Southerners ship food North
Helping Our Northern Neighbours Facebook page at more than 1,000 members and growing
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 8, 2014
IQALUIT
"I didn't know about Nunavut - I was only aware that this new territory had sprung up," said Jennifer Gwilliam from her home in Victoria, B.C.
Then a friend referred her to Leesee Papatsie's Feeding my Family Facebook page.
"Looking at the food prices posted there, prices of ordinary food ... water. I had just gotten 24 bottles of water on sale the week previously for $2.97 and I saw the label up there saying it was selling for $104. That was shocking. I wondered how anybody coped."
Gwilliam continued perusing Papatsie's page and saw people were going hungry, not eating for a day or two in order to feed their children.
"I thought this is utterly ridiculous in a country like Canada that's got so much money, so much wealth, that people in our own country should be starving."
She's worked in humanitarian aid all her life, even overseas, but she "had no idea what was going on up there."
People kept posting messages seeking help on Papatsie's page and people were offering help.
Gwilliam and Papatsie agreed their two efforts should be split - one short-term and one long-term - and Gwilliam started the Facebook page Helping Our Northern Neighbours.
"To see many people with kind hearts is amazing, they are wanting to help Northerners. It amazes me when people come together to help those in need, and that is what this group is doing. People from all over are coming together to help the Northerners," said Papatsie. "It is good for now, it is a band-aid solution to the bigger problem."
The veteran of humanitarian aid agrees "this is not the answer." But she didn't know the problems were "so widespread and so deep." And she could not sit by.
The page had just over 1,000 members as of press time.
Members of the page are hooking up with families in need - sole elders, family, even a multi-generational family of 24. Those who want to help are sending boxes of food to Nunavut.
"We have two programs. People can sign up with us. We have a short form just asking for names and ages of family members, if they're allergic to any foods or on a special diet. And then people who want to sponsor a family and help them on a regular basis can choose a family."
Choice is based on what the southern helper can afford. Some are pensioners or on low incomes themselves. One-time boxes are fine, said Gwilliam.
Gwilliam also manages quality control and guiding the group away from trying to change the food habits of the receiving families, such as sending "healthy food" that is alien to the people that will be eating it. Tofu is an example.
Live cows and gift cards for big-box stores have been offered. Such charming but rather ill-informed suggestions have set the stage for contact between Inuit and southern Canadians, with dialogue and learning coming as a result.
Gwilliam is currently contributing full days to Helping Our Northern Neighbours. What began as a person-to-person or family-to-family effort is already morphing, five months after the page started, into contact with schools and food banks and the beginnings of relationships with food manufacturers.
There are splinter groups - in Prince George, B.C., Kirkland Lake, Ont., Halifax and Winnipeg, for example.
Gwilliam sees food banks in communities receiving the food eventually because they are on the ground and more aware of the needs of the community.
Is she ashamed of the Canadian government that Inuit are living in these conditions? Yes, she said.
"I remember a few years ago when they had a stupid promotion where everybody in the country could get a free flag.
"All they had to do was write in and they'd send you a free flag. I mean, if you want a flag you can go and buy one. While we're spending $40 million on having every citizen have a flag, we have people digging in the dump to find a piece of bread to eat?"
In comparison, the Government of Canada has been spending $60 million a year on Nutrition North, a food subsidy program that recently received a damning review by the Office of the Auditor General.
"It's shocking and embarrassing. And a lot of people are saying they just had absolutely no idea," Gwilliam said.
