INUVIK - Collin Allen's house is quiet now.

Four collectable clocks tick slightly out of sync on his living room walls. By the light pouring in the window, the 75-year-old runs his hand over a scrap-booked photo of him and Rita Allen 50 years earlier. They are young, strong and happy.

Collin and Rita Allen preferred life in the bush and at every opportunity returned to the land to hunt, fish and trap. - photo courtesy of Collin Allen

"She was some beautiful girl."

The walls around him are laden with photos of their eight children, many foster children and others they raised through the young offender program. Every inch of space on end-tables and stands carry faces frozen in time. For decades the house was filled with constant movement - unsure young feet running to keep from falling forward, defiant stomps of teenagers declaring their place in the world and amongst it all the steady steps of Collin and Rita to keep a happy home in an often unhappy world.

"We had a good life together," said Collin, his hand tracing a faded photo. "A wonderful life."

Rita Allen lost her battle with cancer just before Christmas and more than 350 people paid their respects at the elder's funeral.

In 1939 Rita Allen came screaming into a log cabin at Akulik. Like her step-brothers and sisters she wasn't born in a hospital and grew up the old way - in the bush. The Mackenzie Delta's rush to the sea played background music to her life cleaning fish, stretching muskrat and looking after the younger children.

"Oh she spoiled us," remembered Rita's step-brother James Rogers. "When mom was down working at the fish, Rita would take care of us. I remember crawling along crying and Rita would pick me up and put me on her back."

Their lives were determined by the seasons. Summer was fish, fall was fish, winter was trapping and dog teams and caribou, March meant muskrats and spring was the release of winter's grip on land, river and man.

"It's hard to say which is better, the old way or the new, you get used to things," said Rogers. "But those were good times."

As a teenager Rita had a dog team with a grey female leader named Queenie. Her and James were heading to Inuvik to pick up supplies, making up the river on a spring day when Queenie stopped on the ice and refused to let the small caravan take another step. Rita and Queenie were good pals and James remembers his sister trusting Queenie's advice as she walked gingerly past and found a creek had eaten away the ice just in front of them.

"Queenie looked after Rita and Rita looked after Queenie," remembered Rogers.

Rita soon moved to Aklavik for work at the hospital, later following much of that town's relocation to Inuvik. Inuvik was a busy spot in the 1950s, born on the banks of the Mackenzie to replace Aklavik as the region's capital. Rita was working at Stringer Hall when a young carpenter building benches in the hostel's chapel caught her eye.

"She asked me to take her and her friends out to shows," remembered Collin.

One show lead to another and in 1960 the two were married.

Like Rita, Colin had grown up in the bush with a traditional education. Together they built lives in the regimented new world rapidly taking over the Delta.

"She was a hard-working girl," said Collin of his wife.

They raised seven children of their own, adopted another and as if that wasn't enough, took in other children of less happy homes from Social Services and the young offenders program.

"She always had an open heart and an open home, no matter who they were or where they came from," remembered Clara Allen of her mother.

Rita and Collin learned the new world fast and saw that without the formal education they never had, their children wouldn't have much place in it. Clara remembers her mother demanding both her children and the ones she invited in to her home go to school.

Spring and fall, Rita and Collin took their children to Baby Island to fish, out to the whaling camp where Rita cleaned the belugas Collin had taught his sons to hunt.

"One bullet below the blow hole, I taught them," said Collin. "You don't shoot it all over the place."

As their children left home to raise their own families, blessing Collin and Rita with two grandchildren, the couple spend more time in the bush.

"She loved it in the bush - she could hunt, trap, fish, she was one hard-working lady."

So Collin's house is quiet now, but his walls and heart are laden with memories of Rita, children and long days on the land.

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