A well-loved resident passes away

IQALUIT — People throughout the Baffin and beyond are mourning the loss of one of the region’s best-known and best-loved residents.

Joanasie Salamonie, 60, died in Cape Dorset late in the evening of March 7 as the result of a lengthy illness that had affected his health — but not his energies– for most of the past decade.

In the last years of his life, Salamonie worked tirelessly to help others recover from alcohol and drug addiction, using his own recovery as an example for others to follow.

Just last week, Salamonie had been doing work at a workshop run by the Inusiqsiuqvik treatment centre in Apex. He died only a few hours after having returned to Cape Dorset from Iqaluit.

Salamonie also worked for several years as the Baffin’s regional alcohol and drug counsellor.

An irrepressible raconteur and practical joker, Salamonie’s amusing tales and jokes usually rendered his audiences helpless with laughter. He often made frequent appearances on the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation’s Kippinguijautit program to tell stories and display his sunny ways.

Earlier in his life, Salamonie was a pioneer in the development of Inuit film and television, working with the Iqaluit-based Nunatsiakmiut film society until it merged with the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation in 1982.

As an actor, Salamonie played a starring role in Phillip Kaufman’s “The White Dawn,” a feature film shot in Iqaluit that was based on the James Houston novel of the same name.

He also starred in “Nanook Taxi,” a locally-made film written and directed by Ed Folger. In that movie, Salamonie played a hunter from Cape Dorset who comes to Frobisher Bay to work as a taxi driver.

On Aug. 24, 1971, Salamonie was one of 23 Inuit who created the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada at its founding meeting in Ottawa. He also worked as a land claims field worker for ITC and the Baffin Regional Inuit Association.

Earlier in life, Salamonie worked as an artist and had a close relationship with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset. He travelled widely, from Australia to Scandinavia to Alaska.

An Iqaluit resident for many years, Salamonie also served on Frobisher Bay’s village and town councils.