Muslims in Inuvik

Muslims have been in the Inuvik area at least since Peter Baker, a Lebanese-Canadian trapper who started an Edmonton-based trading company, provided supplies to oil prospectors working out of the Mackenzie River delta region,^[10]: 279 where Inuvik was established as an administrative centre in the early 1960s.^[13] He was later elected to represent the Mackenzie North riding in the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly in 1964, making him the first known Muslim elected to office in Canada.^[14] In 2011 it was reported that one Muslim resident, an Albanian, had been living in Inuvik since the early 1970s.^[15]

Muslims began coming to Inuvik in greater numbers starting in the mid-1970s, as the Arctic oil exploration boom created new job opportunities. The boom ended with the collapse of oil prices in 1986.^[13] By the 2000s, there were a hundred Muslims in Inuvik, mostly Sunni from Egypt, Lebanon and the Sudan,^[16] including all the town's taxi drivers, and many architects, engineers and businessmen.^{[17][lower-alpha 3]} Many were men whose families remained in southern Canada, supported by the relatively high incomes from jobs in the Arctic.^[10]: 279 Some of the congregants' wives had joined them in Inuvik, but many had to leave their children in southern Canada to be educated in their faith.^[1]

Our Lady of Victory Church, used by early Inuvik Muslim communities for prayer

The men prayed at Our Lady of Victory Church, the igloo-shaped Roman Catholic church in downtown Inuvik.^{[10]: 279–80} Beginning in 2000, the local Muslim community was served by a converted 2.7-by-4.3-metre (9 by 14 ft) truck trailer with space for 20 attendees;^[15] Eid al-Fitr celebrations were held at the town's curling lounge or its arena.^[19] A painted crescent moon over the entrance was the only outward sign it was a mosque Inside, prayer rows were marked on the carpet with tape. On Fridays men took turns leading the services and giving the jumah sermon to a packed house.^{[10]: 279–80}

Transport and construction of mosque

An Egyptian imam was impressed with the community centre on a 2008 visit. He advised members to incorporate a non-profit society as a step toward building a formal mosque; they soon founded the Muslim Association of Inuvik.^[10]: 280 A Sudanese taxi driver who had been one of the earliest Muslims in town bought two lots at $90,000 in support of the construction effort.^[15]

Building the mosque was a challenge. While Inuvik's remote location had made the land affordable, it also greatly inflated construction costs. The modest structure they had in mind would cost half a million Canadian dollars. A member reached out to Saudi-born businessman Hussain Guisti, who had built a mosque for the small Muslim community in the similarly remote northern city of Thompson, Manitoba, while his wife was doing her medical residency there. He had overcome high construction costs by having the mosque prefabricated in Winnipeg and trucked over 750 kilometres (470 mi) to Thompson.^[10]: 280

Guisti had never heard of Inuvik before he got the call, but when he looked for the town's location on a map, he decided he had to make the mosque possible, believing (erroneously) that it would make history as the northernmost mosque yet built. Before agreeing to fund the construction, Guisti imposed three conditions. First, while the mosque would be open to all Muslims, worship would follow the Sunni traditions he had been raised in. Second, the mosque would have to be financially self-sustaining once it was open. Last, he wanted to call the first prayer.^{[10]: 280–81}

In early 2010, Guisti's Zubaidah Tallab Foundation (ZTF) funded the construction of the mosque.^[7] Instead of building it on site in Inuvik, the ZTF realized it would be cheaper to have the mosque prefabricated in a Winnipeg warehouse.^{[10]: 280–81} That September, the completed mosque was shipped over 4,000 km (2,500 mi) in two sections on trucks^[15] and river barge to its current location.^{[10]: 280–81}

The mosque's journey was heavily covered by the media, which termed it "Little Mosque on the Tundra"^[1] after the CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie,^[15] and beset with difficulties. On the road leg, a truck took it first to Edmonton, where it would take a route north to Hay River in the Northwest Territories (NWT) for the beginning of the barge trip. The water route was necessary because several bridges on the upper reaches of the Dempster Highway, the only road to Inuvik, were too narrow for the trucks carrying the mosque.^{[10]: 280–81}

