Missionary to the Inuit Part 2″

Continued from last week.

Edmund Peck spent four periods of two years each at Blacklead Island.

It was a spartan and disciplined life. Here was his schedule for most days: "Rise 6:45 a.m., light fires, prepare breakfast; breakfast 8 a.m.; prayers 8:30 a.m.; study of Eskimo language from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.; visiting and preparing Eskimo addresses from 10 a.m. to noon. Then came the preparation of dinner. Dinner 1 p.m.; private reading and study from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.; school for children from 3 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.; visiting and exercise from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m.; after tea, prepare for evening meeting, which is at 7:30 p.m.; after the meeting, study of the language with Eskimos; prayer at 10 p.m.; then private reading and devotion till 10:45 p.m."

The schedule for Sunday was different, calling for ­religious services in his small church. Other than that, this rigorous schedule was broken only by the occasional sled

trip to Kekerten, a whaling station across the sound from Blacklead Island.

On each of his one-year furloughs to England, he continued working to oversee the publication of church literature in syllabics, lecture publicly about the importance of his mission to the Inuit, and lobby the mission society for the mission's continuance.

Other missionaries, whose terms generally overlapped Peck's, maintained the mission during his absences. Their names are well-known in the history of northern missions: Charles Sampson, Julian Bilby and E.W.T. Greenshield.

Peck left Blacklead Island permanently in 1905. The following year, with the departure of Greenshield, the mission was left with no resident non-native minister.

But Peck and his colleagues had trained a number of Inuit catechists, the most well-known being Luke Kidlapik and Peter Tooloogakjuaq. When Greenshield returned on a summer voyage in 1909, on which he was shipwrecked and forced to spend the winter, he discovered that these native catechists had faithfully continued the work of the mission.

Peck moved his family to Ottawa, Canada, where he became Superintendent of Arctic Missions for the Diocese of Moosonee. Occasionally he traveled north on supply vessels in the summer, usually to Hudson Bay. His eyesight failed and, almost blind, he retired in 1919. He died in Ottawa in 1924.

Although Peck is often credited with adapting Evans's Cree syllabics to Inuktitut, that innovation had already been made by Horden and Watkins.

Peck's great accomplishment was proselytizing among the Inuit, promoting the use of the syllabic orthography, and translating and publishing scripture material in Inuktitut. He promoted literacy in syllabics.

Following his lead, all Anglicans who followed him in the eastern Arctic used the syllabic orthography, as did Roman Catholic missionaries.

The syllabic orthography is still used today in Arctic ­Quebec and all but a few western communities of Nunavut. Occasionally debate occurs about its continued efficacy in promoting Inuktitut literacy in an increasingly bilingual population, but such debates are usually short-lived – the syllabics that Peck promoted are viewed by now as being the traditional Inuit way of writing in the eastern Canadian Arctic.

Peck's contributions to the study of the Inuktitut language are contained in two works: his Eskimo Grammar, published by the Geographic Board of Canada in 1919, and subsequently reprinted four times, and his Eskimo-English Dictionary, published posthumously in 1925.

Inuit remember Peck, whose Inuktitut name, Uqammak, means "the one who speaks well," as a dogmatic and tenacious man, at once stubborn yet caring, stern yet friendly.

Non-native history remembers him as "The Apostle to the North". In 1877, one year after Peck's arrival in Canada, Bishop John Horden wrote to the Church Missionary Society about Peck, "I thank the Committee for a man; I thank them doubly for the man; a better selection could not have been made."

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.