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Principal bids farewell

Kathleen Lippa
Northern News Services

Cambridge Bay (June 06/05) - She came North for a year and stayed for more than 30. Well, it wasn't quite that straightforward for Cambridge Bay school principal, Dawn Wilson. The story is never that simple.

But she did stay.

And even though Wilson is retiring this month, she will be back. After all, she has her cabin here, her friends and she wants to enjoy her summers in the North.

It started with a teaching job she heard of at a recruitment fair in Montreal.

Wilson, who grew up in Southern Ontario, was young, fresh out of teacher's college, adventurous and thought she "knew it all" then.

She wanted to "change the world," she recalls with a good-natured laugh, and thought Cambridge Bay would be a good place to start. So Wilson took the job and came to the North in 1972. She started as a Grade 4 teacher.

"There was no television, no running water in any of the Inuit houses," she said. "Housing was an issue, even then. It still is today, but it certainly was back then."

Luckily, Wilson got an apartment in town. But that didn't last long. Six months after she arrived, she was awakened at 2 a.m. by an apartment neighbour telling her their building was on fire.

"We lost everything," she said.

If that wasn't enough, six weeks later there was a fire at the school.

It got so stressful that in 1974 Wilson resigned and moved back to Ontario where she got a degree in education from Trent University.

Back North

But it wasn't long before she realized how much she missed the North. She called and asked if she could return to Cambridge to teach. In 1979 she became principal of the school.

In 1994 the existing Ilihakvik was renovated to become Kiilinik high school and a brand new elementary school, Kullik Ilihakvik, was built. That is where she has been working ever since.

Among her greatest professional achievements, Wilson lists reviving Inuinnaqtun writing and reading at the school, the land trips - "We used to take the students fox trapping years ago!" - the student exchanges with Moose Jaw, Sask., running a satellite school in Bay Chimo, teaching home economics, and watching her students grow up, succeed, and send their kids through school.

Nowadays she is even seeing her former students' grandchildren come through the school.

One of the most important lessons she has learned is how to be patient. She learned that in the North, she said.

"When you are young you think you know everything," she said with a laugh. "I have learned there is no one single answer to any problem."

Now, she plans on travelling to South Africa to do volunteer work.

"I enjoy cross-cultural situations. I think I'll have something to offer after all my years in the North," she said.