Gjoa Haven (Jan 17/05) - Frobisher Bay, 1962. A well dressed lady from the Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire (IODE) in Ontario was visiting Baffin Island, anxious to see the community hall the people of Apex had built with the $20,000 her group had donated to them.

When her car and driver pulled up to the IODE hall as it was known, country music poured out of the place. The tunes that night were led by a young Eddie Kikoak.

"She asked what was going on inside," recalled Kikoak, who is now 69 and living in Gjoa Haven.

"Seal skinners" the driver said without further explanation.

The woman was horrified.

She asked to go back immediately to the house where she was staying.

"She thought the Eskimos were seal skinning in there. But it was the name of our band," Kikoak said with a laugh.

The Seal Skinners were a popular band in those days, with Eddie on lead vocals and guitar, Bill Unihah on drums, Steve Kikoak on fiddle, Douglas Kikoak on six string guitar and Abe Okpik on guitar and fiddle. They ordered their instruments from the Eaton's catalogue and taught themselves how to play.

"I never had a lesson," Kikoak said proudly. Today he still entertains crowds at gatherings in Gjoa Haven.

But that wasn't always the case. The first time he ever set foot in Gjoa Haven in 1959, his wife's hometown, there was no live music around, only a gramophone record player.

"There were only three houses at that time in Gjoa Haven. And they were all my wife's family."

Kikoak always wanted music in his life, so when he moved to Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, in the fall of 1959 for a new job and the birth of his first child, he started a band.

Those memories sustain him to this day. The only thing he loves more than music is his wife Mary Porter and their six girls and two boys.

Kikoak kept on with the music, while running an arts and crafts gallery then working for the engineering department with the government before retiring.

Today he is a counsellor on Gjoa Haven hamlet council, and a proud grandfather and great-grandfather.

Different times

He thinks kids today are quite different than he and his peers were.

"We had to listen to our parents," he said. "That way we never got mixed up because they were right. Today it is not like that. In Grade 6 they figure they know everything."

Kikoak thinks it's too bad religion has been taken out of school. Although residential school was riddled with problems, kids today could use the strict rules, he said.

"Kids should go to school. They stay up late and they don't want to go," he said.