Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Jun 28/99) - If saying it like it is, or at least like you see it, is a defining Northern characteristic, there are fewer people more "Northern" than Bryan Pearson.

As a young man three days off the boat from England, Pearson got his start in the North as a cook at the Frobisher Bay DEW Line site.

Since then, through his political career and writings, Pearson has developed a reputation as one of the most outspoken people in the North.

He spoke with News/North last week at the Astro Theatre, which he owns and operates. We pick up the conversation as Pearson recalled his second job in the North.

Bryan Pearson: Then I became emotionally attached to rehabilitation centre established in Apex at that time for people returning North from sanatoria in the south.

The fit ones were given an opportunity to settle in Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord. The ones who were not so fit, or elderly, were given a space in the rehab centre. The purpose of the rehab centre was to give those who had never had any experience on the land an opportunity to learn a new skill.

So we set up various projects and it was my job to organize them.

News/North: You said you became emotionally attached to it. What do you mean by that?

Pearson: I thought it was a good idea. It was a challenge. I enjoyed the people.

News/North: Did it work?

Pearson: It lasted a few years, until the government pulled the plug out. We operated a laundry, movie theatre and bakery.

Of course we had a craft centre. Frobisher Bay in those days was the key stop on the polar route for airlines -- Pan Am, TWA, Canadian Pacific and a host of others -- that flew from the west coast of the United States and Canada to Europe.

So we would meet the planes at two or three o'clock in the morning and introduce them to the beauty of Eskimo carving.

News/North: You said some of the people who were fit who came back were sent out to Resolute or Grise Fiord...

Pearson: No. The people in northern Quebec who wanted an opportunity to improve their lives were given a chance to go to Resolute Bay or Grise Fiord. The ones who were physically handicapped or mentally handicapped -- mostly physically handicapped -- were given a chance to come to the rehab centre here.

What people forget, is that in 1956 or '57 at the DEW Line we all lived in tents. The Inuit lived in tents in the summer and igloos in the winter...that went on for many years, until the place where people camped in town was gobbled up by houses. (Living in tents) became an unpopular activity. However, it's now becoming more popular.

News/North: My understanding of that time was that the transition from tents and life on the land to house life had to do with family allowance.

Pearson: There was a rule, whether it was ever enforced or not I don't know, that if you wanted your family allowance you had to get your kids to school. So there was an exodus from the traditional villages into the main centres, places like Pangnirtung, that sprung up as communities.

But most of them were very ill-conceived. Most of them couldn't provide basic necessities, for example water, for the number of people who entered them. Broughton Island had no water. Pangnirtung had no water. Cape Dorset had no water. Pond Inlet had no water. None of these communities had runways and none had telephones.

News/North: What did the people do?

Pearson: They prayed that an iceberg would get lodged on the rocks and they'd chip away at that. Or they went to a lake and cut blocks of ice. In Broughton Island they travelled across the frozen sea ice to a lake on Baffin Island to get water.

It wasn't until the mid-'70s that provisions were made in some of these places for reservoirs to be built and that was a bloody agonizing process. Little streams were dammed and all kinds of devices were developed to deal with the very fine sand-like substances that were in the water.

News/North: Were there any other examples of badly thought-out ideas that came North.

Pearson: Loads of them. For example, the matchbox houses that were provided by the government to the community came with a bathtub and a 45-gallon drum with the top cut off in which to put the water or the lumps of ice.

There was no plumbing to the house, but everyone had a bathtub.

Well, it takes a lot of energy to thaw out a lump of ice. Water was very valuable. Needless to say, the bathtubs never ever got used, other than to store things in. Most were thrown out because they took up valuable space.

News/North: The last time we spoke you were expressing some frustration with the way the North of your early years is being interpreted today. Care to talk about that?

Pearson: It was interesting to me to read recently that a principal of a school, perhaps it was in Coppermine but I'm not sure, extolling the virtues of residential schools.

It was refreshing to hear him because without a doubt the finest education service ever provided in the North came from the residential schools, specifically the school at Churchill.

That was a superb institution. The advantage it had over many of the other residential institutions was that the students who went there did so voluntarily. The majority of them didn't go there until they were 14 or 15 years of age.

