North of North Opens Ice Cove to the World

Winter is settling over Ice Cove, and Siaja is still determined to make life better for herself and everyone around her.

So begins the second season of North of North, a CBC, APTN and Netflix original series created by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. As of Nov. 5, its eight new episodes are streaming on Netflix around the world. In Canada, both seasons stream on CBC Gem and APTN+.

Anna Lambe plays Siaja, a young Inuk mother guided this season by pilimmaksarniq, the Inuktitut concept of mastering skills through observation, practice and effort. She pushes her boss, Helen (Mary Lynn Rajskub), to trust her with more responsibility at the community center, faces new questions about her family and, after her divorce, is open to the possibility of love, all while raising her daughter, Bun.

The cast also includes Maika Harper as Neevee, Zorga Qaunaq as Millie, Braeden Clarke as Kuuk, Jay Ryan as Alistair, Bailey Poching as Colin, Nutaaq Doreen Simmonds as Elisapee and Keira Belle Cooper as Bun.

Before the global release, IND spoke with MacDonald, Arnaquq-Baril, Lambe, Harper and Qaunaq at CBC Toronto on Sept. 9. Again and again, the conversations came back to community.

A Show You Don’t Have to Brace For

For MacDonald and Arnaquq-Baril, the comedy is a choice.

“We wanted to make a show that people could know they’re going to enjoy watching this and they don’t necessarily have to brace themselves to watch it,” Arnaquq-Baril said.

The creators described the work behind that promise: deciding, scene by scene, when a moment needs a joke and when a character needs room to feel something difficult. Sometimes the answer comes while reading each other’s work; sometimes it takes a conversation about whether laughter would interrupt a moment the story needs.

MacDonald, an Inuk filmmaker and television creator from Kugluktuk, Nunavut, and Arnaquq-Baril, an Inuk filmmaker and activist from Iqaluit known for the documentaries Angry Inuk and Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos, write and executive produce the series. Its press materials describe it as “a comedy written and run by Indigenous women.” It is produced by Red Marrow Media, the Indigenous-owned, Iqaluit-based company the two co-founded, and Northwood Entertainment, led by executive producer Miranda de Pencier, whose credits include Anne with an E.

Built in the Arctic

Season 2 was filmed in studio in Toronto from Jan. 12 to Feb. 12, then on location in Iqaluit from March 2 to April 2. Iqaluit is reachable only by air, and March temperatures there regularly drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius. The show’s producers say the first season was the first television series of its scale to film in the Arctic.

The creators described what that meant on set: staying still and quiet during takes, then moving around to warm up the moment the camera stopped. Only so much equipment could be shipped north, so the crew improvised.

“Our grip department was rigging up, like, just made up equipment,” MacDonald said.

The community made the rest possible.

“I’m just so proud of our community for being on camera, being behind the scenes,” Arnaquq-Baril said. “Sometimes we see the hard work they put in. Sometimes we don’t see it with our own eyes, but we know it’s happening.”

The creators described a community that was patient with the production, closing roads and shutting down buildings to help get the show made, and they remembered people sharing pictures of their names in the credits. MacDonald has championed a mentorship program for Nunavut community members since the series began, and it continues this season.

Zoe Leigh Hopkins directed four of the season’s eight episodes, with Jason Priestley, Lisa Jackson and Yael Staav directing the others. Jackson Parrell is the director of photography, Andrew Berry the production designer and Alexander Reda, new this season, the costume designer.

The Family at the Center

At the heart of Ice Cove is family: Siaja; her mother, Neevee; her daughter, Bun; and Millie, the friend Siaja calls first for everything.

Harper, a mixed Inuk actor and author born and raised in Iqaluit, plays Neevee, a mother of contradictions: tough on the outside, with an enormous heart.

She said it is “really refreshing for people to see a comedy, seeing Neevee not be so perfect, make mistakes, be messy.” A family’s matriarch, she said, is often held up as “this stoic kind of person that you can’t really touch, you know, and she’s definitely not that.”

Neevee is funny and quick, Harper said, with walls that can make her softness harder to see. She connected those defenses with life in a small community, and said Season 2 lets viewers see more of what lies behind them.

“I like to think of her as like a soft rock,” Harper said.

Neevee is also Bun’s grandmother, and Harper spoke warmly about working with Keira Belle Cooper.

“It’s so great to be able to work with children as well because I have two kids of my own and they really have no filter, you know?” she said. Sometimes, she added, a child takes the words on the page somewhere “completely more colorful and more exciting.”

“I love Bun and the relationship that I have with her,” Harper said.

A Place to Belong

Millie, played by Qaunaq, is Siaja’s childhood best friend and co-worker at the community center, and this season their friendship grows into something closer to chosen family.

Qaunaq, an Inuk artist and actor from Igloolik, prepared for the role with her castmates and with coaching, and spent time on set before her first day on camera to learn what it was like.

“I saw how hard everyone was working and everyone was using all their superpowers working so collaboratively,” she said.

Then, she said, it was just like: “This is for me, I belong here.”

That sense of belonging runs through North of North, on screen and off. For its creators, the show belongs to everyone who made it.

“It’s really our collective achievement together, and I’m so grateful to everybody,” Arnaquq-Baril said.

For Lambe, the new season asks its characters to keep growing, even after they think they have already changed.

“It’s a real journey,” Lambe said, “but I think it’s one worth sticking around for.”