Kent Driscoll
Northern News Services

Cambridge Bay (Sep 12/05) - A trip to Iqaluit see the dentist turned into a nightmare for some Kitikmeot residents.

Nancy Angulalik was among the 26 passengers on the Health and Social Services chartered flight on July 23.

Nancy Angulalik and her daughter Natasha spent five days at a boarding home in Iqaluit, after arriving on a chartered flight for dental surgery. They say their stay in Iqaluit was a frightening one after no one from the Health department, which chartered the flight for 26 people, met them at the airport.

Angulalik, like many of the people on the charter flight from Cambridge Bay, had a small child with her, her six-year-old daughter Natasha, who needed some teeth pulled and caps put on others.

The group met at the airport at 6 a.m. and left Cambridge Bay at 7 a.m.

Upon their arrival in Iqaluit, no one was there to meet them and let them know where to proceed.

A call to their MLA Keith Peterson and a two-hour wait at the airport while he made phone calls to track down workers rectified the situation for most.

For Angulalik and four others who were placed at the boarding home directly across from Baffin Regional Hospital, the problems just got worse, she said.

The others were placed in a hotel.

"They let in drunk people, they don't use a hair net when they cook and they gamble. My daughter was scared, she isn't used to seeing drunk people. They were shouting up the stairs after midnight," said Angulalik.

Peterson said he will be filing a formal complaint over the trip.

"I'm going to be writing a letter to the minister of health. The conditions just weren't suitable," said Peterson.

"The families were very distraught, some of the mothers were crying. Iqaluit is 2,000 km away. It feels like you are a long way away."

Peterson said he would prefer to see his constituents treated in Yellowknife or Edmonton, which are both closer to Cambridge Bay.

The charter was a one-time only deal, said Nancy Campbell, a spokesperson with the department.

Usually, a specialist is flown to the communities, but in this case, the specialist was in Iqaluit at the time," said Campbell.

"It sounds like it was an isolated incident, and a formal complaint was never filed," she said.

"What we did find is that there was a glitch."