Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (Aug 20/01) - Leaders here are betting a $1.8 million elders' complex that the territorial government will care more about the living than the dead.

For decades the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk has been literally losing ground to the hammer blows of Beaufort Sea gales.

Combined with the thawing of permafrost and subterranean ice lenses, waves crashing into shore have claimed a curling rink, forced the relocation of some houses and the abandonment of others and crept ever closer to the community graveyard.

For more than a decade the hamlet has lobbied the territorial government for funding to help it fight the shoreline erosion. A number of reports have been done on the problem. Sandbags, gravel and concrete blocks have been applied with limited success.

A 1994 study, funded by the department of municipal and community affairs, estimated it would cost more than $9 million to provide long-term protection for the Tuktoyaktuk peninsula.

"It was concluded that buildings on the North end of the peninsula and the south corner of the school were in danger and require attention in the near future," the UMA Engineering report states.

When the community needed a new school in the late 1990s, the education board decided not to build on the old school site on the peninsula because of concerns about the long-term effects of erosion.

The 11-unit elders housing complex is being built on the site of the old school, next to the cemetery and 27 metres from the sea.

The location of the building was finalized at an April meeting of hamlet councillors, elders, MACA and Housing Corporation officials and the minister responsible for both.

"The reports we used to determine the location (including the UMA report) ... were deemed to be inconclusive," said minister Roger Allen.

The month before Tuktoyaktuk mayor Ernest Pokiak had travelled to the Halifax offices of the Geological Survey of Canada to discuss erosion problems.

The GSC has been studying erosion at Tuk for the last 30 years.

"Our very strong recommendation from a coastal processes point of view was (the area near the cemetery) was not the best place to put it," said GSC scientist Donald Forbes.

Mayor Pokiak was travelling last week and attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

Allen said some reports indicated erosion would not be a problem at the building site for another 60 years.

Allen said the ethical questions surrounding the moving of the cemetery were also addressed at the meeting. The hamlet is loathe to move the cemetery, believing the graves would be a kind of desecration.

Hamlet councillors told the department it would cost up to $5 million to relocate the cemetery.

"Our proposal to them in terms of a solution was that, 'If you can prove that it's going to cost $5 million, then it may be more feasible for us to look at the idea of protecting the shoreline," said MACA minister Roger Allen, also minister responsible for the Housing Corporation.

The government is investing $100,000 in erosion control in the community this year.

MACA has commissioned another study aimed at answering some of the questions Allen says were not addressed in previous studies.