The weather up here ... family law in the far north.

• Author: Wilford, Karen
• Position: Feature Report on Nunavut

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Ahh, September. The morning is a crisp minus 2 and it is snowing hard enough to warrant locating the shovel. An average start to my day as a Family Law practitioner in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. I moved here from southern Ontario in the fall of 2004, looking for new challenges in my career and my personal life and I have been amply rewarded on both fronts.

It has been a privilege to have a front row seat on the evolution of family law in Canada's newest, largest and most isolated Territory. And each of those aspects creates a unique challenge in the delivery of family law services to our Inuit clients.

There is a frontier aspect to practice here. The lack of an entrenched history provides many opportunities for creating arguments and approaches which are uniquely relevant to the people and their customs. It's not every day that the delivery of a caribou forms part of a child support order. And we continue to struggle to find accommodation with ancient traditions such as custom adoption when these traditions conflict with legal rights and remedies.

Family law is delivered almost exclusively through the Legal Services Board of Nunavut, the Territorial Legal Aid service delivery agency. The Kitikmeot Law Centre in beautiful Cambridge Bay is one of three regional clinics across Nunavut that provide legal aid services in criminal and family law to the 30,000 Nunavummiut living here. There are no roads to or between the 26 communities. I am told that you can get from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife on skidoo once the ice is in, but it's a two-week trip.

Stone age technology was actively used within living memory of the people here. Ice houses warmed with seal oil in the stone kullik, fish and seals harpooned with the unique three-pronged kakivak, clothing of caribou, a raw meat diet. Today, however, satellite technology provides the high speed internet and fax machines on which we rely to deliver legal services in this still forbidding environment.

Much too much of our work has to be done by telephone. Delicate client intake. Reviewing a damning affidavit. Explaining an unfavourable court decision. Discussing child protection concerns. Suggesting lifestyle changes that might enhance trial prospects. Oh and by the way, my Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun language skills are, I'm embarrassed to say, non-existent.

There are no process servers. Many, many clients do not have telephones. There is a significant cultural gap which includes a...