Nunavut’s first liquor store in decades opens without a hitch

On its first day, a massive lineup had formed even before the doors were opened. In the days to come, waits of up to an hour were reported, even as Iqaluit began its September plunge towards freezing temperatures.

Opened on Sept. 6, the cause for the massive queues is officially known as the Iqaluit Beer and Wine Store, and it’s the first time since Nunavut’s 1999 creation that it is possible to buy a case of beer over a counter.

Previously, the only way to legally buy take-home liquor in the Nunavut capital was to order an airfreighted shipment from Montreal or Rankin Inlet. In many other Nunavut communities, alcohol is either banned outright or restricted.

So far, the police have noticed no spike in crime. In fact, it may well be the opposite. In the first 12 days of the store’s opening, Nunavut RCMP received approximately 260 calls for service — roughly as many as for the same period in 2016.

Of those calls, 38 per cent “listed alcohol as being a factor.” The year before, 44 per cent of the calls in that period had been due to alcohol. According to Iqaluit media, in only four days the store sold $100,000; 10 per cent of their expected sales for the year.

The beer and wine store was first approved in a 2015 plebiscite, when 77 per cent of Iqaluit voters supported the measure. The city’s last liquor store closed in 1975. That store is now remembered with dread. In only 15 years of operation, community members blamed it for a plague of violence and disorder that caused 49 alcohol-related deaths.