IKPIARJUK/ARCTIC BAY
If Irene Swoboda gets her way, two more members of Arctic Bay's #3045 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps will join three others on a trip to commemorate V-E Day, marking the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe.

Bruno Attagutsiak is featured on a recruitment poster for the #3045 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps in Arctic Bay. The corps is fundraising to send four or five of its cadets to Europe next year for the 70th anniversary of the Victory in Europe. - photo courtesy of Clare Kines

"The Order of St. George has provided funding for all of the cadet corps outside of Iqaluit, including Repulse Bay, Arctic Bay, Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet and Iglulik," Swoboda said, noting the Royal Canadian Legion is another funder of the project. Twenty-two cadets and 10 adults are going on the 11-day trip to the Netherlands, Belgium and France in May.

Arctic Bay has funding for three cadets and an adult. Swoboda is insistent she will find the money to get more of her community's 33 cadets on the trip.

"For an extra cadet to go, it's going to be $4,500," she said. "I'm hitting up everyone I can. I'm pretty ambitious about this."

Each cadet has to raise about $500 individually, and staff have to raise close to double that amount.

Several residents have connections to people who fought in the First and Second World War. Arctic Bay resident Clare Kines' grandfather was one of the soldiers in the limestone tunnels under Vimy Ridge.

"The Canadians were in these tunnels, knowing they were probably not going to survive," Swoboda said, noting Kines's grandfather did survive.

"My cousin was a Victoria Cross winner," she said, noting her own connection. "In France, he held three retreating German armies and took a Nazi prisoner that had killed Canadian POWs."

To give the youth a sense of personal connection, the corps simulated the space in which Anne Frank and her family lived during their time in hiding.

"Anne Frank and seven other people lived in a place that was 500 square feet," she said. "They lived in this area for two years and one month before they got ratted out to the Nazis. So what we did was mark it off in the gym. We put the cadets in that area, and said, OK, for two years and one month, no TV, no iPod, no computer. You sleep here, you go to the bathroom here, you're hungry. And you have to be quiet."

In addition to visiting the Anne Frank House, the cadets plan to visit the Holocaust Museum, perform a silent walk in Apeldoorn to commemorate the Royal Canadian Regiment, take part in the 70th anniversary Liberation Day ceremonies, visit Brussels and Vimy Ridge, Normandy, Juno Beach, and Paris.

It's a trip that would cost about $15,000 to do independently, but with $9,000 in additional funding, two cadets could join the trip.

"The kids will come back with an attitude that not only are they Inuk, and proud of it," Swoboda said, "but they are also Canadian, and we have a history as a country that represents a lot of different things to the international community. We have served the world with honour.

"They will bring back an identity as Canadians, and a humility because of the sacrifice that has been made."

She noted the importance of showing the scale of the sacrifice made to kids from a territory one-fifth of the size of all of Canada.

"Sixty thousand Canadians died in World War I. That's double the population of Nunavut. I've been to these places, and when you see where Canadians died, it's a profound experience," she said.