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Spreading the word

Chris Windeyer and Jillian Dickens
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (May 22/06) - For former Bishop of the Arctic Paul Idlout, a lifetime of
involvement with the Anglican Church was, in some ways, inevitable.


NNSL Photo/graphic

Former Suffragan bishop of the Arctic Paul Idlout stands in front of the boarded-up St. Jude's Cathedral in Iqaluit. Idlout retired from the clergy in 2004 after 15 years. - Chris Windeyer/NNSL photo

NNSL Photo/graphic

St. Jude's Cathedral in Iqaluit has raised one-third of the money needed to rebuild the church that was gutted by an arsonist's fire in November, says the retired Suffragan bishop of the Arctic Paul Idlout. Costs for rebuilding are projected to be around $3 million.

One million of that has already been raised, thanks in part to donations from Anglican dioceses around the world.

Idlout says the church is expecting a shipment of construction materials to arrive with this year's sealift.

Idlout grew up on the land around Pond Inlet in the 1930s and '40s when his father worked as a guide for clergymen travelling the Arctic. His first involvement in the church was in choir, and later as a Sunday school teacher.

Anglican clergy, along with RCMP, were among the first Europeans most Inuit saw. That's one reason the church is so important in the Inuit community, says Idlout.

"(In) the early days (when) the RCMP and the clergy came up North, they were very important to (the Inuit) because they had supplies for the people," Idlout says.

The other is the importance both the church and Inuit people place on family.

"I guess it's good for families."

Idlout worked as a translator and guard for the RCMP from 1963 to 1977, and then for PetroCanada for five years. Encountering what he calls "life difficulties," Idlout found himself drinking too much and decided he needed a change.

"I was looking for a way to get out of my life," he says.

He studied at the Arthur Turner Training school in Pangnirtung and was ordained April 22, 1989. He worked as a priest in Cape Dorset until 1996, when he was elected Suffragan bishop of the Arctic. That's a position he held until his retirement in 2004. But his involvement with the church hasn't ended: he and his wife still volunteer, translating service materials into Inuktitut.

Clyde River's Bethuel Ootoovak also made the leap from working with the federal government to working with Scripture.

And much like Idlout, Ootoovak felt destined to become a minister.

"God let me know ahead of time I was going to be a church leader so I feel very comfortable as that," says Ootoovak through translator Peter Iqalukjuak.

As a young adult he paid the bills through his soapstone carvings, like many people in his community.

Putting the chisel aside, he picked up a career operating heavy equipment. He worked at this for both Clyde River and Pond Inlet's hamlets. He even worked for the Canadian armed forces, helping build an air strip for the base near his home community.

But now his full-time position is Minister of Clyde River's Anglican Church - and community members don't let him forget it.

"When (I go) to public places like the Northern people see (me) as a different person," says Ootoovak, who is still an avid hunter and carver.

He moved back to Clyde River two years ago, and prior to that he was the Minister of Pond Inlet's Anglican Church.

"There is a breaking in the community. The most important thing I would want to see is people working together to make the community better," he says.

That sense of service is what drives Susan Salluviniq, Resolute's two-term mayor, who also conducts the community's Anglican services.

She is lay pastor who oversees worship because the Anglican Church doesn't have enough clergy to cover its 24 Nunavut churches. There are 18 ordained priests in the territory according to the Anglican Communion of Canada, and some communities have more than one. There are 10 lay pastors across the territory.

Salluviniq does it because she enjoys "getting people released from the bondages" that plague them. She's noticed a steady improvement in the civic life during her 11 years behind the lectern.

"Our community was known as drunk town," she says. "It seemed like the only way of life. But (I'm) seeing people set free from the bondages of alcohol."