From Community Dream to National Award Winner: the Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub
Funding provided through the Green and Inclusive Community Buildings program.
Did you know?
Iqaluit is a city of close to 8,000 people and over half identify as Indigenous.
Years of hard work and community dreams are realized in the Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub: a stunning, award-winning, environmentally friendly building in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Run by a non-profit organization, the Hub offers a wide range of services to local youth, seniors, families, and people experiencing poverty.
Inuusirvik, meaning “a place for being well and living a good life”, addresses an infrastructure gap for mental health and wellness services in Iqaluit. By working with the community to identify their needs and how best to meet them, the federal government helped establish the Hub and its services, which now provide a wide range of resources for Nunavummiut.
The Hub received a 2023 Canadian Architect Award of Merit for its “unique design, programming, and budget challenges with environmental responsibility.” The contractor, a local Inuit-owned company, took care to incorporate traditional Inuit cultural elements while also prioritizing low-carbon building solutions. Though this building stands on steel piles to prevent it from melting the permafrost, it’s roots run deep within the community.
"Walking into the Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub was an extraordinary experience. The architecture, deeply rooted in Inuit design, architecture, and engineering concepts, immediately evoked a sense of comfort and safety. It’s a place where learning and sharing come naturally…The Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub is more than just a building; it’s a sanctuary of knowledge, culture, and support."
Quick facts:
- The Hub houses a wide range of services and resources, including early learning language and cultural programs, childrearing and parenting support programs, land-based programs for youth, counselling, literacy programs, drop-in public health and health promotion programs, as well as community-led post-secondary and life-long learning initiatives.
- In the first four months of opening, the Hub:
- welcomed over 1,400 people;
- hosted many gatherings and programs delivered by both Qaujigiartiit and other non-profits in the community, such as Piliimmaqsarniq Week, fish preparation courses, sealskin preparation, graduate training for Nunavut students, land-based skills for women, Inunnguiniq courses for frontline service providers, Makimautiksat courses for high school youth, and much more; and
- opened a daycare at full capacity.
- The Green and Inclusive Buildings Program supports the first pillar of the Strengthened Climate Plan by improving the places Canadians live and gather by cutting pollution (e.g. reducing GHG emissions, increasing energy efficiency, building resiliency to climate change and encouraging new builds to net zero standards), making life more affordable and supporting thousands of good jobs.
For more information, visit:
Report a problem on this page
- Date modified: