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AT A GLANCE
- In summer 2010, Amanda Doiron and Stuart Rostant packed their bags for a one-year adventure in Cambridge Bay, a hamlet of around 2,000 people in Northern Canada.
- One year became 15. They built their first home, experimented with housing technologies and developed a scalable modular housing solution that has the potential to transform construction and delivery in Canada’s North.
- With support from the Housing Supply Challenge, Amanda and Stuart built a climate-controlled modular housing production facility in Manitoba, enabling them to build homes year-round.
- The factory’s first 9 homes arrived in Cambridge Bay in September 2025 and occupants received their keys in November.
Ambition meets adventure
Partners in work and life, Stuart grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, and Amanda in New Brunswick. They met at university and moved to Trinidad shortly after graduation.
Two years later, an economic downturn caused them to pivot.
“Work dried up,” says Stuart. “We had bills to pay. We had just purchased a small home. And yeah, Amanda had the crazy idea of going to the Arctic.”
A self-described, “easy-going Caribbean guy,” Stuart said, “Sure, if you get a job let’s go.”
A month later, Amanda had a job as a project officer with Community and Government Services, Government of Nunavut.
“We landed in June of 2010 and the ocean was still frozen,” says Stuart.
“I think that was my first, oh, what have we got ourselves into?”
Shortly after, Stuart also secured a role with Community and Government Services, Government of Nunavut. For the next 6 years, the couple deepened their understanding of the housing needs and challenges of Canada’s North. They also started to explore technologies, techniques and housing solutions, and built themselves a packaged home from a southern supplier.
No middle ground
“The housing continuum is not broad up here like you might see in other places in Canada,” says Vicki Aitaok, manager, Cambridge Bay Housing Association — one of 25 local housing associations working within the directives of Nunavut Housing Corporation (NHC).
Vicki describes the 3 main housing types as income-based public housing, employer-subsidized housing and private market rental housing.
“It's the speed and the energy efficiency and the economic efficiency of it [modular housing] that just makes sense for Nunavut.”
“We do have shelters and things like that now which we didn’t have maybe 10 years ago,” says Vicki. But “There is no affordable housing. There’s no middle of the ground.”
“People are growing up not understanding that home ownership or affordability is an option,” she explains. “People are 2 to 3 generations with public housing.”
With 185 families on the housing waitlist, demand is high and compounded by overcrowding and aging housing stock.
Solutions through partnerships
In 2022, NHC launched Nunavut 3000, a strategy to create 3000 units by 2030.
“NHC will not build all 3,000 units. Instead, the strategy calls on all housing partners and developers to work collectively towards this expanded number of new units, regardless of whether they are public, affordable, or private market housing.” – Nunavut 3000 (PDF, 7.4 MB)
“Nunavut 3000 is really more than adding real estate,” says Vicki. “It’s the partnerships that are being created. There are opportunities now for small businesses to get in on some of the action. Whether they can build 1 or 10 units. It all counts.”
“Partnerships are very important for us, and they have been since probably the first day that we started doing projects in the North.”
That same year, Stuart and Amanda applied for CMHC’s Northern Housing Supply Challenge.
“It was tailored directly to us… They were looking at Northern supply challenges. And we thought that you know, if we got some funding behind us, we can really make a huge difference at a different scale than what we are currently doing,” says Stuart.
Stick build versus modular
Over the course of 10 years, Amanda and Stuart built a variety of projects with different construction methods and reached several conclusions.
“At the end of the day, you can build a beautiful product, but if no one can afford it, then it just sits there empty... And building in the north is really expensive.”
With the traditional stick build method, raw materials are shipped in and assembled on site.
“You’re bringing material up. It’s all packaged, it’s loose,” says Stuart. “And most of that material is going to go through a winter, that cycle of sitting in snow. There’s no warm storage.” Also, “In most communities they don’t have hardware stores. So, you miss something or need something or something gets damaged, your replacement costs flying that stuff in... There’s a huge cost.”
Stick build also requires large crews. Some may need to be flown in. All need accommodation. Overall, it can take months and prove costly.
With modular, homes are built off site, transported and installed in days with a relatively small crew.
