Culture shared between boys
From iglus to skyscrapers, youth all like the same kinds of things, says chaperone
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, May 2, 2016
KUGLUKTUK/COPPERMINE
Kugluktuk High students had special guests while building iglus eight kilometres outside the community on the sea ice last month.
School staff facilitated the joining up of their students and elders from the community.
Students Max Allen, Robert Walker, chaperone Glen Vance and students Chris Lord and Emerson Shoichet-Bartus visited Kugluktuk March 22 to 30 on an exchange trip by Toronto's Upper Canada College. - David Ho photo/DnV Photography |
Teacher Michael Valk says it's an opportunity to bring the young people out to engage the students in iglu-building, an activity that has largely been dormant in the community.
"We were doing it most weekends. We opted to do it weekends so that the students who really want to be out there will come. Every Saturday, sometimes Sundays, from January to now we've been out there with an elder or two and other community members and students have been learning to build the iglus," said Valk.
A few students who have gained the knowledge fully put up their own iglus.
"That was pretty exciting," said Valk. "They can do it on their own now."
This year, the iglus were built with the intention of housing four students and their chaperone from the all-boys Upper Canada College located in Toronto, who joined the Kugluktuk students March 22 to 30.
"We were planning to sleep out there and we did sleep out there. Our plan was to build enough iglus so we could sleep between 10 and 15 people. Last year they set up a couple of iglus. This year we opted to try to connect them all."
There are three large iglus and smaller ones that connect the three together.
"It's like a little village or a complex," Valk said.
While the five Torontonians, students Robert Walker, Max Allen, Chris Lord and Emerson Shoichet-Bartus and chaperone Glen Vance, were in the community, they lived with families. They attended class, skinned a wolverine, went ice fishing and met Premier Peter Taptuna, whose hometown is Kugluktuk.
"We ate a lot of caribou, musk ox, Arctic char and lake trout," Vance stated in an article on the college's website.
"The highlight for me was the cultural experiences - living with an Inuit family, going to school with Inuit students and doing many of their typical activities with them that gave me a sense of how they live," stated Walker in the same story.
"The people we met were all really generous and welcoming. One woman sewed us mittens made of fur that are warmer than any mitten I've ever worn."
Walker initiated the exchange, says Valk. His older brother had taken part in an exchange with Kugluktuk High students a few years ago.
"They met up in Yellowknife and canoed the Coppermine River. It took 11 days or two weeks. He wanted to do a similar exchange as his brother," said Valk. "They reached out to us. It was totally student-driven."
The exchange for the four Kugluktuk students, Braydon Pedersen, Evan Nivingalok, Preston Kapakatoak, Avery George-Gallagher, and chaperone Valk, was possible largely thanks to a financial contribution from Agnico Eagle, a mining company active in the Kivalliq region. Senior vice-president of corporate development Don Allan is an "Old Boy" - or graduate - of Upper Canada College in 1974, according to the college website.
Because the Toronto college is a boys' school, the trip was only open to boys, said Valk.
"But when the UCC students were here, we had a lot of girls coming out. We had a lot of boys who weren't coming on the exchange coming out."
Pedersen, Nivingalok, Kapakatoak, George-Gallagher and Valk descended on Toronto March 30 to April 6.
"On both sides they got to experience something so unique and so different from their norm. When our students were in Toronto we rode public transportation - the subway, the train and buses - we visited a few universities, we did all sorts of stuff totally foreign to them."
These experiences include visiting the CN Tower, Ripley's Aquarium, the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Eaton Centre and Yonge Dundas Square. The students ate at downtown restaurants and sat in platinum-level seats for a Toronto Maple Leafs-Florida Panthers hockey game at the Air Canada Centre with tickets donated by Leafs co-owner Larry Tanenbaum.
Valk says it was rewarding to see both sets of boys learn from their new experiences.
UCC chaperone Vance stated, "Kids there are same as kids here. They have a completely different way of life and worldview, but they all like the same kinds of things."
