00:00:00:00<\/p>\n
[Audio: Adventurous music plays.]<\/p>\n
[Visual: The sun shines behind fluffy clouds over train tracks in the countryside. The tracks lead past a lot with a factory and several modular homes. A cargo ship sails towards a hamlet in the North. A vehicle drives on a dirt road alongside the shore. A person drives an ATV across the tundra. Amanda Doiron, a woman with brown bobbed hair, sits in an office.]<\/p>\n
00:00:02:00<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
When it comes to Canada and housing needs, unfortunately, Nunavut and the northern provinces are the ones that are being left behind.<\/p>\n
00:00:12:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Stuart Rostant, a grey-haired man with a short beard, watches a modular home being hauled out of the factory. Later, he sits in front of a row of partially built modular homes in the factory. A truck hauls modular homes on a flatbed trailer. Stuart and three men, all wearing reflective vests, talk at a worksite in the North. Snow falls on a frozen arctic landscape.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
There are so many difficulties around capacity, transport, logistics of building in harsh winter climates.<\/p>\n
00:00:20:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Stuart examines blueprints on a computer in the factory. Amanda works on a computer and takes a call in the office. Stuart uses a nail gun to attach plywood to a metal frame.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
Cost, the extra resources you need, the lack of resources that are there when it comes to material, to labour.<\/p>\n
00:00:27:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A truck hauls a modular home alongside a bay. Stuart directs workers in a construction vehicle and on the ground. The truck driver speaks with Amanda on a cleared lot. A forklift carries a modular home away from two rows of similar modular homes. Four rows of modular homes sit in front of a bay, where a cargo ship floats near a barge. Several vehicles escort a truck hauling a modular home towards a hamlet. Amanda sits in the office, crosses her arms and smiles. Stuart sits in the factory and stares forward confidently.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
How do we go from installing 1\u00a0home to 9\u00a0homes to 22 homes spread across Nunavut? We need 3,000 homes yesterday in Nunavut, and so it\u2019s kind of an all-hands-on-deck approach.<\/p>\n
[Visual: A rapid montage of the steps to build a modular home and transport it to a northern community plays. In front of the factory, white text reads, \u201cThe Long Journey Home – Building Modular Homes for Canada\u2019s North.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[Audio: Upbeat music plays.]<\/p>\n
00:00:48:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Amanda types on a keyboard and later sits in her chair at the edge of her cubicle. A text box that reads \u201cAmanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes\u201d appears briefly.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
My name is Amanda Doiron, and I\u2019m one of the principals at Arctic Modular Homes. The team at Arctic Modular Homes is myself and my husband, Stuart Rostant.<\/p>\n
[Visual Amanda and Stuart talk while looking at a blueprint on a computer screen. The couple smiles in a photo from earlier in their relationship. Children play and fish on a dock. A palm tree trembles in the wind. Waves roll onto a beach bordered by a jungle.]<\/p>\n
Both of us have backgrounds in architecture. We\u2019d been living in Trinidad and Tobago, where Stuart is from. We built a few projects within the country itself and then realized: \u201cLet\u2019s do something different. Let\u2019s go back to Canada. Let\u2019s try Nunavut and see if we can build on experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
00:01:13:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: On a map, a dotted line extends from Trinidad and Tobago to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Text reads, \u201cApproximately 6,200\u00a0km.\u201d Clouds cover the sky over arctic mountains. A boat sails away from Cambridge Bay. Three children play hackey sack next to three inuksuit on a hill. Stuart sits in the factory. A text box that reads, \u201cStuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes\u201d appears briefly.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think anybody can know Nunavut until you\u2019ve actually lived there. You know, it\u2019s like having a kid for the first time. You can Google as much as you can Google, but until you\u2019re there and you\u2019re in it, you can\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n
[Visual: Photos flash past: Stuart holding up a fish on a stony shore, Amanda standing next to a Jeep surrounded by very deep snow, Stuart smiling with a boys\u2019 soccer team in a gymnasium, Amanda making a silly face with children in a classroom and Amanda fishing in a bay.]<\/p>\n
So, you know, we landed in June of 2010, and the ocean was still frozen. And I think that was my first, \u201cuh-oh,\u201d like, \u201cwhat have we gotten ourselves into\u201d moment.<\/p>\n
00:01:37:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Amanda sits in the office.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a different terrain, landscape, people, weather, and it\u2019s a very soul-searching moment.<\/p>\n
[Visual: Two children, one pushing a bicycle, walk around a building in Cambridge Bay. Amanda chats with a local man outdoors. Stuart and Amanda supervise and help install modular homes.]<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat am I doing? What do I want to be doing?\u201d And during our time, we built our first house and realized there was a need for housing and built on the lessons we learned through our jobs with Community and Government Services and created Arctic Modular Homes.<\/p>\n
[Audio: Pensive music plays.]<\/p>\n
[Visual: A seaplane glides across the bay. A dog rests next to a doghouse. Two people ride an ATV through the hamlet. Vicki Aitaok, a woman with bobbed grey hair and orange-rimmed glasses, sits in an office. A text box that reads, \u201cVicki Aitaok, Manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association\u201d appears briefly.]<\/p>\n
