What made news in Nunavik in 2015: our annual rewind

Incoming chair of the Kativik Regional Government, Jennifer Watkins, left, hugs outgoing chair Maggie Emudluk after Watkins’ surprising win in November. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Nunavik gets a new police chief: in June, Michel Martin replaces outgoing Kativik Regional Police Force chief Aileen MacKinnon. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Puvirnituq musher Novalinga Novalinga and partner Juani Uqaituq finish in first place, holding onto a lead from day one of the race. (FILE PHOTO)

Ivujivik joins the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, 40 years after the agreement is originally signed, and celebrates with a photo July 20 of landholding directors, Makivik Corp. executives and two Quebec MNAs. (PHOTO COURTESY OF JEAN BOUCHER)

Throughout 2015, Nunavik’s leadership worked to grab the ear of their provincial and federal counterparts, looking to secure more housing and better services for the region of about 12,000 people.

Nunavimmiut welcomed new and old leadership; voters re-elected Makivik Corp.’s president to another term, while the region’s new youth association emerged with its new president, Alicia Aragutak.

The Kativik Regional Government saw a major shake-up when councillors elected Jennifer Watkins as its new chair, ousting long-time chair Maggie Emudluk.

In Nunavik’s 14 communities, residents and police enforcement alike continue to grapple with violent crime, particularly among young men.

Here are some of the top headlines from the region from the last 12 months:

January

• Five months after it was first announced, a temporary rent freeze for some of Nunavik’s social housing tenants finally comes into effect. Regional leadership asked for the freeze to be put in place until a review of the region’s rent scale could be carried out, taking into account Nunavik’s cost of living.

• Makivik Corp. president Jobie Tukkiapik holds onto his job when he is re-elected to a second term to Nunavik’s Inuit birthright organization Jan. 15. First elected in 2012, Tukkiapik wins a clear victory with 51 per cent support in the three-way race against Jobie Epoo and Robbie Watt.

• A young Nunavik woman sues the Kativik Regional Police Force for gross negligence, three years after a prisoner rapes her in the back of a police car. The woman had been left handcuffed in the police car with another male detainee, who was not handcuffed, while the officer responded to a third call.

• A report by Quebec’s bar association finds the justice system that operates through the province’s north, including Nunavik, does not respond to the cultural and administrative realities of the region. The report calls for more Inuit representation to help Nunavimmiut better navigate the system.

February

• A preliminary report by a Laval university economist shows Nunavik’s gross domestic product, or GDP, is rising rapidly thanks to the region’s small but growing mining industry. The reports shows that Nunavik’s GDP more than tripled over the last decade from $291 million in 2003 to $887 million in 2012, mostly as a result of Glencore’s Raglan nickel mine.

• The KRG council votes to terminate a senior police officer for unruly and dangerous behaviour. Councillors vote to dismiss the Kativik Regional Police Force’s deputy chief of operations, Tristan Greene, following an incident where he allegedly drank to excess and neglected to maintain control over his service weapon.

• The KRG adopts a region-wide plan to implement recycling and compost programs across Nunavik. The plan offers guidelines on a number of projects aimed at overseeing the disposal of plastic, hazardous waste, construction materials, vehicles, metal and tires — intended to increase the lifespan of Nunavik’s landfills.

March

• Nunavimmiut mourn the March 3 death of Eli Elijassiapik, president of Illagit co-operative federation, the Fédération des Co-opératives du Nouveau-Québec (FCNQ). Elijassiapik was 79. A renowned soapstone carver, Elijassiapik became the first member of the Inukjuak Co-operative Association’s board of directors when it formed in 1968.

• A three-day long armed stand-off in Inukjuak ends March 25, when police say a 24-year-old gunman turns the weapon on himself, suffering a fatal wound. Police say that during the first day and half of the stand-off, the 24-year-old held a 60-year-old woman and twin nine-month-old babies hostage until they were released from the home, unharmed.

• Puvirnituq, the community hosting the finish line of the 2015 Ivakkak dog sled races, also hosts the race’s top three finishers March 26. Puvirnituq musher Novalinga Novalinga and partner Juani Uqaituq finish in first place, holding onto a lead from day one of the race. Peter Ittukallak and Juani Nutaraaluk, also of Puvirnituq, come in second and Aisa Surusilak and Richard Surusilak finishes third.

