Nunavut students’ grad trip to Europe a no-go: teacher

This Clyde River grads’ plane trip to Europe has been cancelled after they fundraised for the money needed for the trip. (PHOTO FROM GOFUNDME)

After raising more than $24,000 in one month from 211 donors online at the GoFundMe online fundraising site, five 2015 graduates from Clyde River’s Qiluaq School won’t be heading off to Paris, Canterbury, Normandy, Saint-Malo, and London, after all.

That was the plan, but teacher and organizer Heather McIsaac said late May 11 that the Nunavut Department of Education’s Qikiqtani School Operations had pulled the plug on the trip.

“We were informed of the decision that the trip was not approved via email from Paul Mooney (Superintendent) to our Principal (Ron Pate) and Vice-principal (Rebecca Hainnu); Trudy Pettigrew, (Executive Director of QSO) was copied,” McIsaac said in an email to Nunatsiaq News.

“I was shown a print-out of the email and that is the last I saw of it. I was also shown a printed copy of my denied leave request with the hand-written notes on the bottom indicating that students did not have passports and that there was no male or Inuktitut-speaking chaperone.”

McIsaac defended her students’ efforts and said she’d work to see the trip go ahead in 2016.

“These five students have worked hard every single day not only to achieve their academic success, but to rise above the hardships of living here,” McIsaac said on the GoFundMe page. “They have beat the odds in a town with high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, and school absenteeism.”

The students, Nora Aipellee, Katelyn Hainnu, Leah Palituq, Tyson Palluq, and Maybelle Enuaraq, “pursued this trip with passion and professionalism,” she said online.

But “we definitely have to respect the directions of our superiors and the decision they have made,” McIsaac said.

As for the money raised, $20,000 had to be turned over to EF Tours, the company through which the students and McIsaac had booked their trip, set to begin May 30. That will stay in an account for a year.

“We will lose between $2,000 to $3,000 because of cancellation fees, which hurts,” McIsaac said.

“We just can’t make it work. So we are left with the money in an account for next year -— which means that we will have to see where these five students are next year, and try to arrange to have them all come together in Ottawa, likely from various post-secondary sites or from home in Clyde River. There will obviously be many logistics and financials to arrange, but we are hopeful to make it work. Is it ideal? Definitely not.”

McIsaac said that watching the students cry and break down when they learned the trip was not approved “was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve experienced in my years as an educator.”

“Seeing them walk through the school with their heads held high in the days following gives me great pride. They are confused, they are hurt, but they are persevering,” she said.

As for McIsaac, she posted on teh GoFundMe site that she’s disappointed.

“I am frustrated, and I will say that I am still a little confused, ultimately, about the decision not to approve the trip.”

In June 2016, she said “generous and admirable supportive donors can rest assured these students will experience the intended goals.”

Nunatsiaq News has asked the GN’s education department for more information about why the 2015 trip was cancelled, but we have not yet received a response.

As for the disappointed Clyde River grads, they are among many Nunavut residents to go online for help with fundraising,

The others in Nunavut include: cancer patient Janice Simailak of Baker Lake, who recently reached out on GoFundMe because she is not receiving any Government of Nunavut assistance in Toronto where she has undergone surgery and is now enduring a six-month bout of chemotherapy.

She and her husband Darryl have gone into debt so she can get the medical treatment she needs and which she sought — but didn’t receive — back in Baker Lake.

They recently received a $2,500 donation from Andrew Porter of Gjoa Haven, who decided to give the Simailaks the money he won in a dog team race.

Other Nunavut patients stranded in the South have also appealed for help through GoFundMe.

A Nunavut woman, Uviluq Naukatsik of Rankin Inlet, who recently received a heart transplant, has reached out for help through an online crowdfunding campaign.

And a Gjoa Haven man undergoing treatment for cancer at an Edmonton hospital turned to online crowdfunding for money to help reunite his family.