00:02:03:00<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Vicki Aitaok, Manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association]<\/p>\n
The housing continuum is not broad up here, like you might see other places across Canada. So we do have shelters and things like that now, which we didn\u2019t have maybe 10\u00a0years ago. And then we have social housing, the public housing, which is income-based and affordable.<\/p>\n
[A fisherman stands on a ladder in the shallows of the bay. Small, colourful houses border dirt roads. The Cambridge Bay welcome sign, formed by 2-pronged fishing spears holding up a net full of fish with a banner that reads, \u201cTunngahugitti Iqaluktuuttiarmi,\u201d stands on the shore.]<\/p>\n
It jumps from there. It goes to employer-subsidized housing, which is subsidized, not market-rate, but is subsidized for the people. And then it jumps right from there to private housing or private market rent. There is no affordable housing. There\u2019s no middle of the ground.<\/p>\n
00:02:46:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Text on screen reads, \u201cOctober 18, 2022. Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Housing Corporation announce strategy to build 3,000\u00a0homes.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
In late 2022, Nunavut decided that it was really important that they create a program to accelerate housing.<\/p>\n
[Visual: Forklifts carry a rectangular metal frame into the factory and set it on blocks of wood. A worker guides a metal panel hanging from a crane into the frame. Workers install wooden frames to form the walls. Two workers standing in a lift install drywall on the exterior. Amanda sits in the office.]<\/p>\n
During that time, we were already in our application process with CMHC for the Northern Housing Supply Challenge. So, for us, it was not only, do we have a mission that we felt was very important, the government had now announced that it was going to be one of the priorities of the government itself, that they were going to build as many houses as they could starting now until 2030.<\/p>\n
00:03:17:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A bulldozer clears dirt from a lot. Workers carry a pallet past children playing jump rope. Stuart talks with a man holding surveying equipment at the edge of the lot. Vicki sits in the office.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Vicki Aitaok, Manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association]<\/p>\n
Nunavut\u00a03000 is really more than just adding real estate. It\u2019s the partnerships that are being created. There are opportunities now for small businesses to get in on some of this action. Whether they can build\u00a01 or 10\u00a0units, we need them all. It all counts.<\/p>\n
00:03:35:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Workers construct a modular home in the factory, starting with building the frame to painting the finished interior. Later, they push the modular home outdoors and set it on a frame.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
Building in the North is really expensive. So building stick-build, where raw goods come to the North and actually are erected\u2026 when we looked at the comparison between that and actually building modular, there really wasn\u2019t that big of a difference. Because we\u2019re saving on time and we\u2019re saving on personnel that we sometimes can get, can\u2019t get, have to fly in, we realized that our shorter window, even though the delivery of the pods themselves were more expensive than the raw material, that the time we saved, we saved a lot of cost. And that\u2019s when it came about that the best approach for us as a business was to start building these modular units in a factory outside of Nunavut and shipping them up during the sailing season.<\/p>\n
[Audio: Light music plays.]<\/p>\n
00:04:24:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A truck drives past a highway sign that reads, \u201cWinkler, 1\u00a0km.\u201d Green fields surround the factory. Stuart works on blueprints on a computer in the office. Later, he sits in front of a row of modular homes in the main area.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
CMHC just kind of landed in our lap, so to say. And this funding round\u00a03 came out and it was, we thought, tailored directly to us in that they were looking at northern supply challenges. And we thought that, if we got some funding behind us, we could really make a huge difference at a different scale than what we are currently doing.<\/p>\n
00:04:48:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: The sun shines on a billboard that reads, \u201cCity of Winkler. Dream. Build. Live. 5\u00a0Minutes ahead.\u201d Trucks sit outside the factory. Amanda sits in the office.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
Where Winkler is located central to Canada, there was the idea of further down the road, if we want to actually start shipping from Churchill, or if we were to ship from Vancouver, then our transportation is central to Canada. There\u2019s also a lot of industry here, windows and doors, we get all of our steel from here, so materiality-wise, it was just an easier fit for us.<\/p>\n
00:05:08:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A banner around a large stack of planks reads, \u201cFoothills Forest Products.\u201d Signs taped to modular homes on the lot outside the factory read, \u201cNunavut Housing Corporation.\u201d]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
When we started in June of 2024, we broke ground. We finished the factory to the point where we could begin manufacturing in February of 2025. We landed a contract with Nunavut Housing to produce 9\u00a0homes, approximately 11,000\u00a0square feet, 22\u00a0pods within a 4- or 5-month period. So it was really off to the races.<\/p>\n
00:05:33:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Finished modular homes sit on the lot outside the factory.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Vicki Aitaok, Manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association]<\/p>\n
If we can get 9\u00a0units on a barge in the summer, in September, and up and running by November or December, that just makes sense for Nunavut.<\/p>\n