• The Quebec government presents an austerity budget for 2015-16 to help recover from a 197 billion deficit. But it offers some goodies for Nunavik, including $63 million earmarked for Plan Nord development and $100 million in education and training money for northern and Aboriginal residents.

April

• More than 130 athletes, coaches and spectators fall ill during a weekend hockey tournament in Kangiqsualujjuaq. Tournament coordinators cancelled the bantam tournament after many of the players developed coughs, sore throats and headaches, which health officials later said were caused by nitrogen dioxide emitted from the arena’s Zamboni.

• Puvirniturmiut lose their long-time mayor and KRG councillor, Aisara Kenuajuak who dies April 12 of cancer. Kenuajuak was 67.

• An Inukjuak man is fatally wounded by local police after he attempts to enter the Kativik Regional Police Force station with a knife in the early hours of April 24. Police were not injured in the incident.

May

• As of May 1, customers of the Nunavik Financial Services Co-operative no longer have access to in-person banking services. That means the co-operative’s estimated 4,300 customers in Nunavik are almost entirely limited to online banking, besides basic cash withdrawals at their local co-op.

• Lawyers representing the Kativik Regional Police Force and its insurers say the force is not at fault for a 2011 incident in which a young Nunavik woman was raped in the back of a police car. That’s in response to a lawsuit the young woman filed in 2014 against the KPRF — and its parent organization, the KRG — for gross negligence.

• Nunavik’s social housing body announces housing allocations for 2016, but at 60 units, it’s less than half the number usually allocated to the region each year. That’s because Nunavik’s tri-partite agreement housing agreement with the provincial and federal governments has yet to be negotiated for the next five years.

• Nunavik’s Hunter Support program is vital to the region, but could use some tweaks, a program review finds. More and more Nunavimmiut depending on community freezers to eat, the review found, while harvesters say they would like to make a living off the land, and are frustrated that they can’t.

June

• Puvirniturmiut get a scare when a local student brings a loaded rifle to the community’s high school June 5 looking for another student. No one was injured in the incident, but it prompts the school board to develop stricter security measures in Nunavik schools.

• Nunavik gets a new police chief, Michel Martin, to replace outgoing KRPF chief Aileen MacKinnon. Martin, a former Sûreté du Québec investigator and the RCMP’s Canadian Contingent Commander in Haiti, is sworn into his new role June 11.

• A private twin-engine Piper 23 crashes just outside of Kangirsuk June 11, killing the pilot and two passengers. The passengers include Robert Drapeau, 48, who helped run a local construction company, and his son, Alexandre Veilleux, 23, from Val d’Or. The pilot was Jean Robert Corbin, 77, from Winnipeg.

• Nunavik’s Kativik School Board moves forward with plans to launch Nunavik Sivuniksavut — as early as August 2016 — a Montreal-based post-secondary program for Nunavimmiut, developed after the successful Nunavut Sivuniksavut based in Ottawa.

• A June 17 fire at a home in Puvirnituq kills two people: a woman and her infant grandchild. Quebec provincial police say the fire may have been started by someone smoking in the home.

July

• Puvirnituq’s new fire chief, Tiivi Qumaaluk, says the June 17 fire that killed a woman and infant could have been prevented if local firefighters had been properly trained on how to use their equipment.

• After a five-year long search, Nunavik health officials finally secure a location in Montreal for Nunavik’s new patient boarding home. The Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services got the go ahead from the province to award a contract to a Montreal firm to build and manage the new 143-bed facility, which will be located in Dorval.

• Forty years after the original signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the Inuit of Ivujivik join Nunavik’s land claim. People in Ivujivik, along with Puvirnituq, did not sign the treaty in 1975, in opposition to its extinguishment clause. Residents voted in a 2006 referendum to finally join the land claim.

• The KRG receives $26 million from provincial and federal governments to renew and upgrade satellite broadband service in the region’s 14 communities until 2021. The KRG says the money will fund Tamaani’s phase four, which will double home internet service speeds from 1.5 megabits per second to three megabits per second.

August

• An August 1 accident at a Hydro-Québec generating station in Ivujivik leaks an estimated 14,000 litres of diesel fuel into the Hudson Strait community. The power corporation sends crews to clean up the spill, but residents are concerned the fuel has leaked into its natural water system.

