Nunavut

For the last 12 weeks I've been meeting a team of fellow teachers at the Sacramento Brewing Company for Trivia Night. The restaurant and bar fill with teams of at most 6 players each and 30 trivia questions plus a tiebreaker are asked throughout. Answers are written on an answer sheet and the host scores each one.

Two of us missed last week since we were in Florida, and three of our team missed tonight. After 11 weeks, though, we were still in the lead by 9 points over the next highest team, and tonight was the last night of the 12-week quarter. Win, and a $100 gift certificate to the restaurant was ours.

It was a rough night of questions. With half our team gone we didn't score as high as we usually do. We changed some right answers, and guessed some others.

Different subject. It was well over five years ago, on one of my trips to British Columbia, that I learned about the territory of Nunavut. The Northwest Territories were too large, and the eastern part was split off to create the new territory of Nunavut. (A competition was held to name the territory; the runner-up name was Bob.) Knowledge that this place even existed has never paid off for me, but I always somehow hoped it would.

Back to tonight's Trivia Night. One of the questions was, Iqaluit is the capital of what Canadian territory or province? Knowing it wasn't Yukon or any of the provinces, I was able to narrow it down to either the Northwest Territories or Nunavut. I rolled the dice, told our team scribe my guess, and let it be.

When the answers were read off at the end of the night, the correct answer was, in fact, Nunavut. My trivial knowledge of the existence of that Canadian territory has finally paid off!

We ended up winning the $100 gift certificate, too. We'd have won it without that particular answer, but I'm still stoked that I've heard about Nunavut.

And now you have, too.