Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Baker Lake (Jun 27/01) - The tundra flowers are coming back to Blueberry Hill outside Michael Hughson's sunroom window in Baker Lake.
Over 30 years later the young man who jumped on an airplane in the summer of 1968 in Lerwick on Scotland's Shetland Islands for a tour with the Hudson Bay Company now works for the Nunavut government, giving a little back of what the Canadian North gave him.
Born north of the 60th parallel in the Shetlands, a group of islands just off the northern tip of the Orkney Islands, Hughson said he never tired of the naked Northern landscape.
"On the Shetland Islands it's a little greener and the sea doesn't freeze," said Hughson.
"But the terrain is somewhat the same," he said.
That summer of '68 Hughson landed in Kugluktuk on a float plane. With no telephone lines connected to the community, Hughson called home for the first time at Christmas on a radio phone.
"I settled in well," said Hughson. "It was very much like Shetland."
Sometimes on weekends he stayed up all night drinking tea with other workers.
"The sun would go down toward the horizon and come up," he said.
He worked in a warehouse bailing hundreds of seal skins in bundles of 50 for the barge.
The next summer the company transferred him to Baker Lake, where he fell in love with Natsialuk, his wife of 31 years.
They went to dances and picture shows together. With no TVs, people gathered at the community hall to watch Westerns like a young Clint Eastwood's A Fist Full of Dollars.
He remembers the floor shaking during community square dances and the accordions belting out The Soldier's Joy, an old Scottish tune.
Hughson never stayed in one place for very long, moving from Baker Lake to Rankin Inlet, Iglulik, and northern Quebec until 1979, when he transferred to the Hudson Bay's head office in Winnipeg. There he stayed until 1994, when he moved back to Baker.
In Winnipeg, Natsialuk was a medical interpreter with the J.A. Hildas Northern Medical Unit at the Health Sciences centre.
"She helped out a lot of Inuit patients down in Winnipeg for medical appointments," he said.
Hughson didn't watch the Canada vs Russia series in 1972, and heard about Paul Henderson's goal while unloading the year's sealift rations.
Back then they unloaded everything from the boat to the shore by hand.
In 1987 the Hudson Bay Company sold its Northern department stores to a group of investors under the name North West Company.
In 1994 the company wanted to set up a field office in Baker Lake, and Hughson volunteered to go help set it up.
He never left.
Last year Hughson filed for early retirement and took a job with the Nunavut government's community development division, monitoring and evaluating hamlets.
"It was time for a change," said Hughson.
"I wanted to get involved with the new territory and offer a meaningful contribution," he said.
Hughson believes in Nunavut. "It will work out," he said.
"I feel optimistic about the future of Nunavut," said Hughson. "It has come a long way in its first two years."
"The North has given me a lot," he said.
Hughson can see Baker Lake glimmer outside his window and across to Blueberry Hill.
He doesn't plan on going anywhere soon.
