Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 14, 2008
NUNAVUT - According to recently released numbers from the 2006 census, immigrants make up only 1.5 per cent of Nunavut's population, compared to 19.8 per cent of the Canadian population.
Michal Lozowski, originally of Poland, has lived in Cambridge Bay for seven years. Three years ago he bought a house in the community and has no plans to leave. - photo courtesy of Michal Lozowski |
Of Canada's approximately 6.2 million immigrants, only 442 lived in Nunavut during the 2006 census, most concentrated in the territory's larger communities.
Most start off in a southern Canadian city before moving to Nunavut.
Michal Lozowski is one such immigrant. He arrived in Canada on April 1, 1988 and settled in Edmonton.
After 13 years in western Canada, he decided it was time for a change and when an opening came up in Cambridge Bay, he decided to move North.
For seven years Lozowski has been working as the manager for community development programs with the Nunavut Housing Corporation.
"I've found very interesting people here," Lozowski said. "You can make good friendships here. Climate is cold, but people are very warm."
Lozowski travels to Poland once every two years, but gets the chance to speak his mother tongue with other Polish people he has met in the territory.
When he is in Iqaluit, he is able to buy sesame snaps at NorthMart and when in Yellowknife he can find Polish vodka.
Lozowski is far from his place of birth, but has made a new home in the Canadian Arctic.
"It is home now," he said of Cambridge Bay, where he bought a house three years ago.
Like Lozowski, John Mabberi-Mudonyi came North for a job. Mabberi-Mudonyi's route to Hall Beach started in Uganda, East Africa.
In 1979 he came to Canada to attend university and lived in Toronto for many years, where two members of his family still reside.
On Aug. 11, 2006 Mabberi-Mudonyi moved to Hall Beach to work as the hamlet's director of finance.
"Some of the cultural aspects of Nunavut resemble some of the things in Uganda," Mabberi-Mudonyi said.
"It took me back in time to my childhood."
Specifically, how elders and youth interact in the community brings back memories for him.
Life in Nunavut is less stressful and healthier, Mabberi-Mudonyi has found.
"I was just down in Toronto for Christmas and thought 'what the hell is wrong with the people?' Rushing this way, impatient on the road. I said, 'man, I don't need this.' Why would I want to go back to that?"
In the past year and a half, Mabberi-Mudonyi has acquired a taste for Arctic char.
"This year I'm definitely going to go fishing," he said.
Nadjie Martinez arrived in Canada in 1992 through a business migration program offered by the federal government.
Martinez went from working in her family's lube oil trucking company in the Philippines, to running three gas stations for Petro-Canada in Calgary before becoming the Northern store manager in Rankin Inlet.
She moved North with her husband and two children in the spring of 2006.
Martinez had long been thinking of living in the North.
While managing the gas stations in Calgary, she would often meet people who had driven south from Yellowknife and would tell her stories of the Arctic.
"Here I've noticed lots of opportunities," Martinez said. "I'm so happy. We are blessed to see the North."
The beauty of the land is striking, Martinez said.
"When you look at the ground, I see tapestry in it," she said of the tundra.
Martinez said she becomes scared when the electricity goes out in the frigidly cold winter, but is thankful that it never lasts for long.
"I always have the belief that what God provided ... is what you need. I always adapt to wherever I go," Martinez said.
