May 9, 2008

Taissumani

Coming North

KENN HARPER

In my last year of high school, I decided that I would go to teachers' college and become an elementary school teacher. I couldn't afford university without borrowing, and I didn't relish the thought of graduating with a pile of debt.

In those days, the early 1960s, there were too many students and not enough teachers, so teachers were trained quickly. Ontario had Grade 13 in those days, and after that it took only one year of training to be a teacher. No university degree required. So at the age of 18, I started teaching Grade 5 in Toronto.

While still in teachers' college I had applied for a job in the Arctic, but, having no experience I wasn't accepted. I settled down in Toronto, got married, and we had a son.

Three years later I tried again. The federal government's annual advertisement appeared in the Toronto newspapers - ﾒTeach in Canada's Northland.ﾓ I spruced up my meagre resume and sent it off to Ottawa. In due course I got a call to schedule an interview when a team of recruiters would be in Toronto. I had no idea at the end of that day whether I would be considered or not.

We were asked to list, in order of preference, the three communities we would like to teach in. Of course I knew nothing about any northern communities, but I had to list something, so I chose Spence Bay (now Taloyoak), Gjoa Haven and Pelly Bay (now Kugaaruk.) I'd seen their names in books and they seemed as good a choice as any.

Weeks went by and I began to think that I'd been passed over again. Then one day there was a call over the school intercom for me to come down to the principal's office - there was an important call for me from Ottawa. As I walked down to the office, I knew that this would either be a life-changing conversation or a terrible let-down.

I took the phone. Wilf Booth was on the line. He was a District Superintendent in Ottawa, a gruff-speaking man with a game leg, straight-forward to the point of bluntness. A hard case, I thought when I had met him at the interview. I later came to know him as a man whose rough exterior camouflaged a warm heart and a genuine interest in his staff and their students.ﾓ

ﾒ"We've got a position for you in the North if you're still interested in going," he said, getting right to the point. "It's teaching beginners, and Grades 1 and 2, in a two-room school."

I told him I was still interested and asked him where the job was.

"It's on Broughton Island," he replied. "Do you know where that is, and do you want the job?"

I assured him that I knew a great deal about Broughton Island, and that it was right near the top of the list of places where I wanted to live. I accepted the offer on the spot.

"Good," he responded. "You're on. We'll send you a contract in the mail, but you can consider yourself hired on the basis of this phone call, so you'll have time to resign from your present job. There will be an orientation course in Ottawa in mid-August. You'll need to be there."

And that was it. My life-changing phone call was brief and to the point.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to find Broughton Island on a map for, in fact, I hadn't the slightest idea where it was. I searched the Keewatin coast. I searched the Arctic coast of what is now the Kitikmeot Region. I searched the Mackenzie Delta.

On maps of the time, there wasn't much detail and on most maps of Canada that showed Baffin Island at all, there were usually only two places shown. And they weren't Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) or Pangnirtung, the largest communities. They were Kivitoo and Padloping. Kivitoo, north of Broughton Island, was a DEW-line site, and Padloping had been a U. S. Navy radio site during the war.

I spent well over an hour searching for Broughton Island on the school maps. All the while the principal from whose school I was resigning was trying to talk me out of going to a place so small it wasn't even on a map!

Eventually I found it, nowhere near where I expected, a tiny speck of humanity off the east coast of Baffin. In a few months it would be home.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

May 2, 2008

Taissumani

Can a Man Be Mistaken for a Seal?

KENN HARPER

The covering report from the Churchill police detachment to the officer commanding the Royal North West Mounted Police was brief. Superintendent Moodie was forwarding to headquarters the report of an unfortunate killing that had happened at Fullerton detachment, near Repulse Bay, late in the spring of 1909.

Attached to his report was a report by a young constable, Charles R. MacMillan, stationed at Fullerton. His report began with the terse statement that he had to report "the following painful occurrence."

He then wrote that on the evening of June 22, he and two other constables were looking out over the sea ice with a telescope and saw a large seal on the ice, apparently about two miles off shore. MacMillan decided that he would like to get a shot at it.

"I walked to within 600 yards or so of the object, and then lay down on the ice to crawl nearer without alarming the animal," he wrote. "I crawled towards it for about 200 yards or more, and then was stopped by a large pool of water. I was afraid to stand up and wade through it, for fear of alarming the seal, and did not like to risk a shot at the distance, as from my position face down close to the ice, the object did not show up very well."

He reported that during all this time the seal had moved a little, but had not changed its position either backward or forward.

Finally the young constable took a shot and the object disappeared. MacMillan then described his horror at what he saw when he ran toward the "seal" he had shot: "On standing up I saw it, and immediately ran towards it. I ran for some yards when I suddenly stopped, horrified, and I saw it was a man lying face up. I compelled myself to go up to him, and found he was dead. He was an Iwillik [an Inuit from the Aivilik group] called Charlie."

MacMillan had shot Charlie with one clean shot through the neck.

Earlier that afternoon, Constable Walker and Corporal Joyce had taken a walk on the ice to the floe edge. On their return they had passed quite close to a large seal on the ice. Back at the police barracks they had scanned the sea ice with a telescope and thought they saw the same seal in roughly the same place. This was the seal that MacMillan had set off in search of.

After his fatal shot, MacMillan raced back to the post and reported to Joyce, his superior, what he had done. Joyce, accompanied by Constable MacDiarmid and an Inuit assistant named Joe, went immediately to examine the fresh corpse lying on the ice. Joyce reported, "The body was lying face up in a low place on the ice, a loaded rifle was on the ice near the body, and a piece of bear's skin, such as is used by natives for crawling seals, was under the hips." Poor Charlie had perhaps been stalking the same large seal that the police had seen earlier.

Another native employed at the Fullerton post, whom the whalers had given the nickname "Bye and Bye" helped Charlie's grieving wife and stepmother to bury the body. Four reports were written. MacMillan himself wrote, "The natives say the man was fast asleep, and that this same kind of accident has happened with them."

Joyce corroborated this, writing that the Inuit said the man had probably fallen fast asleep on the ice.

Superintendent Moodie's brief report concluded, "I may say from my own experience that it is a very easy thing to mistake a native crawling for, or lying in wait for seal for the actual animal itself."

And there the matter was left. No further investigation was made. It was an accidental death, the result of a tragic error by an inexperienced officer.