Holiday passenger pick-up service sees biggest year in Nunavik community

Nez Rouge volunteer driver Kevin Dulong takes a selfie with his biggest carload over the holidays, when he picked up 14 passengers to transport in a Ford Explorer. This was Nez Rouge’s fifth year running in Puvirnituq. (PHOTO BY K. DULONG)

As Puvirnituq, population 1,800, grows in size, the community becomes harder to traverse on foot. A holiday passenger service picked up 1,500 Puvirniturmiut over the Christmas season. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

A volunteer-run passenger pick-up service ran its fifth and biggest year in the Nunavik community of Puvirnituq over the holiday season.

From Dec. 23 through until Jan. 3, volunteers with Puvirnituq’s addictions support organization Isaruit and the local Inuulitisivik health centre were on call to pick up passengers who needed rides to and from holiday celebrations in the sprawling village of about 1,800 people.

Over that 12-day period, volunteers transported a record 1,500 people to and from events.

The program is based on Opération Nez Rouge (Operation Red Nose), a southern Quebec-based program that transports drivers who have had too much to drink.

But in Puvirnituq, the service offered a lift to anyone who needed one.

“What we saw a lot of this year was families with children, travelling to visit family at the other end of the village,” said Kevin Dulong, a nurse at Puvirnituq’s Inuulitsivik health centre and Nez Rouge volunteer.

Nez Rouge came at a good time, while an extreme cold settled along the Hudson coast. The municipally run public transit system had also been out of service, since its bus broke down last month.

With no commercial taxi service in town, that means residents who don’t have their own vehicles have no other form of transportation.

The Northern Village donated a Ford Explorer to serve as Nez Rouge’s vehicle this year, which operated each night from about 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

About 20 volunteers, working in pairs, took turns doing the rounds.

“At one point, we had 14 passengers,” Dulong recalled on a busy night, Dec. 30, when he and his volunteer partner picked up a group of children en route to the community hall, which was hosting holiday activities.

Nez Rouge first launched in southern Quebec in 1984 to offer impaired drivers a safe ride home. The program now draws an annual volunteer base of 55,000, who pick up some 76,000 passengers every holiday season.

Puvirnituq is one of two communities where the local co-op store sells beer and wine.

Though the community has opted to close alcohol sales over the holiday season in years past, the co-op maintained sales this past year.

While Nez Rouge offers an important service to Puvirturmiut who are impaired, Dulong said the Hudson coast community could use a reliable transit service in general, especially during special events like hockey tournaments and festivals.