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POND INLET, Nunavut — The most-awaited ship here this season wasn’t the 1,000-passenger Crystal Serenity that’s scheduled to arrive Sunday. Nor was it any of the other nine smaller, expedition ships carrying fewer than 200 passengers that had scheduled stops.

It’s the annual “sea-lift” that everybody impatiently waited for. It comes at the end of August before ice fills Eclipse Sound, carrying a year’s worth of necessities ordered months earlier for everyone in the village of 1,600 on Canada’s largest island, Baffin Island.

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It’s loaded with everything from toilet paper to replacement washing machines, from crucial parts for a snowmobile to “fresh pop.”

(Who knew that sugary, carbonated drinks go bad? Everyone here. The lack of it prompts them to approach strangers off expedition ships as they might a drug dealer: “Got any fresh pop?” I’m told the diet versions go flat after six months and the regular, after eight. And since it’s been almost a year since the last sea lift, everybody’s dwindled supply is off and the only alternative is to pay $4.25 for a can at the grocery store where it may or may not be off as well.)