Montreal Inuit skills centre threatened with closure

The Ivirtivik job and life skills centre, which serves Inuit in Montreal, celebrates the first anniversary of its official opening this week. But the centre, located at 4590 Verdun St. in Verdun, may be forced to shut down because there’s been no word yet about whether the centre, started as a pilot project, can count on receiving any more money from Ottawa. (PHOTO COURTESY OF IVIRTIVIK)

Jarvis Usuituaryuk of Salluit, who has lived in Montreal for eight years, has attended the Ivirtivik Centre in Verdun since it opened last year. He says it’s a place where he learns — and can share his concerns, most recently about the three missing from Salluit. (FILE PHOTO)

Only a year after its official opening, Montreal’s Ivirtivik centre may have to shut its doors, depriving Montreal Inuit of an important service for teaching life and job skills.

The centre, located at 4590 Verdun St. in Verdun, now provides service to 17 Inuit adults, among the estimated 1,500 Inuit who live in downtown Montreal.

But those who celebrated Ivirtivik last June 22 feel anxious today because there’s been no word yet about whether the centre can count on receiving any more money from Ottawa.

“I am worried. It would be difficult,” said Jarvis Usuituaryuk of Salluit.

Usuituaryuk, who has lived in Montreal for eight years, spent the past year at the centre upgrading his French and computer skills.

But Ivirtivik isn’t just about learning: the centre also offers understanding and companionship. It’s a place where Usuituaryuk can share his concern about his fellow Salliurmiut and the hunters still missing from his community.

Usuituaryuk and 16 other participants from Nunavik, Nunavut and Nunatsiavur come every day to the centre whose Inuktitut name means “a place to be whole in mind, body and spirit.”

Started as a one-year pilot project under the Kativik Regional Government, Service Canada and Emploi-Québec, the program is aimed at any Inuit who live in Montreal, no matter which region of the Inuit Nunaat they originally came from.

Now Ivirtivik is surviving on money from the KRG, waiting to hear about Ottawa’s contribution to their $2 million budget. That money also covers the operation of the Inuit employment office at 1050 Galt St. in Verdun — and pays for five staff members at Ivirtivik.

Students enrolled at the centre receive a minimum of $30 a day as a training allowance, or $45 a week if they’re on social assistance.

But more than money, the centre gives participants the tools they need to find and keep a job, and to build self-esteem and emotional strength.

They take classes and run the centre, as receptionists, translators and the like, to learn job skills. At the same time, they get help dealing with their personal problems.

That combination of offering hands-on education and tackling social issues is unique, says teacher Janice Callahan, a Kativik School Board adult educator for the past 10 years.

While Ivirtivik’s program includes upgrading in academics, there’s also a large emphasis on personal improvement: a psychologist visits the centre and art therapy has also been offered.

During the art therapy course, one participant started opening up about her past and writing about it, Callahan tells.

Over the past year, two others decided to go into rehab programs to deal with their addictions.

“The centre is here for some many aspects of their lives,” Callahan says.

Elisapee Pootoogoo of Cape Dorset, who has lived in Montreal for 10 years as a single parent with three children, says she’d be lost without the daily support she gets from Ivirtivik.

The same message comes from from Kitty Partridge, a former resident of Kuujjuaq, who’s called Montreal home for 22 years.

The single mother and young widow says Ivirtivik has improved her French and her literacy in English. At home every evening, she says she writes a journal as part of her daily routine.

A year after Ivirtivik started, these participants are getting the catch-up they need.

For some, that included learning how to start up a computer, says Callahan — a basic step towards employability.

But catching up isn’t quick, although Ivirtivik wants to focus on work placements for some participants over the coming months, that is, if the centre remains open.

“We were paving the road as we went during the first year,” says Callahan. “One year later we know what we can and can’t achieve. I think everyone would be lost if we close: we have opened up this box and said ‘we can help you’ and now we close it.”

Here’s the quilt made by the Inuit who attend Ivirtivik. All participants designed and made squares saying what the program means to them. (PHOTO COURTESY OF IVIRTIVIK)