“Alert! Alert! Our municipality is falling off the map!” – Inuit soothsayer

Arto is genuinely busy with his recent move (he and his wife just purchased their first home), but says he’ll post in the morning. However, I know there’s a large 3am-8am PST Funny Names Blog-reading demographic who can’t possibly live without seeing our daily dose of preposterousness, so rather than do extraordinarily kind things like I did earlier this week, I’ll just play warm-up guy and introduce you to a source of endless amusement for Rob, Mailman,* and I. This will tide you over until Arto’s post arrives.

* As you know, “Patsy” Mailman is our resident residence columnist, who wrote an extraordinarily well-received post about Intercourse and Blue Ball, Pennsylvania on what turned out to be our most successful day ever (5000+ hits). Holla if you’d like to hear more from her, and we’ll prod her incessantly until that wish comes to fruition.

Anyhooo…. Alert, Nunavut…. Alert! Nunavut!

It’s the world’s most northerly municipality, in the legendary and brand-spankin’-new Canadian Province of Nunavut. It has five (5) people, and pushes the boundaries of northerliness so far that even polite Canadians struggle to adapt to its latitude. The highness of its latitude approaches Charlie Sheen levels of highness, your highness!

“We want a ‘rock star’ flag design!” – Instructions given to a very literal Canadian flag designer with only primary coloured fabric

And just to add fun to silliness, they decided to place it in a region called Qiqiqtaaluk in arguably the funniest-named Canadian territory (though nothing compares to the name “Saskatchewan,” except for the experience of hearing Americans try to pronounce Saskatchewan).

Inuit legend has it that for years, permafrost-resistant Canadians had only two choices: reside in the Yukon territory, or reside in the Northwest Territories. However, neither of those names were awesome enough, so a group of mostly Inuit inhabitants said “I’ll have None-of-it!” Rather than ignore their native people like the United States usually does, the far-kinder (and perhaps hearing-impaired) Canadian government said:

Okay, eh! We’ll give you Nunavut! – Canada (the entire country)

They set the date for Nunavut’s independence for April 1, 1999.

Can you imagine? April Fools day?!

Thinking it was just one of those silly April Fools Jokes exemplifying Canada’s legendary sense of humor humour, the Nunavut development community designed a bizarre coat of arms befitting an April Fools’ Day launch date. They decided to carry on the “rock star” theme, but upped their game with more rocks, five additional stars, and a bowl of cranberries.

But that obviously wasn’t good enough.

Narwhals! No, just one Narwhal! And Mice, Meese, Mooses, Moose! No, only one Moose!  … No, that’s not what I said! I obviously meant plural Moose, then changed my mind. OK, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. How else can we be culturally sensitive? Let’s have an Igloo – a royal, crown-wearing one with a headlight! And it should be resting on a foundation of blue and yellow capital N”s. Good!  OK, now let’s put this whole thing in a gigantic yellow griddle so that the narwhal’s iceberg melts! – Excerpt from the Journal of the Proceedings of the Nunavut Coat of Arms Development Committee

No caption necessary.

But the joke was on them! Canada actually followed through, and on April 1, 1999, Nunavut became what it is today. The region pictured in the top image, colored white because, well, it’s covered in snow!

And so was formed a region the size of western Europe, containing a population 80% the size of Järvenpää, Finland. I hope you’ve enjoyed this informative look into Canadian history, and how I (Dave) choose to procrastinate from writing med school application essays.

Arto, save me!