Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 25/02) - The weekend before she died, Agnes Semmler kicked up her heels at the first ever Kwa'atlati family reunion, in Inuvik.

Over 50 relatives arrived from Old Crow, Yukon and Kugluktuk for the weekend event, and Saturday night, when the evening was coming to an end, Semmler did a jig out the door, blowing farewell kisses to the crowd. Three days later, on Oct. 15, she was dead. Semmler was 91.

At her funeral and memorial service Monday afternoon, she was remembered as woman of sharp wit and stinging honesty, a force to be reckoned with, both in political and private life.

Fog was thick on the day of her funeral, so charters from Paulatuk, Holman, Sachs Harbour and Old Crow, were unable to make the journey. Still, the church was packed with about 300 people. It seemed everyone had a story to tell, or one of her famous quotations to pass on.

Although her mother was Gwich'in and her father a Swedish trapper, she spent much of her life among the Inuit, and played a key role in the push for an Inuvialuit land claim settlement in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Living in Inuvik since 1956, Semmler was active in many of the organizations that built up the new town.

She helped organize the Home and School Association, Catholic Women's League, Women's Institute, and women's baseball league, the Inuvik Sputniks. She also held positions on town council and the trapper's committee, and she managed the Inuvik Craft Shop or "the Co-op," which later became Northern Images. She travelled widely with the Liberal party, acting as an interpreter in Inuvialuktun, her second language.

In many ways, she blazed a trail for those behind her. In 1967, she was named NWT's Woman of the Century for Expo '67 in Montreal. In 1975, she became the territory's first female justice of the peace, and in 1981 she was one of five women to receive the Person's Case medal, commemorating the struggle of Canadian women to be recognized as persons under the law. When she was 73, she became the first woman to become deputy commissioner for the NWT, a post she served in until 1989.

A woman of her own mind

Her family and friends couldn't resist retelling the many tales of Semmler's exploits. Daughter Shirley Gadbow, 71, elicited a round of laughter with her anecdote of the time her mother came across a burglar in the house.

"He was hiding behind the door with a knife. She found him and said, 'Damn you! What are you doing there?' She grabbed the knife, and the would-be assailant was running for his life."

Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) president Nellie Cournoyea read the eulogy at the funeral service. "Agnes never did things in half," Cournoyea said. "It was always full steam ahead, no holds barred. She always used to say, 'Don't talk so much. Why don't you go out there and do something?' She often had tough words, sometimes words we didn't want to hear. But they were always true and wise, and there to make us strong."

In political life, Semmler was just as tough, forging the Committee of Original People's Entitlement in 1969. The organization would give birth to the Inuvialuit land claim settlement of 1984.

"We formed COPE when the oil men first started coming in to the Delta area," Semmler said in a 1983 Edmonton Journal article. "We got together and said we're not going to let them just take over the country, take everything that's any good and leave us with nothing."

Randal Pokiak, who was a negotiator in the 1970s, remembers Semmler dropping by the office often to check on the progress of negotiations. "Every time I'd see her, she'd say, 'Are we winning yet?' I'd put on a brave face when we didn't know. Now I can truly say, 'We are winning. Hallelujah!' There's a great future for us because of people like Agnes Semmler."

Early Life

Born on April 17, 1911 at Rampart House, a community in the northwest Yukon, Semmler was the eldest of three children.

After attending mission school in Hay River, she followed her father and brother to the Central Arctic to trap white fox. It was at Cape Krusenstern, when Semmler was 19, that she met and married Lawrence "Slim" Semmler, an American trader, in 1931.

"Mr. Semmler came along looking for a good wife and he thought I'd make a good fox skinner," she said in a profile written about her in 1967. Slim operated a number of isolated trading posts around Cape Krusenstern and Kugluktuk (Coppermine) area, and the couple had three children there.

With no doctors or nurses near, the Semmlers provided medical care for local residents, helping them through illness, childbirth and even a few influenza epidemics. Semmler cared for her patients with nothing more than pots of home cooked stew, a medical book and government-issue medicines.

Niece Bertha Allen remembers Semmler wasn't a natural at nursing.

"Aunty wasn't a very good nurse," Allen said at the memorial service. "She said the only reason she'd stay by me is because I promised her I wouldn't yell or moan. She said, 'As soon as you yell, I'm out that door!' "

In Kugluktuk, Semmler delivered a baby for Ruby Stringer.

"She did a good job with the baby, but once the baby was born, she keeled over," Allen told the laughing crowd. "She couldn't stand the sight of blood."

In 1947, the family moved to the Mackenzie Delta, where Slim set up a trading post and mink ranch at Napoiak Channel.

They adopted their youngest son Melvin, from Aklavik, and later moved to Inuvik to set up the first general store in town -- Semmler's Store, where the Semmler Building now stands.

Throughout her life, Semmler was outspoken on the rights of aboriginal people, and at times held audience with the likes of Pope John Paul II, Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien.

She was always herself, regardless of whom she was talking with, Cournoyea said in the eulogy.

When chatting with Prince Phillip during the royal visit of 1971, "He asked her what she would like to achieve in her life. Agnes replied, 'I think I'll have arrived when I get a flush toilet.' "

After serving as deputy commissioner in the 1980s, Semmler retired and in recent years lived at the long-term care ward of the Inuvik hospital. Her husband Slim died in 1997.