Susan Aglukark gives Nunavut food banks a boost for the holidays

Singer-songwriter Susan Aglukark paid a visit to Iqaluit’s community soup kitchen Dec. 18 to help stock the Niqinik Nuatsivik Nunavut food bank in Iqaluit with a 300-kilogram shipment of food she brought in from the South. Food bank chairman Stephen Wallick, left, said the contribution will help cover supplies for at least two months. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

Iqaluit’s food bank is fully stocked for the holiday season, thanks to a big helping hand from Susan Aglukark.

The singer-songwriter brought enough food to the community’s Niqinik Nuatsivik Nunavut Food Bank to last through to the start of the new year — about 300 kilograms — and paid a visit to help unload and stock supplies with volunteers Dec. 18.

“It’s a just great benefit, especially at this time of year,” said Stephen Wallick, chair of the Iqaluit food bank. “We hope this becomes a long-term relationship with Susan.”

Also included in Aglukark’s deliveries were some 150 kilograms destined for Rankin Inlet, where they will go to Deacon’s Cupboard, a food bank run by the community’s Anglican church.

Aglukark, who now lives just outside Toronto, organized the donation through The Arctic Rose Project, which she created to “help boost morale” for aboriginal children and youth in “remote and economically challenged regions of the North,” she said.

This season’s donation is just the start of a Christmas food bank campaign that Arctic Rose, headed by Aglukark and her husband, will put on every year in Nunavut, she said.

“We have a critical mass problem in the aboriginal community in general,” Aglukark told Nunatsiaq News. “Housing is in a major crisis, food insecurity is a major crisis. This is all very clear to us, and it’s important these issues all get resolved somehow.

“But in the meantime, the children and the youth are always forgotten in this crisis. And when I visit and I work with youth, I thought, they are so resilient,” she said. “I decided I would find a way to help boost up the morale, and keep it up for children and youth – how do I do that?”

High costs of shipping to northern communities causes store-bought food to be out of reach for too many families, who rely on food banks in times of need.

“Children shouldn’t go without over the holidays. They shouldn’t go without, ever,” Aglukark said. “So I thought, let’s make this a Christmas food campaign for now.”

Aglukark first tried the idea last year, raising funds on her own for the purchase and shipment of box-loads of food to the Iqaluit food bank for a four-week period just before Christmas.

Her successful career as a singer and artist has brought her a large fan following, she said. This allowed her to raise enough funds through the sale of her own creations of Christmas cards.

“The response was very inspiring, and we thought we’ll just keep this going, and keep promoting it,” Aglukark said. “We raised money so fast, that I thought, why don’t we send one big skid of food instead?”

Support for the idea grew in leaps and bounds, starting with organizations in Oakville, Ont., where Aglukark now lives, to ever-larger donors.

An offer from Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. to cover all shipping costs this year allowed Aglukark to include a second Nunavut community in Arctic Rose’s Christmas Food Bank Campaign.

“That changed things for us this year,” said Aglukark. With Baffinland paying for shipping, she and her husband were able to collect some 450 kilograms of food in Ottawa, fly most of it to Iqaluit, and one-third of it — about 150 kilograms — to Rankin Inlet.

“It’s going to be very helpful for us,” Mary Fredlund, coordinator of Deacon’s Cupboard soup kitchen in Rankin Inlet, told Nunatsiaq News, Dec. 18. She expected the shipment to arrive the next evening.

“It’s wonderful that people are thinking about us at this time of year, and we really appreciate it,” she said. “And it’s nice for us as volunteers, because we’re not having to go scrounge around and look for food, and try to figure out how much we’re going to give people, or not going to give them.

“It’s a great Christmas present.”

Aglukark plans to extend the Christmas campaign to registered food banks in all three regions of Nunavut – including the Kitikmeot as well as the Kivalliq and Baffin.

Once that happens, her ultimate goal, through the Arctic Rose Project, is to supply the three regional food banks with regular, twice-monthly shipments of food from southern supermarkets throughout the year.

“The hope is that this takes on a life of its own,” Aglukark said. “That would be up to the food banks.”

Aglukark’s Arctic Rose Project seems to be hitting the mark so far, according to the chair of Iqaluit’s food bank.

“We believe there’s a lot more food insecurity in town than we see,” said Wallick. The food bank supplies about 500 Iqalungmiut every two weeks, and almost half of them are children.

“We’re seeing people that are more like emergency needs,” he said. “I’m sure there’s kids going to bed hungry in town, and for some reason or other the families aren’t coming to get food.”

The Niqinik Nuatsivik Nunavut Food Bank in Iqaluit offers food every two weeks out of the Qayuktuvik soup kitchen, from noon to 1 p.m.