MONTREAL—Call it a sign of the times: There is something of a run on air conditioners in the Quebec Arctic region.
"It does get pretty hot here, even though we're in the Far North," says Larry Watt, mayor of Kuujjuaq, located about 1,500 kilometres north of Montreal on Ungava Bay.
"Last June or May we reached up to 31 degrees for almost a week."
Some northern residents blame global warming.
"When you look back 20 years, it gets really hot a lot earlier," Watt said. "When I was growing up I didn't notice these kind of temperatures back then."
But, until recently, air conditioners in the remote region were effectively ruled out because of prohibitive electricity rates.
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