By the Rev. Charlotte (Charley) Maidment, Summer Intern in Iqaluit (2025)

It was just above freezing. Rain was coming down, but the sun was trying to poke its face through. I stood at what felt like the edge of the world. We were in a graveyard overlooking the frozen Arctic Sea. A family—a young teenage couple with their parents and grandparents—stood around a grave as a tiny coffin was lifted from the hearse. One of the women began wailing with grief, overcome by the situation before her. The teenagers stood looking on, emotionless. How had I come to be here watching this tragic scene unfold?

My location was Iqaluit, Nunavut, part of the Diocese of the Arctic in the Anglican Church of Canada. I had bagged what felt like the opportunity of a lifetime: to be flown to one of the most remote settlements in the world to serve as an ordinand for two months. Desperate Googling and YouTube videos did little to help with my packing list. Iqaluit reaches -50°C in winter, with summer temperatures rarely above 8–10°C. Baffin Island is reachable only by plane for most of the year. Everything has to be flown in. If your car or washing machine breaks down, you wait for the annual sealift. I couldn’t conceive how people survived in such a harsh climate, with polar bears a regular threat to communities. Yet on that May morning I stood watching a tiny coffin being lowered into the ground. The family wailed as they helped fill the grave with soil. One relative filmed on her phone while the bishop prayed in Inuktitut. I had been in Iqaluit a month and had no idea what she was praying, but the scene was powerful, Spirit-filled and raw.

Bishop Ann-Martha, and Inuk minister originally from Pangnirtung in Nunavut, had recently been elected Suffragan Bishop. She stood at the graveside in jeans, clerical shirt and collar. She (only half-jokingly) told me that robes are not worn to bury the dead because people think they look like vampires. Most telling, in two-degree weather, were the flip-flops which she wore most comfortably, though the snow had not yet fully melted from the ground. For me, this scene was everything Arctic ministry is about: Spiritfilled, passionate, reaching people in their darkest need, ministering where there is simply not enough manpower to meet the endless stream of trauma. That week I had helped prepare the body of a man who had taken his own life, leaving behind two young daughters and faithful adoptive parents in the church.

I looked across the graveyard. Beauty surrounded the rawness. The sun broke through the drizzle. A whale-bone arch framed the frozen sea. Snow and ice still covered the tundra. No trees. Only moss and tiny flowers beginning to push through the thawing ground—a symbol of spring. Details of the burial were scarce. I had been asked to follow the bishop to collect the family, who had no transport to the cemetery in nearby Apex. Even the funeral director knew little. The baby had been flown back from Ottawa, where serious medical cases are sent. The tiny coffin was light enough to carry in one hand. Whose baby was it? It wasn’t obvious, even by the end of the funeral. I assumed the wailing woman was the mother. Later I discovered it was the silent teenage couple—each barely fifteen. The girl already carried a toddler in her amauti on her back. They stood watching as their baby was buried, no emotion visible.

Flip-flops in the snow.

Life in the Arctic is raw—a place of battle and blessing where trauma and joy collide at a hundred miles an hour. Inuit are survivors: deeply spiritual, humble and incredible fighters. Just like the bishop in her flip-flops, this was barefoot ministry in raw circumstances. There were no vast robes or lengthy speeches. She had rushed from a Zoom meeting about the Arthur Turner Training School to this burial before returning to another meeting, where she finally broke down in tears. Later we discovered the baby had not been stillborn, but aborted. I asked whether she would have done anything differently had she known. “No,” she replied.

That’s Arctic ministry. You turn up in your flip-flops in the snow. You minister where you can. You cry, you grieve, you offer the little you feel you have left, and you are simply there. You aim to show Jesus in the darkest places by your presence. During my time, Iqaluit averaged around five funerals a week. Clergy become, in many ways, funeral pastors, rushing from crisis to crisis while trying to keep up with the relentless tide of death and grief, fitting those moments in between all the other work to be done. Yet those flip-flops in the snow were powerful. They reminded me that when Jesus calls us to serve, he calls us first to be present.

After the burial there were smiles. Inuit know how to grieve. As the small wooden cross was placed at the grave, the family turned and asked, “Would you like to come in for a drink?” I drove them home while the grandparents spoke passionately about hunting, fishing and life in Iqaluit.

No theological college prepares you for ministry like this.
The best ministry training I received was learning to shut up and listen. I could read every book, preach the finest sermons and celebrate beautiful liturgy, but the greatest lesson was flip-flops in the snow. Was I willing to stand at a graveside and weep without knowing the whole story? To lay down my best ideas and simply listen?

I was discovering that ministry wasn’t so much about what I could do as what I couldn’t. I needed to be willing to put on my own flip-flops in the snow.

Bishop’s Note: As a diocese, we affirm that all human life is precious, that it belongs to God rather than ourselves, and that each moment – even when life is very hard – is to be received as a gift from our Creator. Our clergy are expected to advocate for life, and to teach that suicide and abortion fall short of how God calls any of us to respond to the gift of life. Yet, because of the church’s lack of investment and zeal in raising up clergy and seeking out the lost and suffering, many don’t get that chance for godly counsel, and the first time a minister is invited into the situation is with the grieving family around the body of a deceased person beloved by God. Even when the cause of death falls short of God’s plan, we will offer comfort to those who mourn, and the hope of restoration and mercy through repentance and acceptance of Christ’s grace.