IT'S KABLOONA HOUR

So what the hell does 'kabloona' mean? The FT uses it in two senses - neither readily comprehensible - on their "In the Next World You're On Your Own". On side one there's a bar where they say "it's kabloona hour." And the epigram on the back cover for side two is "we lost our kabloona."

Now I know that the Canadian Inuit called white people Kabloona, as in the acclaimed 1941 book of that name by the Frenchman Gontran de Montaigne Poncins. (Lest you think he was avoiding the war, I remember reading that he went back and became a hero; then hung out in the Chinese city of Cholon in Vietnam, which was the subject of another book, before retiring in New England, if I remember right).

But in a more recent book about a woman's kayak journey, the Inuit translation is given as "stranger."

Someone else thinks it means "sled dog."

Suspiciously, it does not appear in this Inuit dictionary, or this one.

It's such a cool word, I think it's time to try and figure out where the hell it came from and what it means...

[I checked the Inupiaq and the Yupik dictionary on the alaskool site, nada - but "kafiqsiebitchuq" means "understand not"-PWP]