In Edmonton, it was held up for a day due to construction and heavy traffic, and authorities there made the trucks wait two more days for Labour Day weekend to pass. After crossing the 60th parallel into the NWT, the truck had to cross the very narrow Reindeer Bridge, which was not wide enough for the trucks. After the driver took the tires off and used another truck to balance the building, they attempted the crossing, only for that section of the mosque to become unbalanced and threaten to fall off the trailer into the creek. The crew attempted to compensate by moving all the construction supplies for the interior, such as carpeting, furniture and plumbing, to the opposite side of the structure, but that only made it lean the other direction as they attempted the crossing a second time. A construction crew in the area used their backhoes and lent chains to secure it to the truck bed, and it was able to cross successfully.^{[7][10]: 280–81} "We almost had an underwater mosque, a house of worship for toads and fish," Guisti said later.^[20]

This caused delays getting to Hay River, where the mosque was scheduled for the last barge of the season—any later and the water levels along the Mackenzie might not be high enough to guarantee passage all the way to Inuvik.^[20] Only a late phone call to the barge operator persuaded it to wait. Once the mosque reached the barge, it was transferred to it but rough weather on Great Slave Lake kept the vessel in port for another two days. The trip across the lake and down the Mackenzie to Inuvik took ten days, and the mosque reached its destination in late September,^[7] greeted by 40 local Muslims, as snow fell for the first time that autumn.^[20] At the time of its arrival the congregation had not chosen a name for the mosque. One member jokingly suggested calling it the "Graceful Mosque" because it had reached Inuvik intact.^[19]

Assembling the interior furnishings and dome was the next challenge. Some of the congregants volunteered to do so, but they did not know how. Fathallah Farjat, a Palestinian-born carpenter then working in Hamilton, Ontario, heard about the problem and called Guisti, who paid for his flight to Inuvik. Farjat worked for six weeks without pay on the mosque's interior, doing framing, hanging drywall, laying carpet, finding space for a kitchen, and designing, then building, the dome and pulpit. A minaret, not part of the original design, was suggested; Farjat then designed and built one despite never having done so before.^[10]: 282

On the suggestion of an engineer in the congregation, the mosque is oriented on a very north-northeast qibla, its front facing Mecca over the North Pole. This is distinct from most other mosques in North America, which face more to the east, via the direct or great circle routes. Omar Mouallem considers this an example of ijtihad, since it was not derived from any religious authority.^[10]: 286 Services are held in both Arabic and English.^[15]

The mosque officially opened two months later on November 10,^[15] with Guisti calling the first prayer.^[10]: 286 After a day-long open house at the mosque, the community hosted a dinner at the local arena open to all Inuvik residents. Lebanese and Palestinian relatives of one local restaurateur arranged for enough supplies to be flown in from Edmonton for a Middle Eastern dinner attended by 500–600. A man came from Dubai to personally donate the carpeting. "The day was filled with a lot of emotion", recalled Nilufer Rahman, a Winnipeg documentarian Guisti hired to make a film about the mosque. "It was refreshing to see so many grown men cry."^[15]

Food bank

Following the mosque's completion, the Muslim Welfare Centre (MWC) in Toronto provided the funds to purchase an adjacent property to set up the "Arctic Food Bank". It distributes groceries to the town's population, and is now Inuvik's largest charity.^[18]

The food bank was the first full-service one to be established in Inuvik, according to the mosque leadership. It fills a need since the town's remoteness and dependence on the mostly unpaved 715-kilometre (444 mi) Dempster Highway as its main conduit for goods results in higher prices at local markets, which can rise still further as fuel prices do. Since locals are thus often reluctant to donate in quantity, the MWC ships at least $35,000 worth of donated halal food to Inuvik annually, available to all residents for free once every two weeks if they have registered. As of 2019 that included 700 families living within two hours' drive of Inuvik; the mosque estimated that at any given time one-quarter to one-third of the immediate residents have used the food bank.^[10]: 287