In Inuktitut, the word used for news is pivalliajut. Its literal translation is "things that are gradually developing." For Jim Bell, editor of the weekly Nunavut newspaper, Nunatsiaq News, things always seem to be developing too gradually. This early November morning, for instance, he is fed up with the persistence of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in the territory. In a story meeting with his staff, he is twitching with frustration about a Government of Nunavut (GN) "pilot project" to teach women about the dangers of drinking while pregnant. At 52, Bell is robust and fit, with silvering hair that waves dashingly at his brow, and a full beard that comes and goes according to the dictates of his vanity. His face reaches its height of handsomeness at moments like this one, consumed with confusion and contempt, as he reflects that FAS has been "news" for more than 10 years. "Maybe," he says, "people are doing it even though they know it will harm their babies."

Bell has even less time for the government's concern that the education campaign might be experienced as "scolding" by mothers who already have children with FAS.

"This is not about the moms, it's about the kids. Why does it matter if a mother feels bad or not? She already knows she's damaged her child," says Bell. He then focuses on the government. "What kind of moral thinking do these people do? It's ridiculous."

"I don't know," ventures Sara Minogue, the assistant editor. "I guess they're just sensitive people, unlike others."

"They're idiots," Bell retorts.

Few Nunatsiaq readers would be surprised by this outburst. It echoes the indignation often typical of Bell's written voice, which has made him a household name in Nunavut. At times teetering between outrage and outrageousness, Bell's weekly editorial keeps a relentless watch on the foibles of Nunavut's leaders and is the source of both dread and delight across the territory. Kenn Harper, a prominent Iqaluit entrepreneur and author who has lived in the North for almost 40 years, calls Bell "the conscience of Nunavut." Jack Hicks, another well-known personality in Iqaluit who worked as director of evaluation and statistics at the GN, says Bell is one of the few voices raising debate in Nunavut. And Hunter Tootoo, one of the younger and more confrontational members of legislative assembly in the GN, says he has heard people on the street say, "Jim Bell's running the government."

Some Nunavummiut say Bell walks around with a dark cloud over his head and sees "the cup" of the new territory as not half but almost completely empty. He does tend to dwell, at times rather gloomily, on the hurts in Nunavut. But the truth is, there are many hurts. Nunavut has fallen far short of the many hopes pinned on its creation, with 27 per cent of all its deaths between 1999 and 2003 attributable to suicide; a higher rate of violent crime than anywhere else in Canada; and more students dropping out of high school than graduating. Nunatsiaq News reports on these problems - sometimes to the point that there appears to be little other news. While some readers find the paper's coverage too negative, many others are grateful that it brings the real stories of Nunavut out into the open. Such a job might call for a person with a bit of a dark cloud over his head - a person who, like Bell, thinks "we are ennobled as much by our defeats as by our victories."

Nunatsiaq News began as an nonprofit paper called Inukshuk in 1973, when Iqaluit was still called Frobisher Bay, and its mission was to help foster communication among Inuit adjusting to life in the settlements. In 1978, editor Monica Connolly, an Oshawa resident, bought the paper with a group of other Iqaluit residents and renamed it Nunatsiaq, meaning "unspoiled" or "beautiful land." Since its inception, Nunatsiaq News has always run stories in both English and Inuktitut, and to this day maintains the tradition of publishing as many letters to the editor as possible, often unrelated to the paper's content, including personal notices of thanks and gripes about community issues.

In 1985, Connolly sold Nunatsiaq News to Nortext Publishing Corp., the Ottawa-based, family-run publishing company that continues to own and operate the paper. Over the next seven years, Nunatsiaq went through a number of noteworthy changes. It introduced an expensive typesetting system with an Inuktitut font (previously, Inuktitut copy was handwritten), experienced a dramatic rise in circulation (from 1,500 to 7,000) that saw the paper reach far-flung communities across the Northwest Territories, and endured significant staff turnover, including the firing and rehiring of Bell.

In 1993, Nunatsiaq News reached a major turning point in its development. At that time, Nunavut was well on its way to becoming a self-determining territory. Its Inuit had signed the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement with Ottawa, which would result in the division of the region from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999. Ottawa appointed members to the Nunavut Implementation Commission, whose role was to advise on how the new territory's government should be structured. And the Inuit formed Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., a body whose responsibilities include distributing the financial compensation provided by Ottawa in exchange for less-defined rights.

The infusion of so much political power into Nunavut coincided with the arrival of Todd Phillips and Lisa Gregoire, both graduates of the journalism program at the University of Western Ontario, at Nunatsiaq News. Rather than act as cheerleaders for the new territory, Phillips and Gregoire wanted to report the real challenges facing Nunavut at this critical point in its evolution. Bell, who was then the consulting editor, was more than happy to show them the way.

