IQALUIT
Who keeps Canadians safe, and how?

That's the question the makers of a new television series asked themselves as they sent out 60 camera crews simultaneously across the nation over the same 48-hour period, including for an intimate view of the on-the-land program at Nunavut Corrections.

"We filmed with people and organizations all across the country to give people a snapshot of a day in the lives of some of these people who keep the nation safe," said creative producer with Force Four Entertainment Dianna Bodnar, adding it was an enormous endeavour.

"But it's such a wonderful undertaking because we got this wonderful breadth across the country, and depth, and we have these great stories from so many parts of Canada."

Nunavut's story, which will air on CBC April 6 between 9 and 10 p.m., takes a look at alternative homes and camp manager Pauloosie Nuyalia's work on the land with inmates at Makigiarvik minimum security facility in Iqaluit.

The Inuit Cultural Skills Program has been around since the 1970s, when the first correctional centre opened.

"We try to teach the inmates a little bit of what we know about the culture. First we start off with the history of the Inuit, and the history of the explorers coming to the North and what impact they had on the Inuit," explained Nuyalia.

"We also teach them how to make traditional hunting tools, such as a harpoon, and the tools the Inuit women use, such as the ulu, skin-drying frames and skin-flenching boards, and so on. We teach them a bit of parenting skills from the male perspective."

Nuyalia says before taking the inmates out on the land - because a majority have never gone hunting - there is a classroom session on what to bring, as well as navigational and survival skills in case the GPS or SPOT devices fail.

Inmates also learn how to build qamutiik and how to repair snowmobiles.

This culminates in regular trips out on the land, where the inmates lead the group to practice what they learned. And this is the 48 hours filmed by the crew that was sent to Iqaluit.

The inmates who participated in the filming requested that only their first names be used when the filming took place in September. By the time the series was set to air on television, all the inmates that participated had since been released.

Seal hunting was the objective of the trip.

"When they're in the correctional facility, they're tense and guarded. As soon as we take them out on the land, they're totally different people. There's no walls. There's a sense of freedom even though they know they're still incarcerated. You can see their demeanor - from being tense and stressed to being relaxed," said Nuyalia.

"What we try to teach is a lot of respect. For example, if they catch a seal, they have to skin it with the best care, to the best of their abilities so that they will not disrespect their spouse by giving them a skin that's not very good quality. Or give their mother-in-law a bad skin, or mother, grandmother. It also teaches them respect for themselves and for their spouse."

This is what the cameras captured, along with the inmates' very personal stories of their past and their lives.

"They were very open," said Nuyalia.

Bodnar calls them "generous."

This is reflected, as manager of capital and special projects for Corrections Chris Stewart recounts, in the profoundly changed demeanor of the film crew.

"They were all very, very nervous. 'Are we going to be safe? Are we going to be OK? Are the guards armed? Are we going to be on the same boat?' Really, really nervous about going out with these inmates," said Stewart.

"Fast forward two days and we're waving goodbye ... I don't know what happened out there but when they came back you couldn't tell who from who. Their arms were around each other. The hugs. Something happened out there where it became less us and them."

Bodnar says the series is not an analysis.

"It's a day in the life of all these people. What it does do is it gives you such intimate access to people's lives and jobs - the kinds of things that people do in different parts of Canada that you have no idea about. That goes for places in Canada that people don't get to see, for example, Iqaluit."

She says the Nunavut piece, less than four minutes long, is a "stunningly beautiful story and landscape."

"It allows you to walk in somebody's shoes and open up a whole world to you," she said. "I think that's very important."

Each 30-minute episode features four stories, and two episodes air back-to-back each week.

"There are a lot of stories."

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