PAGE 2 of an Elder's Story The young girls had grown up, and so had the community. Not long behind the old triumvirate came the Ministry of Transport. A doctor arrived in 1929, and the hospital was built in 1931. Chesterfield Inlet's first four nursing sisters, Grey Nuns of Nicolet, continue to serve in Chesterfield Inlet to this day. They arrived in August 1931, after a long and uncomfortable voyage from Montreal. The official history of Ste. Thérèse Hospital records their approach in the MS Ungava: "Now, with the naked eye, they can see the white red-roofed building of the Company, set on a rocky point jutting into the bay. Then the mission comes into view. It over looks a sandy beach, set between the sea and a freshwater lake. West of the hospital, they spy a house - the Doctor's - and, to the left, upon a rise covered with grass, hiding the ground (frozen the year round), are the RCMP barracks where reside two constables and Sergeant Wight, whose wife and three sons are also aboard the Ungava. Sloping down to the sea, a forest of poles and cables marks the site of the radio station that broadcasts the movements of vessels and storm warnings in the Hudson Bay." Chesterfield Inlet became the hub of a huge region that stretch north as far as Pond Inlet, and west to Gjoa Haven, taking in the entire coast of Hudson Bay. Nearly all the missionary priests who worked in that area came first to Chesterfield Inlet, to received their introduction to the language, the culture and the people they were here to serve. Father Roland Courtemanche remembers his arrival on August 15th, 1940, after three days in a small boat from Churchill. Life in Chesterfield Inlet, as he recalls it, was healthy and happy, but it was not without its hardships. "Mail came but twice a year, once in the ship in late summer, and once by dogteam in mid-winter. The Bay, the police and the mission took turns organizing the winter trip, by dogsled, to Churchill. The tradition was for the courier to leave on January 2nd, carrying our Christmas letters out. And he returned in early February with Christmas package from home". At the time, the mission was very much the centre of life in the growing community. Nearly everyone would gather every day in the basement of Ste. Thérèse Hospital, with the strict understanding that the games began at 6p.m., and not before. They played pool, ping-pong, checkers and cards, until precisely nine o'clock. "We didn't need to tell them," recalls Father Courtemanche. "They just watched the big clock." Leonie Sammurtok's growing family came to stay at the mission while Father Courtemanche was the priest in charge. Her husband, Victor Sammurtok, had been taken to south to be treated for polio. One of Leonie's sons, Leonard Putulik, began working around the mission. More than 40 years later, he's still at it. "I am grateful for what they have done for my family. When my father left, we had no more food, and the mission helped us. That's the reason I keep on working there." In 1949, at the age of 15, Putulik hauled chunks of ice to the mission's water tanks. He shovelled coal for the heaters. And when the priests travelled to outlying camps, Leonard went along as their guide and hunter. "I didn't make any money then, but they would feed me and give me clothes. After about three months, I started making 50 cents a day." As the mission grew, so did Leonard's responsibilities. He built a greenhouse so the priests could grow their own lettuce, radishes and other vegetables. He looked after the chickens. "They were a lot of work. I had to clean the chicken house, scrub the floor three times a week, feed them every day, make sure they had water, and pick up eggs. There were about 150 chickens." Centuries of Visitors Ever since ancient times, Inuit hunters have gathered on this low coastal strip on Hudson Bay at the mouth of Chesterfield Inlet - a long, narrow fissure that penetrates deep into the Keewatin Barrens, as far as Baker Lake. Many hunted seal here and moved on when the seasons changed. By about 1,000 AD, the Thule culture had emerged across the Arctic and moved down the Hudson Bay coast. The Aivilingmiut, who moved inland along the Inlet in caribou season, built houses not far from the present-day community; several hundred people are thought to have lived together at one such site. The Inlet itself looked promising to Qallunaaq explorers in search of a passage to the west. The English sea captain Sir Thomas Button arrived in 1612, and was followed by Luke Foxe and others. The Northwest Passage eluded them, but by 1719, the Hudson's Bay Company had arrived. The Europeans plied the coast in sailing ships, trading with the Inuit. They also plundered the virgin bay of its whales. In the mid-eighteenth century, Dr. John Rae came by as he search for the Franklin Expedition, and in 1882, Dr. Robert Bell conducted studies for the