Larga Kitikmeot: where everyone smiles

Cindy Tucktoo gives little Emma a snack in Larga Kitikmeot’s dining room. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Country foods and good, homemade hot meals are always on the menu at Larga Kitikmeot. Here, cook Sarah Narlungaq prepares soup for an evening meal.(PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The Larga Kitikmeot patient boarding home stands at the corner of Franklin and Matonnabee streets in Yellowknife. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

YELLOWKNIFE— Three things strike a visitor to Larga Kitikmeot, the new, $6-million patient boarding home for Inuit who travel from the Kitikemot region to receive medical care in Yellowknife.

First, the grey, white and red brick three-storey building at the corner of Franklin and Matonnabee Streets near downtown Yellowknife, which opened late last year, is still sparkling clean inside and out, like a brand-new car.

Then when you enter, you’re struck by its tranquility: there’s no one milling in the halls. You can’t even hear the traffic speeding by outside.

Finally, there are the smiles. Everywhere in Larga Kitikmeot, people smile.

During a recent afternoon visit, it was impossible to find someone who wasn’t smiling, from the receptionist Tobi Qirngninirq to new arrival Jolene Apsaktaun of Kugaaruk.

Even in the kitchen, cook Sarah Narlungaq smiles as she stirs a soup and Tina Qirngnirk grins as she unloads a dishwasher.

You’d think Judy Anavilok, who’s in charge of taking care of the 56 residents at Larga Kitikmeot would be tearing out her hair trying to figure out who has to go where amd when.

But even she can sit back and smile.

This upbeat mood is exactly what manager Casey Adlem wanted to see when she was asked last year to take on the job of organizing the new patient boarding home.

“I love my job even more a year later,” says Adlem, a former Kitikmeot region director of health and social services who worked as a teenager at the Lena Pedersen home, Larga Kitikmeot’s aged and cramped predecessor in Yellowknife.

Of course, like anything new, even a new vehicle, there were a few kinks to work out during the first months: the elevators stopped working briefly during the first day and there have been staff turnovers.

But now, the elevator — much appreciated by elders — works like a charm, and, out of 23 workers, more than half now originally come from the Kitikmeot or other places in Nunavut.

And residents, who can fill out evaluation forms before they leave and often send thank-you cards afterwards to Adlem, say they enjoy their stay — even though they all come there for medical reasons.

But these positive feelings are no surprise to Adlem who says all staff members try to make the patient residence feel like a home.

There are no signs telling clients what to not do. Instead there’s a little folder in each room, similar to the kind you get in a hotel.

“People feel like it’s their home,” Adlem said — or maybe even better than home because Larga Kitikmeot offers privacy, three nutritious meals a day, visits with relatives and friends, as well as daily outings for shopping.

A zero-tolerance policy is in effect for drugs and alcohol, which Adlem says people increasingly respect. That’s in spite of the presence of many popular bars in downtown Yellowknife.

This state of affairs appears to counter the fears of some in Montreal’s Villeray borough who maintained that Inuit would be out partying and bringing in crime if the Nunavik House for Nunavimmiut receiving medical care in Montreal relocated to their neighbourhood.

If there was any fears about the residence being built in this residential neighbourhood, Adlem said she didn’t hear about them — and the local MLA even came to celebrate the residence’s opening, bringing a helium-balloon blower to liven up the festivities, she said.

When someone does break the zero tolerance policy, it’s handled on a case-by-case basis.

Adlem says she tries to be flexible and pretend she’s walking in the shoes of the people who stay at Larga Kitikmeot.

“Let’s be inclusive instead of exclusive” is her motto.

During its first 10 months of operation, Larga Kitikmeot has often been full, with 56 residents in its 28 hotel-like double bedrooms.

Each room as its own flat-screen television, phone and wi-fi internet connection, and every resident receives a key for the room and a locker to store valuables in.

There are play areas on each floor and an outside sitting area for smokers.

Larga Kitikmeot also provides airport pick-ups, transportation to medical appointments, trips to stores and even the delivery of meals to the hospital, when required.

Two vans pick up and drop off patients in an insulated indoor garage area so no one waits outside during the winter.

Like the other Larga patient boarding homes in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Ottawa, Larga Kitikmeot is a joint venture between Nunasi Corp., which is owned by the Inuit of Nunavut, and a regional Inuit association— in this case, the Kitikmeot Corp..

The Nunasi-KIA joint venture won the GN’s multi-million dollar, 20-year boarding home contract from T.C. Enterprises Ltd., headed by well-connected Yellowknife businessman Tony Chang.

For years the GN had dragged its heels on building a new patient boarding home in Yellowknife because the Kitikmeot regional health centre in Cambridge Bay, which opened in 2005, was supposed to reduce the need for medical treatment and patient care in Yellowknife.

But Yellowknife continues to require 9,000 and 10,000 bed nights a year for patients and escorts.

Larga Kitikmeot plans to celebrate its first birthday in November.

And during this first year, Adlem says she’s accomplished what she wanted, with Larga Kitikmeot now a comfortable, calm place that people can call their home away from home.