Fortunately, their publishers backed them. Early in its ownership of Nunatsiaq News, Nortext opted to keep editorial decisions independent from the wishes of advertisers, most of whom were part of the Government of the Northwest Territories, which had a history of threatening to pull its business when the paper criticized them. And they were not the only ones uncomfortable with Nunatsiaq's approach. Phillips remembers people in the community phoning him at home to complain that coverage was not relevant to Inuit, or that it was too depressing. "They would say, 'Your paper's just politics, politics, and sexual assault,'" recalls Phillips. "The average citizen would grow weary of that."

The newsroom, on the other hand, had never been livelier. Gregoire (who went on to work at the Edmonton Journal and is currently freelancing) and Phillips (a senior editor at CLB Media, publisher of several trade magazines) both say working at Nunatsiaq was one of their best experiences in journalism, and they both describe Bell as a mentor. "Jim's overriding motive was to be a mirror for what was going on in Nunavut at the time," reflects Gregoire. "He was so committed, for whatever reason, to making sure that his readers were informed in such a way that they were able to make appropriate decisions about their lives."

The Todd-and-Lisa years were brief (Gregoire left in 1995, and Phillips in 1997) but potent, and the mission of that masthead - accountability - lives on. Bell resumed the post of editor with Phillips's departure, and continues to hold up the paper's reputation for hard-hitting, reliable coverage. A recent example was a front-page story in November 2004 that suggested the GN fired a qualified and competent South Asian employee, Harbir Boparai, from the Department of Economic Development located in the community of Panniqtuuq (also known as Pangnirtung), due to rumours of nepotism that were false and possibly fuelled by racism. Boparai approached Nunatsiaq with his belief that because he had been staying with another South Asian man, people in the community assumed the two were related and that Boparai's host "conspired" to get him a job with the GN. Nunatsiaq broke the story, complete with an email excerpt from a GN employee suggesting Boparai's complaint was valid, and made the government squirm. A month earlier, Nunatsiaq had covered the less juicy story of an application by the Nunavut Power Corporation to raise energy rates, and Bell blasted both the GN and the Iqaluit town council for "willful stupidity," saying they are apparently oblivious to the catastrophic impact the increased rates could have on the territory's economy, and specifically the toll on "ordinary people." It seems Bell was among a select few who read the application, and one of the only ones who read between its lines.

Jim Bell learned to drive in the summer of 2004. As of November, he still doesn't have a full licence, but a permit that allows him to operate a vehicle only if accompanied by a licenced driver. He seems quite comfortable at the wheel and can recite the rules of the road chapter and verse. But when he accidentally put the car in park instead of drive, his reflex was to quickly mutter to himself, "That was stupid."

Bell expects a lot of himself, but in his early years, he had no real goals. He never dreamed of being a journalist. When he finished high school in Oshawa, he worked, travelled, started and dropped out of the University of Toronto ("I just got very impatient"), and wound up working for Operation Dismantle, a nuclear disarmament lobby group. He had pacifism in his blood; his mother's brother had been a conscientious objector in Bell's native Scotland during the Second World War, and her family opened its home to men who refused to fight. His father, on the other hand, was a soldier who fought in that war, and while he politically supported the war, his near-death experiences with dysentery and malaria inspired some ambivalence. "He came back divided in himself about whether what he had done was worth it or not," says Bell.

By the time he left Operation Dismantle in the spring of 1979, Bell says he thought the organization was "a crock." He also had a $5,000 debt with the Household Financial Corp., which charged 26 per cent interest, and he was looking to pay back the money as quickly as possible. He got a job bartending at the Frobisher Inn, known in those days as "the Zoo," and moved north just in time for Christmas of 1979. He hated the job and hated seeing people at their worst. The bar was losing money and three months after he started, his boss let him go, telling him he was too nice a guy to be working there.

Bell noticed there was a newspaper in town. He figured he was "fairly literate" and could perhaps get a job as a reporter, in spite of having no training in journalism. Connolly first hired him not as a writer but as an advertising salesperson - a job Bell guesses she was having more trouble filling. He quickly got hooked on Nunatsiaq. When Connolly, burnt out from working too hard, started spending weeks and even months away from the newsroom, Bell picked up the slack, doing stories, layout, sales, circulation - whatever it took to get the paper out. Though it would still be a number of years before he took his own talent seriously, he'd found his calling.

Bell identifies with the saying that the three pillars of Scottish culture are drinking, smoking, and swearing. The swearing - at a principal - got him suspended from high school for half a year, and he spent most of Grade 11 in the Oshawa Public Library, where he passed his days studying the development of political theory and listening to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. The smoking started when he was a teenager. The drinking was a part of Bell's early days in Iqaluit, when he describes having a binging habit, saying he used alcohol to help him talk to people. He started cutting down in the late 1980s and gave it up almost altogether in the early 1990s. He no longer wanted to be part of a scene in which alcohol ruins lives. He also decided it was time to protect the most important tool of his trade - his mind.

