KUGLUKTUK/COPPERMINE
The eyes of the nation may have been on the federal election, but for weeks it was another set of numbers many people across Canada avidly watched climbing.

Beaufort Delta Petroleum is selling gas in the hamlet for $1.90 a litre as the pump indicated on Oct. 15. More than a hundred residents of the community have signed a petition calling for a different company to step forward and sell fuel at a cheaper price. - photo courtesy of Fred Behrens

Jimmy Hikok Ilihakvik joined the Indigo book store chain's Adopt a School contest, thanks to teacher Nicole Wutke.

The contest sees schools in each province - the territories are included in the Manitoba category - vying for a top prize of a $10,000 gift card. Second prize receives $7,500.

Jimmy Hikok came in second.

"It is exciting. I'm exhausted," Wutke said about the results.

Throughout the three-week campaign people could "adopt" Jimmy Hikok and throughout the campaign the Kugluktuk school was neck and neck with Warren Elementary School located in Warren, Man., with one school, then the other, trading off the first-place position.

In the final hour, Warren outstripped Jimmy Hikok with 12,464 adopts to 12,151.

"Everyone was watching," said Wutke. "I felt I was the only one that was doing that, that involved, but I've been hearing it from all my friends all over Canada."

Not only did the school win the second-place gift card, but an additional 1,645 books were donated. People supporting the school could adopt daily, but for $12 they could also buy a book and thereby contribute 10 votes.

"It would have been nice to have the bragging rights for first place but when we tally it up, with books that were donated, it's over $19,000, so we can't say we lost," Wutke said.

In 2012 Wutke, who taught at Nuiyak School in Sanikiluaq, did have the bragging rights, along with teacher Gerda Westenenk. Back then, there was only one $10,000 prize for all of Canada. Nuiyak School took it. The school hadn't had a library in 10 years.

That's not exactly the case with Jimmy Hikok.

"When I moved to Kugluktuk last year, we had a library. It was OK. But I kind of left my masterpiece behind, and I had it in my head. It was too much to take on last year because I was a new teacher in the school but I had it in my head all year that I was going to take it on this year," said Wutke.

She explains the school library is a beautiful space.

"It's on the main floor of our school, in a big open foyer. It should be the centerpiece of our school, in my opinion. It just needs a little bit of love. The shelves are full of books, but they're older. They're outdated. Some of the science books are inaccurate, now. We need to update it and give it a facelift to bring some new life."

Wutke said this contest is all she's been talking about. She and the students made a big banner for the outside of the library to keep community attention on the contest.

"Instead of a thermometer, we made an inuksuk with a graph of how many votes we were getting. The kids were colouring it in every day.

"We had it on the white board in the gym. We had newsletters go home. The kids were coming in in the morning and using the school computers to adopt."

And, of course, sharing spread like wildfire on Facebook.

In her own class, Wutke used the contest as a teaching tool, with her students graphing results for each province.

"Once a week I would print off results and they had to build a graph."

Other teachers and students organized a cake walk to raise funds, which went toward book donations and adopts. High school students baked pizzas and had a pizza sale, also donating the funds to the effort.

Three Indigo stores in Edmonton chose the school to partner with.

"Just the stores alone, I think, collected more than 500 donations for us. That's a huge contribution to the books coming to our school."

Indigo Spirit at the Edmonton International Airport, Coles Bonnie Doon and Coles Southgate competed to see which store could donate the most.

Once the win is confirmed by Indigo Oct. 23, the library committee will get to work outfitting the space. Wutke herself likes to pick from children's books which have won the Caldecott Medal and the interests of the students will be taken into account.

"There are high-interest books for every group of kids. We'll be talking to the teachers and the kids. We need a class set of dictionaries, so the teachers can sign them out of the library and have a whole class project. The science and non-fiction area is a big focus - are we hitting all of our core curricular subjects?"

The three weeks were exciting to Wutke who, as a teacher, feels books are sacred.

"Everyone just got so sucked into the competition. On my timeline on Facebook at one point there were 12 people in a row that had posted and shared," she said.

"It makes the kids see, too, that we're not so isolated. Everybody's connected. It was just a really fun project to do. And literacy is the foundation of our learning."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.