Cassette dating to 1920 believed to be oldest recording of Inuktitut

When Capt. Robert Frank, an air force reservist from Montreal, returned to the North this summer for Operation Nanook, he brought a gift for Kimmirut.

Frank donated a cassette to Kimmirut's visitors centre of what he believes is the oldest audio recording of Inuktitut, made by Rev. Edmund Peck, an Anglican missionary who adapted the syllabic writing system from Cree into Inuktitut.

"To me [the recording] is of great importance to understanding the history of Nunavut and Nunavik over the last 150 years," Frank said in an interview.

Peck travelled through the Eastern Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, establishing missions as far north as Blacklead Island in Cumberland Sound.

Tommy Akavak, manager of Kimmirut's visitors centre, said Peck helped open an Anglican mission in the community in 1909.

Akavak said the tape "brings back good memories" for elders.

"I'm going to have [the tape] available here for people to listen to and maybe make some duplicates for the elders," he said.

Frank said Peck made the recording around 1920 after he had left the North due to poor health. The album, which Frank found at the Anglican Church Archives in Toronto, contains readings from the Bible, hymns and prayers.

The tape is made from some scratchy old 78-rpm records that Frank stumbled upon in 1981, when he was writing an honours thesis on the introduction of literacy in Inuit communities in the Eastern Arctic.

Frank lived in Iqaluit for a couple of years in the early 1980s and said he left behind of a copy of the tape when he moved back south in 1983, but no one knows what became of that first copy.

Now a public affairs officer for the Canadian Forces, Frank dug out another copy of the tape when he learned he'd be going to Kimmirut for the military's Operation Nanook exercise, which took place last month.