Brenda Angotautok can’t wait to see the CN Tower.

The 10-year-old admits, however, that she’s a bit nervous to go up Toronto’s most famous landmark. After all, Angotautok has never seen anything as tall as the tower — the highest building where she lives is just two storeys.

Angotautok has spent her entire life in Hall Beach, Nunavut, a hamlet of about 700 people located north of the Arctic Circle.

Many of the kids in Hall Beach have never been to a museum or swam in a pool or felt the bark of an oak tree.

But Angotautok and her Grade 5 classmates are hoping to change that with a trip to Toronto in May, when the 12 kids and a few chaperones from the tiny hamlet will venture way down south to check out what the big city has to offer.

Travelling the more than 2,700 kilometres will require the group to take a small plane to Iqualit, then board a larger plane and fly to Ottawa. From Ottawa, they’ll take a bus to Toronto.

“Toronto will be so cool!” Marla Alorut, 11, said on the phone from her Hall Beach classroom, where the temperature outside that day was a bone-chilling -54C. She’s excited to see Niagara Falls and learn about science.

Her classmate Inuuyak Pikuyak, 11, wants to see a big library. Hall Beach’s only library is in the school.

Along with seeing museums and landmarks, the group is hoping to watch a hockey game and visit with a Grade 5 class at a Toronto school. They’ll also experience some of the everyday wonders many Torontonians take for granted, such as grocery stores.

Hall Beach was put on the map in 1957 when a DEW line station was built there, but it is still tiny, with just two stores in the hamlet, each selling clothing, food and other supplies. Instead of popping down to Loblaws for a frozen dinner, locals hunt caribou, walrus and seal, and fish for Arctic Char.

Kids in the tiny hamlet spend their free time playing on monkey bars in the playground and shooting foosball with their friends at the community centre. Many of the kids speak Inuktitut as their first language.

Janice Beardsley, who teaches in Hall Beach, came up for the idea for a trip when she realized the kids didn't recognize things she took for granted, such as bridges.

"It became apparent that living up here, while beneficial in a lot of ways, meant that they simply aren't exposed to a lot of things they read about and are expected to understand — trees, flowers, elevators, tall buildings, squirrels," she explained.

The kids are trying to raise $10,000 to fund the trip through an Indiegogo campaign, and are offering everything from ice chips to seal skin mittens to people who donate.

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Exposing the kids to the larger world will help expand their minds, said Beardsley, who moved to Nunavut from New Brunswick.

"These children could become future doctors, nurses, educators or they could just have a better understanding of the stories they read. Either way, they'll have great stories to tell and, hopefully, the people we meet down south will gain a little knowledge of the Inuit way of life."

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