Nunavut’s Kivalliq region fundraises for Hurricane Irma victims

The power of Hurricane Irma—the home of Cheryl and Leonard Forbes, longtime residents of Nunavut, lost its roof and suffered extensive damage Sept. 8. The Forbes retired to Leonard’s Caribbean home on the Turks and Caicos after they retired. (PHOTO/YOUCARING.COM)

This is how the Turks and Caicos home of Cheryl and Leonard Forbes looked before Hurricane Irma destroyed it. (PHOTO/FACEBOOK)

Nunavummiut, many of whom live in substandard housing on incomes that barely cover basic essentials, are once again ready to step up and share with those who are less fortunate.

This time, it’s to help those who lost everything when Hurricane Irma ripped through the Caribbean region into Florida last weekend, bringing storm surges and waves over low-lying areas and winds of more than 200 kilometres an hour.

To that end, a Rankin Inlet woman, Sally Kusugak, has planned a fundraising event: a Hurricane Irma Relief Fundraiser, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 16 at the community hall, which will include a penny sale, bake sale, and draws, with items and money donated by residents and businesses in her community of roughly 3,000.

“The hurricane affected everyone in the community, no matter how far away we are,” Kusugak told Nunatsiaq News. “This hurricane has led to a cascade of support.”

Other natural disasters that have generated a similar outpouring of help from the eastern Arctic include this past June’s tsunami in Greenland, for which students at Joamie Elementary School in Iqaluit raised money, and the 2005 tsunami in Southeast Asia for which people in communities throughout Nunavut—and Nunavik—raised money, in whatever way they could.

It’s estimated that Hurricane Irma killed about 20 people, destroyed essential infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, power plants and airports, tore through homes—leaving thousands without any shelter, food or water—and caused about $10 billion in damages.

For many living in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region, Hurricane Irma was more than shocking images on television and social images: it also affected people they know.

That’s because the victims of the hurricane include Cheryl Forbes, a former principal, now retired, at Leo Ussak Elementary School in Rankin Inlet, and her husband Leonard Forbes, a veteran North West Co. employee.

An online fundraising effort aims to specifically help this couple who, after retiring, returned to Leonard’s home community in the Turks and Caicos, an island chain with a population of about 35,000, spread across about 40 flat islands and coral reefs.

Hurricane Irma tore the roof off the Forbes’ modest, yellow cement-block home in Providenciales, an island in the northwest Caicos Islands, Sept. 8. The storm hit the island chain with a low pressure wave so intense that people actually felt its force bearing down on them when they tried to breathe.

According to information posted on Cheryl’s Facebook page, the Forbes are OK, but only the battered walls of their roofless home remain and their furnishings and other possessions have been blown around and ruined.

“They have some insurance, but this will not be enough to help them get back on their feet. Those of you who know Cheryl and Leonard know that they have done, and would do, anything to help others,” said Bill Belsey, a former Rankin Inlet teacher, who started an online campaign to fundraise for the couple.

“These are real people that we know—it’s one thing to hear about things on CNN, but now it becomes personal.”

Belsey, who has had some communication with Cheryl via Facebook, said the couple have lost everything.

“Their house is a complete write-off,” he said.

The couple’s main concern, when he heard from Cheryl, was to find drinking water and some clean clothes.

“Really basic things,” Belsey said. “They’re been in damp dirty clothes for days. They’re alive, but they are suffering shock.”

Cheryl moved in 1971 to Repulse Bay—now Naujaat— and started the first kindergarten there.

In 1975, on a trip to the Bahamas, she met Leonard, who came from Middle Caicos and was working there as a taxi driver.

They married in 1977 and, in 1983, returned to the North with their sons, reads an online biography of Cheryl at a gallery where she has sold handmade dolls.

After the couple’s retirement about 10 years ago and their return to the Turks and Caicos, Cheryl used her northern-acquired sewing skills to make dolls on the islands.

“Both she and Leonard, they were kind of people who would always be there for someone else,” Belsey said.

You can visit the online campaign to assist the Forbes here.

If you want to give to the Canadian Red Cross Irma relief fund, you can go to this website to make a donation.