Looking back on a lifetime in the North
After 36 years in Nunavut, Marion Love moves on
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
SALLIQ/CORAL HARBOUR
In the springtime of a year in the mid-1980s, Marion Love found herself adrift on an ice floe with James Arvaluk.
Marion Love, centre, is leaving the North after a lifetime of working in Nunavut. Her sons Nuq Arvaluk, left, and Aapak Arvaluk, right, join her for one last photo in Rankin Inlet, accompanied by their dog Scamp. - photo courtesy of Marion Love |
The two, who were living in Pond Inlet at the time, had gone out north to the floe edge for a few days where Arvaluk was waiting for narwhals and the ice they were on detached from the mainland.
"The gap between where we were and the solid ice was (growing). We couldn't jump it or cross it anywhere," Love recalls.
The mountains shrank into the distance as they drifted away. As Love tells it, they and another group were on that floe for 18 hours before a helicopter was able to rescue them.
"I look back on it and I wasn't nervous. Because I was with James and my next door neighbour, who was the leader of the other group. They were some of the most competent men I've ever seen on the land," she said.
Sure enough, the currents had already started to send them back to land when the helicopter arrived on scene.
It remains one of Love's most special memories of the North, where she has spent more than 35 years.
Originally from Prince Albert, Sask., Love is leaving her job as director of liquor management for the Government of Nunavut to return there and care for her 92-year-old mother.
But a lifetime in the North has left its mark, from making bear fat bannock for Arvaluk to sharing coffee and stories with Vietnam veterans working as helicopter pilots in Northern camps. As she prepares to leave, Love said the warmth and friendship of people she has met will stay with her forever.
Love originally came North in the 1970s, working summer jobs with the government at a time when the Northwest Territories and Nunavut were still the same territory, and returning south for the rest of the year.
On Dec. 17, 1981, she received the call that would change her life forever.
"I remember as clear as bells, as if it happened yesterday," she said. She was working her last few days at a job with the government of Saskatchewan, which had been cut when the government changed over.
"I was either going to go back to the oil camps and cook, or go on welfare -I just had no options," she said.
"I got a phone call from Iqaluit -Frobisher Bay, back then -asking me to come for an interview."
The first week in January 1982, she hopped on a plane and landed a job with the Government of the Northwest Territories Department of Education doing home management education.
"I had a three-month contract in Igloolik. That was 35 years ago," she said.
As her job evolved, she found herself in Pond Inlet, where she spent four-and-a-half years running cooking classes as part of the education program. That's also where she met James Arvaluk, who would become her husband.
"Being with him, my world just expanded," she said.
"We were on the land all the time. I'll be forever grateful to him for all the stuff he shared with me and taught me, and his family. His family was very traditional and I embraced that lifestyle.
"To this day, I still rely on that skill-set I acquired while I was in their presence."
In 1986, Love moved to Coral Harbour to take on a position as an adult educator. She spent 25 years there.
Arvaluk joined her there and in 1998 they adopted two sons, Nuq and Aapaq. Arvaluk died last year.
For Love, teaching adult education was a very fulfilling job.
"It has got to be one of the most rewarding things there are," she said.
In that position, she made an effort to preserve the history and traditions around her by getting elders involved in writing down their stories. Eventually, those stories were put into a book and she used them as a resource for her adult education classes.
During her time there, she also brought in a teacher education program and a 10-month carpentry program, which five people graduated from.
She eventually got involved with politics as well, following in the footsteps of Arvaluk -who was elected as an MLA -by becoming a councillor.
"I always had a small political bone in my body. I learned so much from (Arvaluk)," she said.
"I loved hamlet politics."
It helped that Coral Harbour was, in Love's words, a progressive community.
"They were very quick to organize and get politically aware," she said.
"I really liked that. The community didn't sit back -they would tell you what to do and how fast to do it."
After leaving Coral Harbour, Love spent the past four years in Rankin Inlet as the territorial government's director of liquor management before she decided to retire and return south.
But the culture, the pull of the land and the many friendships she made will remain with her.