Physically, Bell is a most careful person. He walks as though balancing a book on his head, and dresses in trousers and a collared shirt in a newsroom where most show up in jeans. He is probably the only person in Iqaluit who buckles his seat belt. Aside from the odd verbal eruption, in person Bell is formal and polite, pleasant and professional, at times a bit shy and awkward. He refuses to submit to social niceties, bluntly saying his parents are "dead" and telling his partner "I love you" over the phone in front of a stranger. At times, this style has made it challenging for Bell to offer feedback to staff, especially when it is negative. "One thing I find really hard to talk about is when someone has written a pile of crap," he says. "I'm not very good at being diplomatic."

This got Bell into trouble with Nortext in 1987, about two years after it bought the paper and hired Bell to be editor. The company poured tens of thousands of dollars into upgrading Nunatsiaq, but Bell found himself without the staff or technical support he needed to cover important stories such as local criminal trials. He grew angry with Michael Roberts, then publisher, who was living in Ottawa. In November, a group of schoolchildren visited the newsroom to ask why there were no games or puzzles in the paper, and Bell lost it. He penned an editorial in the voice of a child, bitterly accusing a "man in Ottawa" of not giving the paper enough money to do its work. By the next edition of Nunatsiaq News, Bell had been replaced as editor.

Today, Bell is embarrassed about the incident. "I was 35 years old," he says, looking sad. "I should have known better." Even now, his one fear, he says, is of being too sure of himself, and sees his attack on Nortext as a "classic example" of this. He admits: "I usually get into trouble when I become overconfident about an editorial position and don't ask enough questions."

By the time he left Nunatsiaq at the end of 1987, Bell had a strong reputation in the North and he quickly snagged a job as a part-time teacher in the journalism program at Nunavut Arctic College. The program lasted only two years, but Bell was not long unemployed because in 1990, Nortext came calling again. It was launching a hard-hitting magazine about the North, and wanted Bell to be involved. "He was the obvious choice to lead that project," recalls Steven Roberts, current publisher of Nunatsiaq, and younger brother of Michael, who was publisher of the magazine. He and Michael harboured no hard feelings. Bell started as a feature writer, and his story about the housing crisis in Iqaluit appeared on the cover of the premiere issue of Arctic Circle. He eventually became associate editor of the magazine, which published until 1994. Also in 1990, Nortext brought him back to Nunatsiaq News, primarily to mentor the paper's relatively green staff. This often meant writing the editorial, because younger editors did not always want to "stick their necks out," as Bell puts it. Greg Coleman, managing editor at the paper from 1992 to 1993, says: "We used to joke about my late Thursday walk down to Jim's office to tell him that I just wasn't comfortable editorializing on anything that week. I can't exactly say that his eyes didn't light up a little bit."

Bell claims he gets no more satisfaction from writing editorials than a good news story, but Minogue has seen him chuckle to himself in the midst of a rant. How could he not, when rechristening the government "the Regurgitative Assembly of Nunavut," or comparing the November Throne Speech to "recycled puppy food"? Bell is clear about the importance of being interesting. "I'm not going to work as hard as I do and not have any readers," he says. At the same time, he is frustrated that people only seem to notice his "nail to the wall" editorials. He says he often tries to use editorials to educate readers about basic political issues, and makes an effort to be hopeful whenever possible. But his writing voice is strongest and most authentic when he is frustrated, like the time in 1997 when he addressed a group of "esteemed citizens" in "insulated bunkers" who were protesting cuts to the Iqaluit library. "Come on people," he wrote. "Get your priorities straightened out before you cause any more embarrassment for those in the community who do care about the life and death issues many people are facing here."

In Inuktitut, a person may only make definite statements about events he or she has actually witnessed - perhaps a reflection of the tenuousness of life on frozen land. Jim Bell knows the history of the Inuit. He understands both the havoc precipitous social change has wreaked in Nunavut, as well the crushing disappointment the realities of division have brought. But the inevitable cultural divide between Inuit and qallunaat (white people), together with Bell's impatient nature, can sometimes make for an unsettling gap between Nunatsiaq and its readers. Paul Quassa, who was a chief negotiator of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, sees the paper as a key player in the development of literacy in Nunavut, but also says its journalistic values, such as "digging" for stories or exposing politicians' transgressions, are foreign to Inuit, who tend to avoid conflict because their dependence on one another was critical to surviving on the land. "Media should be more aware of how Inuit react," says Quassa. "We're still especially leery of news about people not agreeing with each other." (Quassa is not an unbiased source; his past problems with alcohol and questionable use of public money have been the subject of both news stories and editorials in Nunatsiaq News.)

