Appeal by cancer victim's family
Trying to raise money for trip between Grise Fiord and Pond Inlet
Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 26, 2015
AUSUITTUQ/GRISE FIORD
A Grise Fiord woman is hoping the public will support her efforts to get her family back to Pond Inlet while her mother-in-law fights cancer.
Jane Singoorie and Eepa Ootoovak are fundraising to hire a charter to get them from Grise Fiord to Pond Inlet to spend time with Ootoovak's mother Rebecca Ootoovak while she fights Stage III lung cancer. - photo courtesy of Jane Singoorie |
Jane Singoorie is working to raise $13,000 to charter a plane to take her, her partner Eepa Ootoovak and their four children to Pond Inlet. The one-way commercial ticket to Grise Fiord cost the family $15,000 when they moved last year.
"I decided to stay here at least a year to be with my side of the family," Singoorie said. "While we were still here, my common-law's mother got sick and was diagnosed with cancer in the springtime. We haven't seen her yet. She's home right now, but she's going to go back to treatment at the end of this month (in Ottawa)."
Her mother-in-law Rebecca Ootoovak's lung cancer was successfully treated, but has returned and progressed to Stage III, which indicates cancer cells have moved to the lymph nodes.
Eepa used the family's savings to get to Pond Inlet before his mother heads south for treatment again this week.
"We started saving up to go home, but then my mother-in-law started feeling not too well," Singoorie said. "(He) is with her right now from what we saved up before. He had to go see her. He's down there for a couple of weeks."
Singoorie said the family will book the charter "whenever we get enough money."
The charter not only saves money, but time. With a commercial route, the family would have to fly to Resolute, 382 km away and only 55 km closer than Pond Inlet, then another 1,571 km down to Iqaluit and then 1,065 km back up to Pond Inlet. The route takes about 30 hours including an overnight and stopovers, whereas a charter takes an hour-and-a-half.
Anyone interested in helping out can search for Singoorie's name on gofundme.com.
