Toonik Tyme founder recalls 50-year-old Iqaluit festival’s origins

Mayor Bryan Pearson, then of the hamlet of Frobisher Bay, right, chats with John Diefenbaker, then Progressive Conservative leader of the opposition and former prime minister, and Gene Rhéaume, MP for the Northwest Territories, far left, in April 1965. Diefenbaker was in Frobisher Bay, as Iqaluit was then called, to preside over the community’s first Toonik Tyme festival as Honorary Toonik. (FILE PHOTO)

Bryan Pearson poses with his dog Kamik at his home in Iqaluit. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

As Iqaluit’s Toonik Tyme spring festival gears up for its 50th anniversary, few in the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit can dare claim to know how it all started any better than longtime resident and former mayor Bryan Pearson.

Frobisher Bay, as Iqaluit was first called, was known to very few outside of the Canadian Arctic in 1964 — other than Canadian and American military personnel.

The village of about 2,000 people had grown up around a military air base that had shut down the year before.

And, as the mayor of the time, Pearson recalls “Frobisher Bay in those days had nothing going for it.”

That’s when he and a small group community leaders decided it was time to create a spring festival, starting in 1965 — to celebrate the end of winter and promote the community internationally, Pearson said.

Members of the hamlet council, Inuit leaders, and Frobisher Bay’s lead RCMP officer, among others, first met in the fall of 1964 and settled on the name Toonik Tyme.

The name is a play on words that refers to the Tuniit, a people who lived in the eastern Arctic prior before the arrival of the Inuit about 1,000 years ago. “Tyme is the old English spelling,” Pearson said.

Frobisher Bay’s population at the time was a majority of Inuit, he said, with little in the way of communication with the outside world other than through CBC Radio, telex, and a telephone line that ran through the Distance Early Warning Line system.

For entertainment, there wasn’t much more than a small movie theatre.

“There was nothing else. No hockey, no TV,” Pearson said. “There was a great need for something — so we developed this idea. We anticipated games and things that would make Toonik Tyme unique.”

Obvious events showcased the expertise of Inuit culture, such as igloo-building, hunting, seal-skinning, and whip-cracking.

Others drew on the quirks of settled life — such as the honey-bag fling. Participants didn’t actually throw bags full of their personal sewage, but bags full of water.

Snowmobile races would be among the most popular events. The first ones were around the community, with a “Monte Carlo start,” Pearson said.

“The drivers had to run to their machine and start the thing, and race around over the hills. So you could stand and watch the race.”

Pearson and his fellow organizers of that first festival 50 years ago decided that Toonik Tyme should promote the obscure Arctic community to the outside world as well.

To accomplish that, “one of the important concepts of the new festival was that we would have high-profile guests who we would appoint as the ‘Honorary Toonik,’” Pearson said.

“The purpose of that was to bring an international focus onto the community. Because nobody had ever heard of Frobisher Bay then, other than a few military people, and a few DEW Line people.”

“Then we were fortunate to get a hold of a high-profile guy, who was John Diefenbaker — who had been prime minister.”

Diefenbaker’s party had lost the federal election in 1963. The former PM was leader of the opposition to a minority Liberal government at the time.

Pearson recalls greeting Diefenbaker, his wife and his brother, as well as then-MP of the Northwest Territories, Gene Rhéaume, upon their arrival at Frobisher Bay airport for the first Toonik Tyme in April 1965.

The festival would continue to appoint high-profile guests as Honorary Tooniks for the next three decades. Among them were Prince Charles in 1975, heir to the British throne, Governor General Roland Michener, and three commissioners of the Northwest Territories.

The celebrity guests would bring “their entourage, and the press, and we got all of the publicity that was good for the community,” Pearson said. “That began to put the community on the map. That was the whole purpose of it.”

Pearson said in a Facebook comment April 1 that he will become this year’s Honorary Toonik, and that he’s honoured to serve in that role.

Festival organizers found it was fairly easy to draw big-name bands and musicians to perform in Frobisher Bay as well, so long as they covered their airfare and accommodations in the community.

“For the bands, it was a big exciting gig, to be able to play in Frobisher Bay,” he said. “Because most Canadians dream of going north, and never get the opportunity.”

Toonik Tyme brought country band Chef Adams to Frobisher Bay for the first festival.

Montreal-based promoter Donald K. Donald helped Pearson bring others to the community over the years, including April Wine and the Spoons in the 1970s and 1980s.

Attracting Canadian hit performers was a mainstay of the festival through most of its history.

Many contests and activities from year one have also stood the test of time. Others, like snowmobile races, have gone through various changes.

Some years after the first festival, “I came up with the brilliant idea of the Lake Harbour (now Kimmirut) skidoo race — which in retrospect was kind of silly,” Pearson said.

“It was sponsored by Molson Breweries, to the tune of $10,000, and the skidoo drivers of course loved that.”

Racers would take off from a starting line teeming with spectators, in a cloud of smoke. Nobody would see them for a few hours. And no one would see them return either, as they had no way of knowing when the racers would come back.

“The skidoo drivers loved it, but as a spectator sport it wasn’t much,” Pearson said. Molson’s sponsorship also aroused controversy.

The Iqaluit-Kimmirut race has been part of the festival, off and on over the years. Organizers put the race back into the schedule in 2014, after an absence of several years, and promise to hold one for the 50th festival, so long as weather permits.

As Pearson sees it, Toonik Tyme’s success now depends on one individual — the president of the Toonik Tyme Society — who relies on volunteers.

“I think people have lost sight of the tourist development concept of Toonik Tyme. The problem is that it’s usually up to an individual to keep it going,” he said.

“The main beneficiary would be the city and its elements, businesses and hotels, who would prosper from a well-organized Toonik Tyme.”

Pearson pointed to other capital cities that put on big winter and springtime festivals, such as Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Quebec City, where governments recognize the benefit and take on a leading role.

“It should be done on that basis. There should be a budget, in the city,” he said, adding that the territorial government also has a role to play.

“Toonik Tyme, as simple as it is, and as limited as it is, has a major impact on the welfare and happiness of the people who live here.”