Jack Anawak is another prominent Inuit leader, who, unlike Quassa, has stayed clear of personal controversy. For this, as well as for his continued connection to the land, Anawak commands the respect of many Nunavummiut, including Bell. In February 2003, while serving as minister of culture, language, elders, and youth, Anawak, on behalf of his constituents, publicly disagreed with the premier on the relocation of the government's Petroleum Products Division from Rankin Inlet to Baker Lake. Bell said Anawak should resign from cabinet for having breached "a cardinal principle of parliamentary government" - cabinet solidarity. Anawak is highly professional and articulate, but when asked about Bell's argument, he momentarily loses his composure. "See, that's where you start thinking more of politics than the right thing," he says. "Who the hell is Jim Bell to try to judge what the cabinet of Nunavut should do? He always knew we were going to do things differently." Anawak was stripped of his portfolio by the premier and eventually dismissed from cabinet by the legislative assembly, but he is confident he might have been elected premier had he chosen to run for the GN again (instead he accepted a federal appointment as ambassador for circumpolar affairs). In a March 2003 editorial, Bell similarly said that Anawak's removal from cabinet had given him more political clout. "In Nunavut politics, it's emotion that usually matters, and Anawak's appeal is aimed at all those who feel that, so far, Nunavut has not lived up to its promise. Right now, that likely includes the vast majority of Nunavummiut."

Jimi Onalik, a 30-year-old Iqaluit businessman and former GN employee, believes this disillusionment is contributing to the growing popularity of the evangelical Christian movement in the North. James Arreak, a pastor with the Iqaluit Christian Fellowship, estimates that more than 1,000 people attended the 20th Arctic Bible Conference in Iqaluit in April 2004. Arreak reads Nunatsiaq News, but questions its sensitivity to Inuit values. "People felt deserted by the newspaper," he says, referring to the coverage of the Christian campaign against the inclusion of sexual orientation in a human rights bill the GN debated in 2003. Earlier that year, Bell made a respectful and persuasive case for gay rights. But in November, when the act passed, Bell was less tactful, perhaps out of anger at religious politicians who threw their power into an effort that almost prevented Nunavut from having a human rights act. He wrote: "There is only one reason why any person would oppose a law that makes it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians. And that reason is simple: they want the freedom to continue practising such discrimination." Bell gloated as he observed that the ultimate passing of the legislation meant "the forces of hatred, fear, and superstition" had been defeated, and concluded with a sarcastic "praise the law."

Bell understands his comments may have alienated some religious readers, but does not realize just how bold others found them. The fact that a member of the business community would be loath to openly criticize the church for fear of losing customers is something of a revelation to Bell. "Oh really," he says. "I didn't know that, actually I didn't know that people felt that way." It is not clear which surprises him more - the information or the fact that it is news to him.

Patricia D'Souza, who was managing editor at Nunatsiaq between 2001 and 2004, wonders whether the paper's hard-line approach to the church's anti-gay position made believers distrustful of the paper, ultimately costing Nunatsiaq access to sources in the church. "Maybe if we'd taken a softer tack we could have gotten in more, and gotten better stories," she says. "I don't think I ever understood how the church became as influential as it is."

Wednesday is production day in the Nunatsiaq newsroom, and at 5 P.M., Bell is finishing his editorial. He types almost without pause, his jaw working hard on the gum that helps with the cigarettes, which he gave up in the spring of 2003. He is writing about Harbir Boparai, arguing that while the potential racism involved in the matter is "despicable," the less obvious scandal is that the government threw away a staff member with a degree in economics, the kind of expertise his department desperately needed.

On Friday, readers are diving into the story. Weeks later, they are still pondering the questions it raises - questions about the benefits of the land claim's requirement for 85 per cent Inuit representation in government, or the government's policy of decentralization, which has meant uprooting several departments to small communities. Jimi Onalik believes the scoop about "the guy from Pang" could have implications for the GN for years to come.

Bell has devoted a quarter-century to covering Nunavut and he still relishes a groundbreaking story. But the work alone did not keep Bell in the North. He says simply, "I like it here." Though Iqaluit is often described as a run-down and dirty town, even in the November cold it is no stretch to imagine becoming addicted to everything around it: rolling, snow-covered tundra, tufts of smoky clouds, a bay that changes colour in the blink of an eye as it freezes over for winter. And for some there is an inescapable pull in the pain of the place, something that might resonate with a person's own sense of melancholy. Bell accepts this proposition, sighing deeply. "I've always thought it's important," he says, "to be aware that, in a sense, all life is essentially tragic."

The shift from more defeats to more victories, unlike the icing of the bay, is neither certain nor quick. Bell has made the transition gradually. Perhaps, in its time, Nunavut will too. For that, possibly more than anyone, Bell can't wait.