governmental bragging rights. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo
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The Christmas silly season began in earnest Dec. 5 with the nine staff members at the Inuvik Municipal and Community Affairs Department (MACA) office teaming up to enter an elaborate gingerbread sculpture into an informal contest against their counterparts in Yellowknife and Norman Wells.
"We're treating it like a team-building exercise," said Lorraine Lokos, one of the architects of the diorama-style creation that features typical Northern scenes, including drying fish, stacked wood, and a hanging caribou or reindeer carcass ready for butchering.
"We designed it with the drum dancers in front. We have fish cooking, we have a teepee, and we have a chocolate cabin and our wood for the year."
Sculpture evolves organically
She said it took the MACA staff about two weeks to
prepare the sculpture, which seemed to evolve on its
own in an almost-organic fashion rather than being designed.
"We just designed it as we were doing it and somebody would say, 'Oh, we need this' and we'd go ahead and put it in," she said.
"This is the second annual gingerbread competition," Lokos explained.
"It originated in Yellowknife with MACA and some other GNWT departments."
Despite being mostly in fun, there was no doubt the Inuvik office hungered to triumph over their colleagues in the southern capital city.
"What they wanted was a gingerbread structure. They judged for originality, creativity, presentation and structural integrity. The display has to be edible.
"We were kind of crunched in the last week, and we had to get more gingerbread on if we could," Lokos said.
"A lot of it got eaten. Whatever we broke, we ate."
While it is an unofficial contest with no real prizes, there are certain stipulations, she said.
The base has to be 22 by 30 inches, Lokos said, and it's made of cake icing.
The deadline was 3 p.m. Dec. 5, and Lokos and her team were waiting to hear the judging results.
"It was fun, and a lot of laughs," she said.
The staff isn't sure what they are going to with the sculpture after the contest. They had thought of donating it to the Children's First Centre, but couldn't bear the thought of someone actually eating it.
"We might take it to the GNWT Christmas Party on Saturday night, but we really don't know after that. We don't really want someone eating it," Lokos said.
