Airshow organizers hope to inspire Northern youth
Northern tour aims to instill aviation dreams in youth
Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Thursday, February 23, 2017
INUVIK
Residents will be treated to an airshow in June but the initiative has a bigger goal than a summer distraction.
Northerners - all of them, pretty much - will be treated to an airshow this summer to celebrate the aviation industry and Canada's 150th anniversary. The show in Inuvik will take place June 8. - photo courtesy of Nancy McClure
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"The approach to this project is it's really about what should be important to all Canadians," said Nancy McClure, executive director of the Canadian Arctic Aviation Tour 2017.
"It's about heritage, culture, education, social justice and national pride, and we're just actually delivering it as these 97 airshow events."
A team of 15 aircraft will tour Canada's North over the summer, stopping in Inuvik on June 8. The event corresponds with Canada's 150th anniversary heritage celebrations.
"There certainly is a celebration component, and that celebration component is the fact that we're going to do these ambitious, epic aviation events in Canada's North, but I believe what was really important to this project was (that) we didn't just come in and do an event and not leave something behind," said McClure.
To that end, the project is including an educational component.
McClure said the project recognizes that Canada's 150th anniversary might not mean a whole lot for some people in Northern Canada.
"It may also be something they don't want to celebrate because there's been some negative pieces to the confederation of Canada," she said.
"While we acknowledge that's part of this project, the big focus for this project is that we are talking about what role Northern Canadians have in the next 150 years of Canada's confederation. The way to do that is through the youth, certainly recognizing people of all ages because they're part of this, but recognizing youth for their hopes, dreams and possibilities."
David Bouchard, author and Order of Canada recipient, was recently in Inuvik meeting with youth on that subject.
McClure said some of the project's goals are more undefined - instilling dreams in young people - and some are more specific, such as starting a conversation about post-secondary career possibilities in aviation.
McClure said she would like to see more Northerners in the aviation industry.
"If you grow your own, if you educate people that live there, they will want to go back there and hopefully build their own lives there to take forward," she said.
The project team is also encouraging communities to hold their own events on the same day as the airshows.
Vicky Grégoire-Tremblay, economic development and tourism manager, said the town is looking into that.
"We have the possibility . of creating another event to enhance their own event," she said at a tourism stakeholders meeting last week. "We're still in the process of planning things."
McClure wants the communities to be invested in the project.
"We want them to make part of it their own," she said. "By design, we want Inuvik to figure out what that looks like."
The show will visit Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic June 7, with Sachs Harbour, Ulukhaktok and Paulatuk on June 9, Aklavik on June 10 and Tuktoyaktuk June 11.
