Like many others in Gjoa Haven — a hamlet perched high in Canada’s Arctic, alone on a large, flat windswept island — Betty Kogvik never had any interest in plants.
Gjoa Haven lives through weeks of total darkness during its long winters. Shrubs stir alive as ice and snow recede but keep their heads down during the short summers by hugging the tundra floor. The nearest trees are hundreds of miles south on the Canadian mainland, the shortest and skinniest of spruces.
Today, though, Ms. Kogvik grows strawberries, carrots, broccoli, bell peppers, microgreens, tomatoes and myriad other fruits and vegetables — year round.
“I didn’t know anything about plants before,” said Ms. Kogvik, who is Inuit like most people in the Canadian Arctic . “Now I’m a green thumb.’’
Ms. Kogvik works inside a high-tech greenhouse that yields locally grown fresh produce for the first time in the memory of the region. Inside insulated shipping containers with no view of the outside, artificial lights grow plants in soil and water, protected by constant heating during much of the year.
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