Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
After 35 years of service to Northern education, he received a send-off from his co-workers. With photographs of his years in the North on display, which included the last eight years spent in Yellowknife, he was feeling nostalgic.
But that doesn't mean his life will change much. In fact, during this interview with News/North, Tolley takes a call from his former employer, the Department of Education Culture and Employment. They requested his presence at a meeting.
"I've retired from the government, but not from education," he says.
His first spell in the North, which lasted two years, began in 1963.
"There were only Inuit people there," says Tolley about the 150-person community of Payne Bay (Kangirsuk) in Northern Quebec. At that time the entire North was considered the Arctic District.
"The school opened in 1960 so it hadn't been opened very long. I taught the senior grades, 4 to 8. There was another teacher there who taught 1 to 4."
Tolley stops and asks his wife for the picture of the 17 students in his class.
"That was my first class," he says. "Wonderful kids. For many, many months of the year we had 100 per cent attendance. The kids were so eager. They probably taught me more than I ever taught them. I'm in touch with a number of them and they've done really, really well."
Tolley points to Lolly Annahatak, back row, third from the left.
"Lolly, shortly after, became blind, and is the most accomplished blind person you could ever imagine. There was just an article done about her in Up Here magazine. She's a social worker in Kuujuak now."
As a teacher, Tolley last saw his student in 1968. She was 11 at the time. In the late 1980s, once he'd been assigned director of the Baffin Division Board of Education -- after years as teacher and principal in the communities of Baker Lake and Pangnirtung -- Tolley again met Annahatak.
"Almost 20 years later, we were on the way south, the plane stopped in Kuujuak. She got on with her husband, and she had two small children. They sat in the seat behind us. She started talking and I knew it was her. I turned around and said, 'Are you Lolly Annahatak?' And she says to me, 'Yes, and you're Chuck Tolley.' She remembered my voice," says Tolley with emotion.
One Payne Bay experience remains especially clear in Tolley's mind as the moment which taught him the most about the Inuit people with whom he had settled.
"We were working with a map (in school) and I wanted to get an idea of the names in Inuktitut, of a number of the areas around Payne Bay. So I had gotten a topographical map of the area, which extended about 100 miles outside Payne Bay. I gave it to this young girl, Betsy Annahatak, and asked her if her dad could put a few of the place names on there in Inuktitut. Just so we could talk about these things.
"They brought this map in the next day. Every island, river -- for a hundred miles -- he had named. And at that point I realized, this land, they know it so intimately. Every island, every shoal. He was a wonderful man."
No telephones, no radios
Tolley cannot specifically say why he came North in the first place, or why he spent so many years in Payne Bay and other Northern communities. But when he thinks about it, he again digresses about people.
"I was always interested in the North. I don't really know why. I grew up in what people called northern Saskatchewan. I taught for two years in Saskatchewan and then I applied to come North, I was interviewed and got hired," Tolley says, matter-of-fact.
He says it was "really, really different then. We got mail only twice a year, and the rest was whenever a plane would bring it. We had no telephones, no radio. We could get shortwave radio.
Every Sunday night, Tolley listened to the Northern Messenger, through CBC's Northern Service.
"People in southern Canada would send messages. I got to know many people in the North just by their messages, and never even met them. Some things were pretty confidential. And, years later, I got to meet some of these people that I had got to know just by these messages."
He loves the North, and says as much, but his tone of voice says more than words can.
He has seen much and done much. He saw the first snow machine arrive in Payne Bay. He helped install a phone system in the community -- his mother acquired the telephones from the Saskatchewan telephone company. He brought two Volkswagen Beetles into Baker Lake. He built a dome house and helped build a hotel in Baker Lake.
He and his wife, Muriel, have two sons, Charles and James. He returned south several times to further his education, but always he came back.
Tolley and Muriel have called Yellowknife home since the fall of '93, when he joined the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. The pair have no plans to leave. Once again, it's about the people.
The NWT capital is still somewhat of a gateway to the rest of the North, and Tolley often runs into people he's known through the years in the Northern communities he once called home.
For example, he recently ran into Nunavut Commissioner Peter Irniq at Extra Foods in Yellowknife. He knew Irniq while living in Iqaluit.
Personal views of education
Tolley still feels passionate about Northern education.
"I was a teacher and then a principal. I was assistant superintendent, then director of education for Baffin. And yes, I have some pretty definite views. I really believe strongly in grade extensions in the communities.
"Basically, the success rate of students leaving the communities to go to school has not been very great.
"My last job with the government was as director of board operations. That's a real passion I have, the local control of education."
And it's not a passion that's likely to end, despite official retirement.
