Montreal Christmas feast offers food, fellowship to Inuit

After a wait of several hours, everyone who showed up at the Dec. 10 Christmas feast for Inuit in Montreal was overjoyed to line up for a meal which included ptarmigan stew, bannock, caribou and char. (PHOTO BY EMANUEL LOWI)

Jacob Partridge, originally from Quaqtaq, and Nutaraaluk Jaaka, originally from Kangiqsujuaq, who works for Kativik School Board in Montreal. Both regularly attend Montreal Inuit community events. (PHOTO BY EMANUEL LOWI)

EMANUEL LOWI

MONTREAL — “FOR SALE” reads the big sign on the huge main doors of the Imani Family and Full Gospel Church in Montreal’s Little Burgundy neighbourhood.

The house of prayer has fallen on hard times. Attendance to services has become sparse and the building — very large and perhaps once proud — is showing its age.

One of its smaller halls is rented out to a Muslim group for use as their mosque space, made cozy with carpets for barefooted worshippers.

But the church is also the last refuge of Montreal’s most needy Inuit.

On a Saturday evening every few months, first a straggle, then a stream of northerners emerge from wherever they’ve found shelter in corners of Montreal to converge on the church’s basement.

This past weekend marked the Association of Montreal Inuit’s annual pre-Christmas feast and nearly a hundred people made it there.

Among them were patients passing through the South for the medical care they cannot obtain in their communities, the rounds of staggered hospital appointments filled with long stretches of waiting at the YMCA residence nearby in downtown Montreal.

There, too, at the holiday celebration came the Inuit who have stayed in the big city for years, the physical scars of their battles with urban life all too evident, the emotional scars of their lives on earth obvious too.

Some of the Inuit were accompanied by a sketchy crew of non-native hangers-on, the sort of folk who may never ride a snowmobile through town on a winter’s night or eat raw fish with delight.

Attendance at the once monthly feasts is down too.

Once, a few years ago, the gatherings would attract two or three hundred people and, at holiday time, those Inuit with good jobs in regional organizations — and the elected leaders too — would mingle and greet each other in the spirit of the season, just like back home.

But, as it is Christmas — or nearly so — there is always a special place for children and for elders at the Montreal gathering.

This year was no exception, even if the number of children were fewer than before and no jolly Santa Claus arrived to gift a toy to every girl and boy.

There was no Christmas tree adorned with lights either.

One would like to imagine that St. Nick and the absent politicians are still hard at the tasks of their northern workshops, and simply couldn’t get away before the big holiday comes, finally, on the evening of Dec, 24.

And trees are mighty scarce up North.

Whatever was there, and despite what was missing, everyone who made it to the Montreal Inuit Christmas feast this year agreed on one thing: the food was great.

A cup of hot ptarmigan stew in darkest winter does wonders for the ailing spirit. The chunks of caribou meat, the frozen char, the deep-fried bannock, the last of summer’s berries were tastes of faraway home and reminders of the love of family and of the people who mean so much at this time of year.