Jillian Dickens
Northern News Services

Pond Inlet (Oct 28/05) - Danny Kippomee was a young man with a big heart. He proved that you can be a quiet person and still have a big impact on those around you.

Danny died on the evening of Oct. 18 at around 8 p.m., while tending to family fishing nets with his older brother George, at a lake 12 miles from his home community of Pond Inlet. He was 17.

Others in his family had been at the lake earlier that day, and left the ice pick and shovel at one set of nets. Danny sped over across the lake on his ATV to retrieve the tools, and fell through an unfrozen section of the lake, drowning shortly after.

His brother chased after him, and managed to retrieve Danny's jacket on the ice But Danny was gone.

George headed back to the community on foot, and was picked up by worried family members at about 6 a.m., about two miles from the community. He had been walking all night.

Well-loved and well-missed, Danny's impact on the people around him was evident at his memorial service held Oct. 25.

The community poured into St. Timothy's Anglican Church that day.

Speaking on behalf of students and teachers at Danny's high school, Nasivvik principal David Parks had nothing but praise for Danny.

"The things that come out strongly when the students and staff here remember Danny is that he had a good personality. He treated people nicely, and he was friendly to everybody," said Parks, who has taught in Pond Inlet since the 1970s. "He was quiet and was a good listener."

"He always had a smile on his face."

This year Danny was in Grade 10, taking a few Grade 11 courses.

He enjoyed school, and was especially fond of math, social studies and spelling, said Parks.

"And he was very good in Inuktitut."

Not only an adept scholar, Danny was an athlete always ready to play any sport, and play it fair.

"He enjoyed sports and was a good team player," said Parks. "He is greatly missed."

Danny was like most kids his age.

"Just coming to school every day and wanting to do well in courses - those were his short-term goals. He was doing what most students do," Parks said.

Parks said the school was "shocked" when the accident first happened, and closed the school the next day, Wednesday.

On Thursday, the school held an assembly, where elder Jayko Peterloosie spoke to students about dealing with emotions inflicted by tragedy.

"He also spoke about things we have to accept and go on with our lives," said Parks.

Pond Inlet's search and rescue team, along with a group of Canadian Rangers, spent three days and two nights searching for the body at the accident scene, a lake about 12 miles from Pond Inlet.

Desperate and without any electronic equipment on hand, they dragged a rope with a hook tied to the end of it along the lake bottom, hoping to grip the body.

"We wanted the Emergency Measures Unit in Iqaluit to send us a sonar because we have people in the community who know how to use it, but the people in the office couldn't find the sonar," said mayor David Qamaniq. "I wasn't happy about that."

A diver was among the search crew, but failed to see anything through the lake's milky and foggy water.

"It was impossible for him to see even a few feet in front of him," said Qamaniq.

Reduced to primitive searching techniques, the chances of finding the body were one in a thousand, said Qamaniq.

"The search team prayed together holding hands every time they went to the accident scene," said Qamaniq.

On Oct. 21 at 11:15 a.m., they recovered the body, in an amazing way.

The rope used to search the lake floor was wrapped three times around the arm of the body, rather than puncturing its flesh.

"The searchers couldn't believe it wasn't hooked at all, not even his clothing was hooked," said Qamaniq. "The Almighty might have heard our prayers."

On Oct. 26, church minister Caleb Sanguya blessed the scene of the accident in front of family, friends, the mayor, the Rangers and search and rescue team.