A new special issue of Anthropologica (Vol. 67, No. 1, 2025), the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society, has just been published. Titled “Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience,” the issue was co-edited by Giuseppe Amatulli (Carleton University) and InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka and presents anthropological perspectives on water, energy and transport infrastructures across Canada. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, most contributions focus on the northernmost regions, highlighting the challenges faced by people (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) in relation to poor infrastructure such as inadequate roads and airports, unreliable electricity systems, insufficient housing, and old, deficient water pipelines. These infrastructure deficiencies pose substantial challenges to the health, well-being, and prosperity of northern communities, particularly Indigenous peoples.

Contributions from the InfraNorth team in this issue comprise two articles authored by Philipp Budka and Katrin Schmid, alongside the introductory essay co-authored by the guest editors:

• Budka, P., & Amatulli, G. (2025). “Introduction: Narratives and temporalities of infrastructure in Canada.” Anthropologica, 67(1).
• Budka, P. (2025). “Infrastructural disruption, entanglement and change in Northern Manitoba, Canada.” Anthropologica, 67(1).
• Schmid, K. (2025). “Flying into frictioned futures: Development of Canada’s northernmost runways.” Anthropologica, 67(1).

Additionally, InfraNorth associate researcher Susanna Gartler co-authored another article with Susan A. Crate titled “What does Permafrost mean to you? Inuvialuit and Gwich’in Knowledge Holders’ Perceptions of a Thawing Relation.”

Infrastructure and change in northern Manitoba

Philipp Budka’s article presents a case study of Churchill, a town in northern Manitoba located at the junction of the boreal forest, Subarctic tundra, and Hudson Bay, notable for its transport infrastructure. With no road access, this community of 870 people hosts the only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean connected to the North American rail network. Its airport, a legacy of military presence, supports a growing tourism economy. Churchill exists because of these infrastructures—and has changed alongside them. This entanglement becomes especially visible when infrastructure is disrupted. In 2017, flooding destroyed sections of the Hudson Bay Railway, cutting off land access for eighteen months. The disruption triggered shifts in ownership, control, and governance, resulting in one of the few cases worldwide where Indigenous and northern communities collectively own and manage a major Subarctic transport corridor. Ethnographic fieldwork and future scenario workshops reveal how residents of Churchill engage with infrastructure—living with, adapting to, and reimagining it in everyday life. Infrastructure is approached not only as a technical system but as a site of political, affective, and future-oriented engagement. As such, it offers a powerful lens for understanding broader dynamics of change and continuity in (sub)Arctic regions shaped by climate pressures and colonial legacies.

The development of Canada’s northernmost runways

In her article, Katrin Schmid focuses on Nunavut, Canada’s largest, youngest, and northernmost territory, where gravel, asphalt, and concrete determine much of daily life. Airport runways’ materialities dictate the types of aircraft that can land in each of the 25 fly-in communities and with them the cargo-carrying capacity, passenger mobility, and frequency of intercommunity connections. The last jet capable of landing on gravel was recently phased out of commercial service in Nunavut, a move that further limits access to communities and works counter to the desires voiced by residents to increase jet access. Temporality, an immaterial concept, becomes intimately articulated through the physical realities of transport infrastructure in Nunavut. The author examines the interplay of residents’ imagined futures for their communities and the on-the-ground reality of developing, operating, and maintaining gravel and paved runways in Nunavut as points of friction, following Anna Tsing. Schmid argues that the divergent development of communities can be partially attributed to the accessibility of transport infrastructure in each location. In conclusion, she questions the idea of infrastructure as a promise of a “future perfect” (Hetherington 2016) and attempts to refocus the processes of Nunavut’s transport infrastructure development onto Nunavummi-centred solutions.

All articles in the special issue are open-access and available in Anthropologica Vol. 67, No. 1 (2025).