IQALUIT - This Canada Day marked a new milestone for prominent Inuktitut teacher Mick Mallon, when it was announced that he has been appointed as a member of the Order of Canada.

Mick Mallon has been appointed as a member of the Order of Canada. In February 2007, Mallon suffered severe frost bite and other injuries after he fell during a walk, and shows his amputated pinky alongside his wife, Alexina Kublu. The well known Inuktitut teacher has almost completed a full recovery. - NNSL file photo

"In a way this is a bit embarrassing for me. It's Inuktitut. It's their language, not mine," said Mallon, in a telephone interview from his boat just off Victoria, B.C. "I am overcome by the honour. I wasn't expecting it."

Mallon, 75, was recognized for his contributions as a teacher and linguist, having spent decades preserving and revitalizing Inuktitut.

Mallon's journey to becoming a prominent Inuktitut teacher in Nunavut was never one he expected, especially for an Irishman from Belfast. He came to Canada when he was 21.

"If my first wife Cynthia and I hadn't moved house in 1958, I would probably be a retired English teacher in Ottawa," said Mallon.

Instead, while living in Ottawa, the couple changed apartments and met a neighbour who would change their lives after regaling them with stories about the Arctic.

In 1959, Mallon arrived in Rankin Inlet to teach the "Eskimo language" to civil servants in a specially set-up language school.

Mallon himself credits learning Inuktitut initially from three main sources, one of whom was the well-respected Inuit elder and educator Mary Cousins.

"A lot of my career has been based on luck," said Mallon, who said he was not fluent in Inuktitut when he arrived at the language school.

His own Inuktitut education was helped along by notables such as Jose Kusugak, Annie Ford and even Alexina Kublu, with whom his relationship has flourished from teacher and student to husband and wife in 2000.

Mallon was later in charge of the Eskimo language curriculum, then the teacher education program that taught English students to teach in Inuktitut.

Mallon evolved as a teacher, first teaching Inuktitut as a second language and then creating courses for Inuit.

His career has slowed recently for three reasons. First because of bureaucracy, secondly because of an accident he had last February that left him with a punctured lung, several broken bones and frost bite, and thirdly because of a bright new light he sees on the horizon.

"There's an increasing number of Inuit doing the work that I started but doing it much better than I did," said Mallon.

Mallon lives in Iqaluit most of the year, but every summer he spends some time on the West Coast. When asked about his future, Mallon said he is going to start writing his memoirs but will keep teaching as well, although he added he doesn't have the stamina for the regular courses, but would consider a teaching a course such as dialectology.

"I love teaching those students," said Mallon. "We'll just have to see."

Alexina Kublu couldn't imagine the Order of Canada going to a better person.

"I'm very, very pleased that he is getting recognized for all the work that he has done with Inuktitut. I truly and honestly believe that he deserves it because of the work that he has done," said Kublu.

"I think it has to be considered first of all as an honour to Inuktitut that it's important enough that somebody deserves this award," said Mallon.