That school was so good it produced all of the present-day leaders. Every single one of them went to Churchill -- Amagoalik, Anawak, Peter Irniq, Peter Ittinuar, Jose Kusugak and many of the top-notch ladies went to that school.

They got a bloody good education. There was no friggin' in the riggin'. It was hard work and discipline and a lot of it.

Since then it's been a downhill ride for education. As this guy in Coppermine said, you cannot provide people with a well-rounded high school education in a little isolated settlement. It's impossible.

News/North: You feel education needs to be centralized to achieve the same standards there are down south?

Pearson: Sure. Churchill was a good example. Yellowknife and Akaitcho Hall was another excellent institution.

It was an enlightened period of education for native people.

News/North: Did you ever visit the Churchill school?

Pearson: Many times as an MLA.

News/North: You're fairly outspoken. Have you been that way all your life?

Pearson: Yeah, I guess. Just another loud mouth. Not very diplomatic.

News/North: Where did that come from?

Pearson: I think living here, the frustrations of living in the Arctic, and not having the education that I suppose would have equipped me with a more rationalized thinking process, instead of blurting out and shouting out.

But let's not leave the education thing yet.

I've come to the realization in all the years I've lived here that so many of the children here are so bloody bright.

What's tragic is that these bright kids are not singled out and given an opportunity to get a real education.

I said to (the leader of a local Inuit organization) a few years ago, 'Take some money and buy places in Canada's great private schools -- Stanstead, Bishops, Lakeside and those places.

'The average tuition there is $25,000 a year. Buy 10 or 15 or 20 places at these schools each year and pick out 20 bright kids, buy them a place there and get them a bloody education.

'You will end up with some people who can read and write and think clearly and, perhaps, will come back and help get Nunavut on its feet.'

News/North: So what did he say?

Pearson: I don't remember exactly, but something to the effect that the education system in the North has to be supported and as far as he was concerned it was good enough for him. Which is absolutely untrue, because he sends his own kids down south to school.

News/North: Were you involved in education much as an MLA?

Pearson: I was the most ardent critic of it. Deputy ministers resigned because of me. One of them died and I was accused of causing his death -- John Parker said, 'You killed him, you son of a bitch!'

The great problem with government in those days was the lack of communication.

If you went to court there was no interpreters. The accused went there and sat there and listened to the whole proceedings and that was it. There was no translation in the early days, in the 1970s.

That went on until the establishment of the interpreter corps, which I consider the most important single thing the territorial government ever did.

It was only then that the people began to understand what the government was talking about and it was only then that the government began to understand what the Inuit were saying.

Prior to that it was all guesswork. Nobody had a clue about what was going on. They couldn't interpret terminology, medical terms and legal terms for example.

News/North: There is a renewed emphasis today on preserving native languages.

Pearson: The great tragedy with the way that this language is fading so quickly is ****ing syllabics...they jeopardize the language. One has only to go to Greenland to find Inuktitut alive and well, and they never used syllabics.

They should just drop syllabics. They should have been phased out years ago.

News/North: You said you didn't get much education and yet you turned out to be a pretty successful politician and businessman. Don't you think others could do the same with as little education?

Pearson: Well, I wouldn't make a very good surgeon or a lawyer or teacher, would I?

News/North: How do you explain the conflict between the negative way you sometimes talk about the North and the fact that you've been up here for a long time?

Pearson: At one time I was in a position to do something about it and did things about it because I was elected as mayor of Iqaluit for 16 years. I was able to bring a sense of direction to the community. I was MLA for eight years, at which time I think I accomplished a hell of a lot. Nobody heard about Frobisher Bay before I came to Yellowknife.

I'm very proud of my record as MLA and as mayor. But being a politician is not based upon what you can do. It's who you can suckhole to and who you can con.

The PR side of it is not my forte. To be a successful politician, the first thing you got to do is get elected. The end of my political career was not my idea.

News/North: You ran for federal office and didn't get elected.

Pearson: Yeah. People do not want to hear the word 'no'...they want these namby-pamby yes men. I was never prepared to be one.

News/North: You must have made somebody happy to be a politician for so long.

Pearson: The voters then were just as naive as the politicians they were electing. I was the only loud mouth around here. As time progressed, more and more of these kinds of people arrived in the North and took on more of these responsibilities.