Yellowknife (Sep 20/04) - Third-year nursing student Andrea McLarty from Rankin Inlet never met Dr. Christine Egan, who worked in the North for many years as a nurse before being killed in the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001.

But McLarty knows about Egan's work and admires her.

"I know that she was a good nurse and she really cared for the people in the Kivalliq region," she said. "She got involved in the community -- she went to square dances and everything. She didn't just go to work and go home; she wanted to be a part of the community."

McLarty, who plans to work in Rankin at the new health centre after graduating, is one of four nursing students attending Nunavut Arctic College who will receive the first-ever Dr. Christine Egan Scholarships. The others are Sipporah Peterloosie and Martha Nowdlak, both in fourth year, and Rebecca Akulujuk, in her third year of studies.

The award will be made each year to select Nunavut nursing students.

The scholarship is distributed through an endowment fund held by the Manitoba Medical College Foundation.

Peterloosie, of Pond Inlet, is a mother of six children, and a grandmother of three.

Her $1,000 scholarship will go towards her family mostly, she said. It is also great encouragement for her in the final stretch of her courses.

"I was working in the health centre in Pond for four years before I started this program," she said. She already has a job lined up at the health centre back in Pond when she graduates.

"I want to work with elders," she said. "I would see that many of the elders don't get the help they need. Nurses come up for only a few years, then they go back south again. So a lot of people fall through the cracks."

Nowdlak said she wants to keep working at the Baffin Regional Hospital. She plans to put her scholarship money towards a new computer. She wants to work in the adult ward caring for in-patients.

"It's been my dream. So here I am."