Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

Norman Keenainak, left, his daughter Meghan Bowden, son Jordan Bowden and wife Sandra Bowden together at home for Meghan's 25th birthday last year. Keenainak died Saturday of multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer that attacks bone marrow. - photo courtesy of Meghan Bowden

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Inuktitut language lost one of its greatest savants and contributors when Norman Ittuat Keenainak died of cancer on Saturday at the age of 56.

As a professional Inuktitut translator, Keenainak's passion in life was to bring knowledge to and about the Inuit people. And he was a very determined man.

Even when he was in the hospital fighting multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer that attacks bone marrow, he had his wife Sandra Bowden bring him his laptop and get a WiFi internet connection set up so he could work.

Before he went to the emergency room the day he first got sick in January 2012, he made sure to submit his translations and walk his dog, Bailey, then asked his wife to take him to the hospital.

The doctor discovered a tumour in his back, and was astounded he was even walking, Bowden said with a soft smile in their kitchen on Tuesday.

"He worked hard, and he loved what he was doing," Bowden said. "He kept working but the myeloma went in his eye ... and he couldn't see, so he had to give up his work, which was tragic."

His determination came not only from a love for languages and technology, but a deeply engrained sense of duty to provide for his family. Though he had never taken a technology or linguistics course, Keenainak became a certified translator of Inuktitut, an entrepreneur, and a provider for his family.

"It's crazy to me, you know? It's crazy to me that he worked so long," his daughter Meghan said.

Aside from being a hard worker, Keenainak was an athlete. He played basketball and other team sports from a young age and enjoyed running, although he would only run indoors, Bowden said. He was also a very private man who kept his family and work life separate, and was not fond of making conversation.

Should someone approach him to talk about computers or languages, however, the man would reveal a wealth of knowledge, understanding, and appreciation.

Keenainak loved technology so much he purchased a computer in 1987 and had more computers than televisions in his home in Yellowknife 30 years later. He would buy parts and build computers for his children so they always had one in their room. Whenever someone had a computer issue, they called him, and he was always there to fix things.

For a techie, though, Keenainak's early childhood was a strong contrast.

In 1957 he was born on the land on Baffin Island in Nunavut and lived there for the first eight years of his childhood before his parents brought him to Pangnirtung for school. He hunted with his father and learned how to provide for his family on the land, long before he laid eyes on a computer, Bowden said.

"We think of Inuit as hunters and outdoor people but Norman never loved it," Bowden said. "He hunted with his dad only because he had to. In his adult life, he never went hunting, only when his dad asked him for help."

Although he wasn't necessarily outdoorsy in his adult life, Keenainak showed his love and appreciation of the land through the thousands of photographs he took of his hometown, which are posted on his website (ittuat.ca).

Keenainak was a good student. He attended Attagoyuk School in Pangnirtung from age eight and was nominated by his teachers upon graduation for entry into Pearson College, a full-scholarship university prep school in Victoria, B.C. He turned down the offer so he could stay in Pangnirtung and be close to his family.

"He wanted to further his education without leaving home," Bowden said. "We grow up in our individualistic culture, but for the Inuit, you don't do something for yourself that's going to hurt your family - so he stayed."

Keenainak completed a teaching certificate with the Nunavut Teacher Education Program in the early 1980s. He taught Inuktitut to other teachers and government workers at the school he attended as a child, and that was where he and Bowden met.

"That was his passion, teaching Inuktitut to other people," Bowden said.

The couple remained in Pangnirtung for eight years, during which Keenainak worked for Auyuittuq Territorial Park and Bowden taught at the school. In 1991 Keenainak expressed his wish to move to Yellowknife where he would work various jobs before starting work as a translator for Northern News Services in 2000.

In the translation business, Keenainak was known as being the best.

"He was the best with Inuktitut, precise and accurate and fast," said Bruce Valpy, managing editor at Yellowknifer and Nunavut News/North. "He understood the history of linguistics and how language migrated, and was very knowledgeable. He was an extraordinary individual."

Valpy worked with Keenainak at the newspaper company and continued to contract him for translations when Keenainak began his own business in 2004.

Keenainak's love for language led him to develop a unicode syllabic font for Inuktitut which he called Aiju, after the spirit name of his sister, Eva Keenainak, who died in 2004 at the age of 29.

The font has the same point sizes as the Latin alphabet, allowing for the same space to be used for both Inuktitut and English. It is also thinner than the usual font commonly used in corporate page design, Euphoria.

"He did that for the reading public, for the Inuit readership," said Valpy.

Bowden said the font was a pet project all along, but became part of his work when he opened the business and began using it in his translations.

"It was a merge of technology and language," Bowden said. "He was fitting his two passions together in a way to benefit both, and to benefit the language."

He never considered copyrighting the font, either, according to Bowden.

"He believed with language and with his fonts that if you're doing something to help someone's life, you should give it to them," she said. "He believed his reward would come back to him in other ways, such as when he had his own business, he got clients."

Ultimately, Keenainak transformed his pet project into a tool that made information more readily available to the Inuit people, Bowden said.

"If it would bring language and knowledge to and about Inuit people, that's what he wanted. I used to think his work was so important because many Inuit were unilingual, so he was bringing information and knowledge to those people.

"For him language was really so important," Meghan said. "It's the way you see the world."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.