• Makivik launches the region’s new youth association, the Nunavik Youth Forum. It replaces the now-defunct Saputiit Youth Association, which folded after it was unable to resolve years of financial mismanagement.

• Nunavik leaders present the Parnasimautik report to a ministerial committee in Quebec City. Parnasimautik, the result of region-wide consultations, sets out priorities for the region, from the need to protect and promote the Inuit language and culture, to identifying clear rules for resource development.

September

• The newly-formed Nunavik Youth Forum fills its new board of directors by acclamation, including the acclamation of its new president, Alicia Aragutak. Louisa Yeates of Kuujjuaq is acclaimed as the youth association’s executive vice-president, while Aleashia Echalook will serve as the organization’s new secretary-treasurer.

• Nunavik’s transport department scrambles to fix issues that threaten to close screening stations in two of its major airports. Transport Canada inspectors flagged fencing and staffing compliance issues at the Kuujjuaq and Kuujjuaraapik airports, the only two in the region with screening stations.

• Quebec police investigate the sudden death of a young Umiujaq woman, Nellie Tookalook, found at home Sept. 21. Police later arrested a 26-year-old Davidee (Qavik) Novalinga and charged him with second degree murder.

• Hydro-Québec responds to another fuel spill, this time an estimated 13,500 of diesel that leaked from its Inukjuak power plant Sept. 14. With Inukjuak’s power plant located away from the shoreline and downstream of the drinking water plant, Hydro-Québec says there is no risk to the local water supply.

October

• Health officials host Nunavik’s first regional suicide prevention and healing conference in Puvirnituq Oct. 5, modelled after the Dialogue for Life conference hosted each year in Montreal. Sixty attendees earn their Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) certificates, the largest-ever group in the region to receive that training at once

• A tanker belonging to Arctic shipping company Transport Desgagnés spills an estimated 3,000 litres of fuel in the waters outside of Salluit while offloading fuel to that community’s fuel farm Oct. 7.

• The co-operative association in Puvirnituq is the second in Nunavik to launch local beer and wine sales. The decision to offer alcohol sales comes three years after the community voted to lift liquor restrictions in the community of 1,700.

• The New Democrat Party’s Romeo Saganash is re-elected as MP in Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou during the Oct. 19 federal election.

November

• With a new federal government in place, Quebec says it hopes to negotiate the extension of its northern maritime boundary, which currently stops along Nunavik’s shoreline, to accommodate future marine infrastructure projects. But Nunavut, which claims the waters beyond Quebec’s shoreline, says it has no interest in discussing the issue.

• Health officials launch a mass screening for tuberculosis in the community of Salluit, where more than 24 cases of the infectious disease have been reported since June 2015.

• Makivik premieres a new documentary it co-produced, called “Napagunnaqullusi” or “So That You Can Stand,” which follows the talks leading up to the signing of Nunavik’s land claims, the James Bay and Northern Quebec agreement.

• A new crop of KRG councillors elect Jennifer Watkins as its new chairperson Nov. 24. Watkins, a Kuujjuaq municipal councillor and health board administrator, surprised many when she won a two-way race against incumbent Maggie Emudluk, who had held that position since 2005.

• The KRG awards a contract for new satellite service that will almost triple the amounts of bandwidth available in Nunavik by 2016. The KRG’s Tamaani internet with finish its contract with Telesat and then partner with SES to upgrade its network from current speeds of 1.5 megabits per second to four Mbps.

• Police in Puvirnituq report that calls for police assistance have dropped since the community’s co-op began selling beer and wine in October.

• KRPF officials defend a decision to equip officers with high-powered rifles to use when responding to cases of active and barricaded shooters, noting that officers positioned outside a home may not be able to return fire with their pistol.

December

• Peter Murdoch, a founder of Nunavik’s co-op movement, dies in Montreal Dec. 9. Murdoch worked for the Hudson Bay Co. in communities across Nunavut and Nunavik in the 1940s and 1950s, before he helped launch Ilagiisaq, or the Fédération des Co-opératives du Nouveau-Québec, where he served as general manager from 1967 to 1997.

• A Kuujjuaq man is charged in the Dec. 18 stabbing death of another man in Montreal. Bobby Tukkiapik, 30, is charged with the second degree murder of a 32-year-old man, also believed to be an Inuk.