A Nunavut mother’s never-ending nightmare

Helen Tologanak smiles with her son Julian Tologanak-Labrie early last April when they met in the Kugluktuk airport. (PHOTO COURTESY OF HELEN TOLOGANAK)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Happy and smiling together, that’s how Navalik Helen Tologanak tries to remember her 20-year-old son, Julian Tologanak-Labrie.

As she sit in her living room, Tologanak wipes tears from her eyes. She crushes a Kleenex in her hand when talking about the shock she experienced last April 15.

That was the day Tologanak turned up at the airport in Cambridge Bay to meet her son, who was to arrive from Yellowknife.

But members of the RCMP were already at the airport — and they told her Tologanak-Labrie had jumped from an Adlair Aviation King Air en route from Yellowknife.

Tologank says she couldn’t understand what they were telling her at first.

When their words finally sunk in, Tologanak’s ordinary day was quickly transformed into a nightmare that doesn’t end.

Six months later, Tologanak-Labrie’s snow-covered skidoo is parked outside her Cambridge Bay home. His black work boots still stand in the entranceway, and inside, his Snowgoose parka hangs on a hook — sometimes Tologanak wears this parka just for the memories and lingering smell of her son that it brings back to her.

Tologanak still wrestles with many questions about why and how her son, Julian, who was fun-loving and full of life, opened the door of aircraft that was flying at about 7,000 metres, 180 southwest of Cambridge Bay.

Soon Tologanak will have some answers.

A coroner’s inquest into the circumstances around Tologanak-Labrie’s death is scheduled to take place Jan. 18 to Jan. 22 in Cambridge Bay.

The Nunavut coroner, Tim Neilly, and a jury of six will hear from many witnesses whose testimony might shed light on the events of April 15.

Tologanak hopes that the conclusions of this inquest and its recommendations will help avoid a similar death in the future.

An inquest into a death generally requires that a body be found.

But, in this case, Tologanak’s remains have not been located, despite two search efforts undertaken last spring in the rugged terrain around Bay Chimo.

While she steels herself for the coming coroner’s inquest, Tologanak said she also wants to mount another effort to find her son’s body even if it takes two, three — or even 10 years.

“Maybe the wind blew him,” she says, or maybe, as he fell, God or angels swooped him up before he hit the ground.

For Tologanak, that’s much easier than imagining her son somewhere out on the land.

After Tologanak-Labrie’s jump, Tologanak sat in Cambridge Bay and watched the snow fall, thinking how it that much harder that would make it to find her son, and imagining him clad only in jeans and black shirt, lying in the snow.

Over the past six months Tologanak tried to remember her son in many ways.

Smiling photos of Tologanak-Labrie hung on the walls of her living room — along with a hand-drawn, heart-decorated certificate from him to her for being “the best mother” ever — surround Tologanak.

On July 13, which would have marked her son’s 21st birthday, Tologanak and her family and his friends held a birthday party.

They lit a cake with 21 candles, which his son Felix, who turned two in October, blew out. They released 21 balloons into the air.

When Tologanak writes her column on Cambridge Bay for the Nunavut News North, she often mentions Tologanak-Labrie and his son, her grandson, who visits her nearly every day.

A book, and eventually a memorial are among Tologanak’s future plans to remember her son.

Meanwhile, the strength of elders, the support of her many friends and especially of her daughter Kim, 34, who lives in Edmonton, help Tologanak deal her grief.

The pain is still raw: the sight or sound of an aircraft bring back her shock and loss.

But she keeps on going.

Tologanak still hands out copies of a four-page, illustrated program prepared for her son’s memorial service to friends who weren’t able to attend the event.

Tologanak’s advice to other parents: “watch over your kids, no matter what their age, love them, protect them.”