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Stars in Scotland Casey Lessard Northern News Services Published Monday, December 19, 2011
Donald Mearns, John Graham, John Todd, Jim Deyell and Neil Greig moved to Canada to become Hudson's Bay Boys, and returned to their native land last month for a reunion ahead of the film's premiere. "I'm proud to be one of the five chosen to represent the thousands of Scottish boys who came over through the years," said Graham, who recently celebrated 35 years living in Iqaluit. "I think the film will be a credit to all of them." The Hudson's Bay Boys were Scottish men who'd come over to work in the sealing industry before it took a political blow in the 1980s. Despite sealing's collapse, many of the men remained in the North. The film, a one-hour documentary by BBC Scotland's Gilly Mathieson, was the result of an idea brewing in the Edinburgh-based reporter's head since BBC World Service paid for her to do a radio series on Nunavut in 2000. Stuck in Yellowknife en route to Grise Fiord, she stopped at a pub where she met Gordon Wray, a Hudson Bay Boy from Scotland with many stories. "He had all these stories of Scottish men who had remained in the Arctic, so he put me in touch with others," Mathieson said. "When I returned to Scotland, I kept in touch, and later I pitched the idea to my boss at the BBC. They loved the idea, so they let me do it." She and camera director James Dawson spent three weeks this April in five communities visiting the towns where Mearns, Graham, Todd, Deyell, and Greig live or lived: Pangnirtung, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, and Sanikiluaq in Nunavut, as well as Kuujjuaq in Nunavik. Following their stories, the film's theme revolves around the effects of the collapse of the sealing industry stemming from protests in Europe led by film bombshell Brigitte Bardot. "We knew for Inuit that seal hunting was a way of a life," Mearns, who first arrived in 1981 and is now an education director, said of the Bay Boys, "and the seal industry was a connection to that cultural past. We also saw first hand the impact that had in many of the communities. Many young men lost their way, their place at that time, when suddenly it wasn't there any more." Graham, who met and married his Inuk wife Eva in Iqaluit, figures he was one of the last fur buyers Gordon Rennie trained in the art of grading sealskins, and says people were paid a "fair tariff" for the thousands of sealskins he bought over his five years with the company. "Making this documentary, it occurred to me how important that sustainable economy was to the Inuit of Nunavut," he said. "Overnight, with the fuss kicked up by Brigitte Bardot and the heroes in Europe, the fur industry collapsed. Overnight, people were put on welfare." The message was heard by many in Scotland, where all of the major daily newspapers wrote feature stories on the men and the film in the days ahead of its premiere on BBC2. "Here in the UK," Mathieson said, "people were not aware that the Inuit were not slaughtering thousands of seals, that it was subsistence and that they used every part of the seal, not just the fur." Like Graham, Donald Mearns married a Northern woman, Meeka Metuq. Her brother, Donald's best friend Noah Metuq, and a cousin led Mathieson, Dawson and the men as they filmed on the land and waters around Pangnirtung. Interviewed for the film, Noah speaks of the effects of the seal trade's collapse and climate change on his family and community. The film is dedicated to his memory; he drowned on a fishing trip a few months after it was filmed, and a fundraiser and crafts raffle in Scotland raised some funds for the family. The gesture speaks to the ties between Scotland and Nunavut, which is now inextricably linked because of the Hudson's Bay Company, despite the company's role in colonization. "They were a company that came here to make money," Mearns said. "But I think many people are quite proud of their Scottish connections and Scottish heritage. It becomes an extended family thing. People are delighted to find they have Inuit relations scattered throughout the North, and some of those Inuit are delighted to know they have Scottish relations." For Graham, the Company had a lasting effect on his life. "Hudson's Bay Company taught good work habits," he said, noting Canada presented a great opportunity at a tough time. "When I went in 1976, the farming industry was in collapse, the woollen mills were shutting down. Opportunity opens itself to anyone who has a goal, good work habits, isn't afraid of a hard day's work." And thanks to the company, Mearns made lifelong friends and met some new ones in the making of the film. "We don't know each other, all of us. But we know of each other," he said. "Jim Deyell was a legend. He was one of the old guys who helped babies be born and mended broken legs, and did minor surgery (all without training). But you have almost the same background, you speak the same language, you have many of the same experiences. When he turned up, it was like a kindred spirit. It's just like you've been best friends forever." The men share one link that keeps them tied to the North (Deyell is the only one who left, now living in Ottawa). "We all have an incredible love for the North and the people, and an understanding of the way things are and what the North means to those people," Mearns said. "An appreciation and love of Inuit people is something we all share."
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