Geological Survey of Canada. The RCMP set up bases at Cape Fullerton in 1904, and at Chesterfield in 1914. But it was Father Turquetil who began Chesterfield's official history when he established a Roman Catholic Mission in 1912. Bay traders set up shop the next year. Chesterfield Inlet's annual shipload of supplies always included livestock in those days: young hens for the mission, and pigs for the Hudson's Bay manager. The pigs were fattened up through the autumn, and slaughtered as soon as the days turned cold enough to keep their meat frozen through the winter. "In the 1950's, the mission built the first school here, and then the power house," says Leonard. "The government built houses for some people. I noticed the community began to grow then. Airplanes started coming, to bring in mail and take patients down south. There was a single engine Norseman; I remember the pilots, Charley and Gunnar." (Charley Weber and Gunnar Ingebrigsten piloted Arctic Wings, the single-engine Norseman that did most of the flying for the Roman Catholic missions.) "Before it came in, I had to smooth out a runway for that airplane. I would cut the rough spots off the snowdrifts with a shovel. There was no way to light up the runway, so we would just take some old brown coal bags, fill them up with snow and line them up along the runway, to let the pilot know where to land. Most often it was on Mission Lake, behind the hospital. If that got too rough, then we would clear a runway down on the sea-ice." On February 1st, 1958, a Norseman crashed in fog not more than 50 km from the settlement. Everyone on board was thrown clear of the wreckage, but all were unconscious, and would have frozen to death except that a dogteam travelling across Hudson Bay ice caught their scent. The dogs forced their master off his trail and brought him to the crash site. Leonard remembers that day very well. "There was a police patrol returning from Rankin Inlet. The mine had just opened, and the police from here had to go down there on patrol. Nicholas Irkootee was their guide and his dogteam found the plane crash. Irkootee built an igloo for the survivors and he left the policeman at the crash site, so he could come into Chesterfield Inlet quickly to tell everyone. The MOT Bombardier took nurse out to get the passengers and the pilot. When they got back into town, lots of people were waiting to help carry them up to the hospital. The next day an army plane came with doctors and took all the survivors down south." There had already been a resident doctor in Chesterfield Inlet for 30 years, but Dr. Patrick was one of the crash victims sent south. He did not return, and a replacement was never sent. The nickel mine at Rankin Inlet, which operated from 1955 to 1962, brought change to Chesterfield Inlet. Chesterfield Inlet's population dropped almost overnight from about 250 to fewer than 100, as people moved to Rankin for the employment opportunities. Today, Chesterfield Inlet's population has climbed back up to just over 300. Chesterfield Inlet is no longer the hub of the Keewatin. The hospital is now a home for the severely disabled. The residential school closed its doors in 1969, as the government initiated community - based education across the NWT. Policing is now handled by the RCMP detachment in Rankin Inlet. Chesterfield Inlet remains a small and rather traditional community. There lingers a sense of its historic role, a feeling enhanced by the powerful presence of the Elders. Last winter, Leonie Sammurtok sat on her bed looking out the window at her community - her extended family. She feels detached now, and she's unable to go out. "It's kind of boring. In the old days, there was always something going on. Now that there are houses here, it's just boring." The window provides her final view of the Arctic's oldest settlement; the town she watched grow from its earliest beginnings. Today she sees much the same things as she would see in any Arctic community: a mixed assemblage of houses, some old, some new, and the same assortment of institutional buildings - the Co-op store, a hotel, the hamlet garage, a new school, government offices. They sprawl over a widening arc around the head of an indent in the Keewatin coastline. In summer Hudson Bay sparkles to one side, the rocky tundra dominates the other. In winter a blanket of whiteness stretches from the inland horizon, several kilometres across the frozen bay to the floe edge, where the open water is cold and grey. The picture has remained much the same, as the settlement developed to its zenith, and then retreated into its present quiet existence. Other Inuit Elders have memories of Chesterfield Inlet's formative days. But none has seen as much as Leonie Sammurtok, who watched the gathering of her people into a community. Her family grew large here, and her story is the story of Chesterfield Inlet itself.