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SANIKILUAQ
After a six-month sabbatical from the North, new Sanikiluaq SAO Andre Larabie had had enough.

Sanikiluaq's interim senior administrative officer Bill Buckle, left, passed the baton to new SAO Andre Larabie, right, in February. Mayor Elijassie Sala is in the centre. - Photo courtesy of Andre Larabie

"I just couldn't take it down south," said Larabie, who was in Florida and Panama for five months before starting his new role Feb. 1. "The North is so different. It's where I want to spend my time."

Born and raised in Ottawa, Larabie has been coming to the North since 1977, working first with the Department of National Defence in Inuvik for two years, and later as an adult educator in Iglulik, a college instructor in Yellowknife, and until July 2011 as Kugaaruk's SAO.

"I'm not just a newbie here," he said, noting he has lived in the North for a total of 10 years. "I know exactly the ways the communities are. I was glad to accept the position here in Sanikiluaq."

He looks forward to the work, including generating jobs, setting up a food bank, and improving housing.

"I intend to present a balanced budget with some reality checks here," he said. "The cost of living is still expensive. We want to study all of the possibilities. There's no union here, so we want to be able to look at the well-being of our employees and see if there are ways we can assist them."

Government contracts are one way he sees to generate work.

"We're not on their minds many times," he said, "because we're so far south. But it is a population of 800 and we need to be supported. We'll do some lobbying and work with our MLA on different projects.

"We're being approached on different programs, but it has to be financially rewarding for the hamlet and the employees."

Before accepting Sanikiluaq's offer, he said he had several others, including higher-paid jobs in Ottawa, but "my mind was set on Sanikiluaq because I had applied in Sanikiluaq way back in 2009 and never got called."

The Hudson Bay community was attractive for several reasons.

"I have an elderly mother in a nursing home (in Montreal), so for me, it's a lot easier to get to Montreal than from Kugaaruk (through Yellowknife and Edmonton). It's still $2,000 return to Montreal, but it's not the $4,600 that it costs to get out of Kugaaruk."

And while it's not Florida, Sanikiluaq's weather was also an attraction.

"It's further south, so I believe it will be an earlier spring than what we had further north. That appeals to me to have a little more hot weather in the summer."

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