Canada Post grant may hold key to future of Toonik Tyme, says president
123Go! board members plan to use funds to promote succession plan for organizing committee
From left, Pitseolak Alainga, president of the 123Go! board; Robyn Pavia, director; Adamee Itoncheak, director; and Mathew Alainga, secretary treasurer, help Mathieu Beauchesne, Iqaluit area superintendent with Canada Post, extract an oversized $15,000 cheque from a post office box at the Astro Hill post office on Monday afternoon. (Photo by Daron Letts)
A $15,000 Canada Post grant may hold the key to the future of Iqaluit’s longest-running festival.
Iqaluit-based non-profit organization 123Go! received the money Tuesday from the Canada Post Communities Foundation. The foundation provides grants to support youth-led and youth-focused events.
As the organizing committee behind Iqaluit’s annual Toonik Tyme celebration, the 123Go! board is approaching the grant as way to ensure the 59-year-old festival’s future success.
It also may plant the seed for the organizing committee’s succession plan.
“We would like the younger generation to take over Toonik Tyme in the future so that they can keep Toonik Tyme going,” said Pitseolak Alainga, president of the festival board, who has helped organize the event for more than a decade.
“This was our goal, to keep Toonik Tyme going so that we won’t lose the culture of Toonik Tyme and the Inuit culture of helping each other together.”
The Canada Post funding will assist the board in organizing youth-led events, which should help develop youth leaders for future festivals, he said.
Next year’s edition of Toonik Tyme will mark 60 years since the late Simeonie Alainga and the late Bryan Pearson, with other organizers, helped concoct the first festival in 1965.
They whipped up a slate of traditional activities designed to help Iqalummiut emerge from the dark cloister of winter to enjoy spring’s warmth amid fun and memorable activities shared with family and friends.
The festival has grown from a schedule of Inuit games and a community feast into a 10-day event that includes dogsled races; a tea and bannock competition; the iglumiutautiluni, or igloo-making contest; elders’ bingo and children’s games; and the Kimmirut Race with Qamutiq.
The festival is important to Iqaluit’s economy as a tourism event because it boosts demand for local services, said Geoff Byrne, economic development officer for the City of Iqaluit.
“Beyond the immediate festival, Toonik Tyme helps raise Iqaluit’s profile, fostering future tourism and growth in a region where tourism infrastructure is limited,” he said.
“The festival serves as both a cultural celebration and an economic engine, driving significant short-term benefits while supporting long-term economic development.”
The festival’s offbeat name comes from the singular term for an individual of the Tuniit, known to archeologists as the Dorsets.
The Tuniit inhabited what’s now Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic before the region came to be occupied by ancestors of today’s Inuit, known as the Thule, who migrated from what is now Alaska approximately a millennia ago.
Dates for next year’s Toonik Tyme will be announced before the end of the year, said secretary treasurer Mathew Alainga.
Given their aversion to cultural imperialism and ethnic cleansing I would hope the next generation to steward ‘Toonik Tyme’ would see the light in re-naming the event.
Kinauvi? Who are you? I think it’s up to Inuit on how we’d like to name our festivities. We are connected to it, also Inuit don’t view tunnit in a negative view – it’s part of storytelling while we were kids and the folklore type of view of it. I always see your post about name change but is it your call? Inuit in this community won’t change it, it’s part of us and Iqalummiut and those who are now gone, it’s a way to remember them as well.
So it’s okay for me to call you Eskimo? I mean, it should be up my group to decide what to call you, right?
Could you please just not?
I don’t understand how you jumped to that conclusion? It’s not okay to say that, I see you’re not welling to have a fair exchange of opinions, we obviously disagree and let’s leave it at that. Aa’ngii.
Poor litle ah,,,,,
Great to recognize the future needs of this important historic ongoing event. Youth are the key to continuing our traditions
Sorry, cancel culture was so 2021.
Killing people and appropriating their legacy is even less cool though
Let’s see the real Tuniit and walk down Apex road past Tuniq lake ascend the climes of the hill on the right hand side. Whoever can lift the boulder atop that hill shall be declared the Honourary Tuniq!
WIll it be the Postmaster?
Will it be someone from Team 123GO?
Or will it be an unknown tuniq?
Only time will tell. One thing is certain, the champion of this feat will be beheld with such resplendent glory and much honour. This is the true spirit of the festival.
So many funding streams available to support this annual festival. Put a bit more effort into branding and developing the spaces for the festivities and you’re good to go. Think 50th Anniversary Toonik Tyme. $15,000 for succession planning – seems like a waste of money. Get money for the events and make them worth it.