Amanda and Stuart determined that the per square foot cost of stick build and modular is similar. However, when time and risk are factored in, modular wins out.
“It's the speed and the energy efficiency and the economic efficiency of it that just makes sense for Nunavut,” Vicki adds.
By the time they launched Arctic Modular Homes, Stuart and Amanda were building a modular home a year and exploring how to scale production. The Northern climate, limited access to materials, resources and personnel meant they had to look further afield.
“I think we would have gotten here at some point, but it probably would have taken us 10 years versus one year.”
During their time with Community and Government Services, Amanda and Stuart established relationships with suppliers, contractors and electrical and mechanical teams in Winkler, Manitoba. All were proficient in the Northern climate. Building a climate-controlled factory in Manitoba would enable them to build year-round and then ship homes to the North during the July-September sailing season.
“And with Winkler’s location central to Canada, there was the idea of further down the road if we want to actually start shipping from Churchill or if we were to ship from Vancouver, then our transportation is central to Canada,” says Amanda.
Off to the races
Arctic Modular Homes’ Housing Supply Challenge proposal was a success and construction of the factory started in 2024.
“I think we would have gotten here at some point,” says Stuart, “but it probably would have taken us 10 years versus one year.”
By February 2025 they were in production on their first order.
“We landed a contract with Nunavut Housing to produce 9 homes, approximately 11,000 square feet, 22 pods within a 4 or 5-month period,” says Stuart. “It was really off to the races.”
To design the factory workflow, Stuart and Amanda collaborated with the National Research Council and the University of New Brunswick. While the initial concept has evolved based on the realities experienced on the floor, the basic workflow remains — 6 pods flow through a series of 5 workstations.
- Station 1: Walls, floors and roof assembled.
- Station 2: Mechanical, electrical and drywall installed.
- Station 3: Mudding, taping.
- Station 3b: Painting.
- Station 4: Kitchens, cabinetry, backsplash, tile work and baseboards.
- Station 5: Overflow, electrical finishing.
Finished pods are stored on site until they are transported to Montréal.
The long journey home
At the end of July, the final pods left Winkler for the Port of Montréal. By mid-August, all 22 pods were loaded and stacked onto the ship for the 11-day 5,000 km journey to Cambridge Bay.
The arrival of the pods in Cambridge Bay was quickly followed by the installation crew, many of whom assembled the homes in Winkler.
Nine weeks later, the pods were installed and operational. Two weeks after that, 9 families received the keys to their homes.
“When we can actually allocate or move people into units, that's the best part of my job,” says Vicki.
On a frosty November day, together with Stuart and Amanda, Vicki watched as the new residents entered their new homes for the first time.
“That's when it makes it all worthwhile. You see hope, you see happiness. You see a future in people's eyes. Like it's just, yeah, everybody cries when they get a house. It's, it's wonderful.”
“My hope, vision that I have that keeps me going would be that there might be 10 to 15 people in a housing list in the north,” says Amanda. “That, for me, would mean that we did a good job.”
The path forward
Already in production for 2026, Amanda and Stuart are keen to expand and deliver to more communities across Nunavut and Canada. They would also like to train Northern crews in the factory to build capacity for modular construction in the North.
At the end of the day, they want to increase options for people at all points on the housing continuum.
“I think both Stuart and I, when we moved to Nunavut that first year, you're trying to find yourself. It's a different terrain, landscape, people, weather and it's a very soul-searching moment where [you ask yourself] what am I doing? What do I want to be doing?” says Amanda.
“Jumping into building our home and having people come to our home… seeing how they were interested in and excited about, like, ‘I would love to have a house like this. I would love to own my own home’ has been the driving force for us since day one… There's nothing like it.”
KEY FACTS
- Arctic Modular Homes’ production facility in Winkler, Manitoba was supported by the Housing Supply Challenge: Northern Access Round.
- The Housing Supply Challenge was a 5-year initiative led by CMHC and Impact Canada that rewarded a diverse portfolio of solutions to break down barriers to housing supply and affordability. Citizens, stakeholders and experts participated in 5 distinct rounds and received funding to prototype and implement their solutions.
- More information about the projects and results can be found in the Housing Knowledge Centre.