00:05:43:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: In a time-lapse, workers build pods inside the factory. A forklift raises a modular home at the doors. Then, a worker pushes the modular home across the lot using a hydraulic lift platform. A truck hauls the modular home on a flatbed trailer through the countryside.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
We like to have 6\u00a0pods in the factory, pod in one side, and we shift them down the line, and pod out, finished at the end of the line. When the time comes for us to start trucking those units, we raise them off the ground with a customized hydraulic system. The flatbeds come in, come right underneath, and then we put that pod right back down onto it.<\/p>\n
[Visual: Text above a map of Canada reads, \u201cHousing Supply Challenge Recipient – Arctic Modular Homes, Housing Pod Journey.\u201d Labelled dots appear sequentially across the map, linked by dotted lines. The first set of labels reads, \u201cDate: July 18th. Winkler, MB\u201d The second set of labels reads, \u201cDate: August 18th. Montreal, QC.\u201d The dotted line rapidly extends around the landmass and into the North. The third set of labels reads, \u201cDate: August 30th. Cambridge Bay, NU. 8,090\u00a0km.\u201d]<\/p>\n
And then from there, those guys truck it to Quebec, to NSSI and NEAS. They get craned from there onto the ship, and then they\u2019re brought to the community, where they\u2019re craned off onto a barge, at which point in time, we then transport those to site, jack them off the ground, and get them all secured with Jackpad foundations, or whatever foundations that they\u2019re using.<\/p>\n
00:06:27:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A crane lifts a modular home from a cargo ship onto a barge. The barge sails the modular home towards the hamlet. Rows of modular homes sit on the shore. A truck hauls a modular home on a flatbed trailer on a dirt road. In a time-lapse, workers connect two sets of three modular homes on a cleared dirt lot.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
The other side that we saw with modular and building out of a factory in down south is that we can actually build year-round. We can stockpile the homes and then, when it\u2019s time for sailing season, we can dispatch them to Quebec. Our sailing season starts in Nunavut from July until September, which means that we can potentially do more than one community a year.<\/p>\n
00:06:53:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Vicki, Amanda and Stuart give residents tours of their new modular homes.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Vicki Aitaok, Manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association]<\/p>\n
When we can actually allocate or move people into units, that\u2019s the best part of my job. That\u2019s when it makes it all worthwhile. You see hope, you see happiness, you see a future in people\u2019s eyes. Like, it\u2019s just, yeah. Everybody cries when they get a house. It\u2019s wonderful. It\u2019s wonderful.<\/p>\n
00:07:11:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A woman with bobbed black hair admires an empty room in her new modular home.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Female Resident 1]<\/p>\n
Wow! I got a home! Yay! I\u2019m happy crying right now. I want to jump for joy.<\/p>\n
00:07:20:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Stuart directs workers installing a modular home in Cambridge Bay. Stuart and Amanda pose outside the factory in Winkler.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
I think we\u2019re definitely driven by difference, the difference that we\u2019re making. You know, hopefully not just in Nunavut, but hopefully that sort of expands, becomes bigger than that, becomes bigger than us.<\/p>\n
00:07:32:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A teenager stands behind a woman with grey hair in the kitchen of a modular home. A family stands in a hallway. Amanda laughs with the teenager. <\/p>\n
A woman with short black hair stands in the kitchen of a modular home.]<\/p>\n
00:07:38:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: Stuart accompanies an elderly woman and a young man touring a modular home.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Stuart Rostant, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
Home sweet home. I\u2019m so happy that you guys are moving in. That\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n
00:07:41:00<\/p>\n
[Visual: A construction vehicle leads a truck hauling a modular home along the bay. Workers on foot and in construction vehicles install the modular home on a cleared lot. A child looks out the window of a modular home. A dog rests near a modular home installation site. Amanda and Stuart talk on site.\u00a0 Four colourful modular homes sit on a cleared lot at the edge of sprawling tundra. Amanda sits in the office.]<\/p>\n
[Speaker: Amanda Doiron, Co-founder, Arctic Modular Homes]<\/p>\n
My hope, vision that I have that keeps me going would be that there might be\u00a010 to 15\u00a0people on a housing list in the North. That, for me, would mean that we did a good job. I believe that having a home, children having their own home, there\u2019s nothing like it.<\/p>\n
[Visual: The sun shines on the \u201cCity of Winkler\u201d billboard. A truck hauls a modular home on a country road. Blue skies extend over Cambridge Bay. Rows of modular homes sit on the shore while a cargo ship and barge sit on the water. A construction vehicle leads a truck hauling a modular home along the bay]<\/p>\n
[Visual: Black text on a white background reads, \u201cProduced with support from\u201d and the Arctic Modular Homes logo appears below.]<\/p>\n
[Visual: Black text on a white background reads, \u201cProduced with support from Botsford Productions, Icepik Media\u201d<\/p>\n
[Visual: The CMHC logo appears next to the Canada wordmark above a red-blue ombr\u00e9 panel.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"00:00:00:00 [Audio: Adventurous music plays.] [Visual: The sun shines behind fluffy clouds over train tracks in the countryside.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,1720,9172,3042,9173,9174],"class_list":{"0":"post-17934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-construction","10":"tag-housing-supply-challenge","11":"tag-innovation","12":"tag-modular-housing","13":"tag-northern-housing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}