Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Jan 29/99) - Hundreds of Inuvik residents packed SAM school gym Jan. 23 for a memorial service for Robert Hansen.

Though Hansen lived in Alberta the last few years -- travelling frequently to New York's Memorial Sloan Care and Cancer Centre due to a cancerous brain tumour, medullo blastoma -- he lived in Inuvik for many years before leaving in 1994.

Born in Aklavik on June 3, 1959, Hansen grew up there, on the Pokiak Channel. He lived in the bush during the trapping season and spent summers at the coal mine.

He attended elementary school in Aklavik and graduated from Samuel Hearne secondary school in 1976.

In 1979, he married Glenna (Storr) and the two had four daughters -- Bobbi-Jean, Krysee, Sherris and Tiffany.

Hansen was first diagnosed with cancer in Edmonton in 1990 before undergoing six weeks of radiation.

After it went into remission, he was rediagnosed with cancer in January, 1995, while living in Strathmore, Alta.

Glenna says Hansen received bone-marrow transplants and other treatment in New York and Mexico after the two successfully lobbied the Canadian Board of Physicians to approve the treatment which was not available in Canada.

"He was a very humble man," she says.

"He always felt really sorry for people who didn't have anybody to support them or to voice their concerns."

Following the maxim to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, one thing Glenna says Hansen "always told me because I was active in the political arena was to make sure to represent the little guy."

Hansen finished at the top of his Arctic College class with a diploma in business management. Then he started his successful business career by managing Storr and Sons Contracting.

He also spent time working as a councillor and deputy mayor in Aklavik and on the board of directors of the Inuvialuit Development Corporation.

"He was a very devoted, loving father and devoted husband," Glenna says.

Hansen, who was the youngest child, is predeceased by parents Hans and Kathleen Hansen.

Hansen is also predeceased by his eldest brother Peder Hansen, while he is survived by siblings Elizabeth, Dennis, Roy, Frank, Cecil, Freda, Verna, Knute, Marjorie, Moses, O.D., Vern and Dwayne.