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magazine / so07
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September/October 2007 issue |
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FEATURE
People of the delta
Scattered across the vast reaches of the Mackenzie Delta, five small
Arctic communities are home to a mix of newcomers from across
the country and around the world and First Nations people still living
off the land.Will a $16 billion gas-pipeline project be their salvation
or their destruction?
By Lisa Gregoire with photography by Patrice Halley
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In-depth: The Mackenzie Delta
A Former Iqaluit resident Lisa Gregoire returns to the north to investigate the Mackenzie Delta and discover how the pipeline project affects those living in surrounding communities. |
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Simon Jozzy keeps a map of Africa on the wall of his
apartment in Inuvik, N.W.T., to remind him where
he came from and a caribou skin on the floor to keep
his feet warm. He tells a story like a maestro conducting
Beethoven's Fifth. His left hand waves and clenches,
while his right pokes the air with a pencil and periodically
whacks me on the knee during riotous re-enactments of eating
raw meat and fixing teeth north of 60. I don't mind. I'm
a Maritimer and part Québécois. We're all about the knee
slap in my family. The isolation of life in Canada's Arctic and
the fierce weather tend to instill a certain frontier stoicism
in people. Not Jozzy. He's the most exuberant dental therapist
I've ever met.
Jozzy's explaining how he got from Zimbabwe in 1980 to
within 100 kilometres of the Arctic Ocean 11 years later,
with stops in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Repulse Bay,
Nunavut. In Repulse, he eventually learned how to say
"open your mouth" in Inuktitut, but it never felt like home.
"I was so determined, but sheesh!" he exclaims, forehead
falling dramatically into wide, brown palms. "When I left,
it was not because of the people. It was the weather. Every
night, 'Whoosh!'" His arms flail about to simulate wind, then he shouts as though into a gale, "You could not open your
door!" Sure, winters are long and cold in Inuvik, but at least
there are trees here and most people speak English. Many are
like Jozzy: they came from somewhere else. "They love me
here," he beams. "And I love my job."
The walk to Jozzy's apartment had taken me past Inuvik's
new $40 million regional hospital, past children bouncing
on a trampoline calling out, "Whaaat's your naaaaaaame?"
but stopped short of the Mad Trapper Pub, where the
1970s-era rock band Trooper had raised a little hell just days
before my arrival. The present collides with the past on street
signs overhead: Mackenzie Road, Camsell Place and
Bompas Street. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, whose name is
pinned to the big river on the town's doorstep, was a
Scottish-born explorer; Julian Camsell was a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) boss in the 1890s (and the father of the
founder of this magazine); and William Bompas was the first
Anglican bishop to this region in 1884. Colonial exploration,
resource extraction and religious evangelism - that
omnipotent northern triad - have spawned communities
and, for better or worse, governed the lives of northerners
for centuries. In fact, they still do. But forces more powerful
than these threatens to make even greater alterations: a
$16-billion pipeline project and warming weather.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
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