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IQALUIT
Though his health doesn't allow him to travel much these days, Gordon Rennie, now 83, spent his youth travelling the Eastern Arctic by dogsled and boat as a Hudson's Bay Company manager in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Gordon Rennie, 83, spent his youth travelling the Eastern Arctic for the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. - Tim Edwards/NNSL photo

Right after graduating high school in St. John's, Rennie's father handed him a newspaper ad put out by the Hudson's Bay Company and said, "Here, Gordon. Here's something for you to try out for," according to Rennie.

"They figured they could get a bunch of good Newfoundlanders to come up and work in the Northern climes," Rennie said.

He applied and got the job, along with about 35 others, most of whom travelled up North on the RMS Nascopie's ill-fated last trip, where it hit an uncharted reef and sunk off the coast of Cape Dorset in 1947. The crew were all safely evacuated, according to an account of its history on the University of Calgary's website.

His first assignment, in 1947, brought him to the northern Manitoba community of Wabowden, which was mostly Cree, said Rennie. The trip there alone, mostly by train, was exciting for the young Newfoundlander.

"I was 18 and had never been anywhere on my own, so that was quite an experience by itself," said Rennie.

He would then travel to Qavviuja, or Tavane, which was back then a community north of Arviat. Johnny Voisey took Rennie to Qavviuja on a 12-metre Peterhead boat. He says he remembers Johnny Karetak also being aboard during the journey.

"I travelled up the coast with them, which for a young person like me was quite an experience. On the way, the first stop we had, we went ashore and we shot caribou … and along the way, we were hunting seals ... and got the odd white (beluga) whale."

Finally at Qavviuja during his first year in what would eventually become Nunavut, Rennie began to learn two languages he'd become fluent in – Inuktitut and Morse code. Rennie learned the latter mostly by training programs that were aired, but the Inuit language he learned by sitting down with Pauloosie Tulugak, who would go over words with him.

"He made it his (job) to teach me Inuktitut," said Rennie. "Trading, I was using the language and people were quite happy to do business with me because they liked to have someone who spoke the language to attend them."

He was called back to Churchill in 1949, and returned over land as the passenger in a dogsled. Driving a dogsled was a skill he started picking up in Qavviuja, and Rennie said he "became quite proficient with a whip" and travelled by dog countless times by himself later on in his Northern career.

After Churchill, he went to Duck Lake, or Caribou, a Chipewyan community in northern Manitoba, before taking the six-week vacation he was finally allowed after three years of working with the company.

"You were lucky to get that much," he said.

In 1950, Rennie worked in Arviat and Attawapiskat, a Cree community in northern Ontario near James Bay. In 1951, he was back in Arviat for two years before going to Kimmirut in 1956, where he would spend three years buying ivory carvings for the Hudson's Bay Company.

"What did I know about ivory carvings? Nothing, but, boy, I'll tell you, it didn't take me too long to learn," said Rennie. "We would get all those little bagfuls of walrus tusks and we would give them out to people we learned were the good carvers and they would bring the finished carvings back in. We got all kinds of fabulous carvings, and we gave them what we came to learn was a very good price."

Rennie calls Kimmirut "God's answer to any place in the North" and said he was sorry to leave it, but he and his wife – Sarah Davidee, whom he'd met in Kimmirut – moved to what is now Iqaluit in 1956, where he's been living ever since. The Hudson's Bay Company had parted ways with a manager in then-Frobisher Bay, and wanted Rennie, who'd built up a good reputation in the company, to take over the post there and conduct and inventory.

Rennie served as a councillor and mayor in the 1970s, and has sat on numerous boards, including the NWT Liquor Board (before division) and the Baffin Business Development Centre, of which Rennie served as chair for many years. He retired from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1995.

Rennie said the biggest sudden change Iqaluit has seen while he's lived here was when the United States Air Force moved out in 1963 – their upper base, he said, was a good place to have a drink and a good time.

Of course, the city itself has changed hugely since then.

"It's become almost a modern town now," said Rennie.

Rennie received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee medal at the end of August.

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