Clarkson’s legacy to be made in Nunavut

JOHN THOMPSON

The women’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup will be made in Nunavut, by students and graduates from Arctic College’s fine arts and crafts program.

Governor General Adrienne Clarkson announced last week that she will commission a trophy for women’s hockey as a legacy as her term ends.

That wasn’t news for Beth Biggs, senior instructor for the fine arts and crafts program. She first received a phone call from Clarkson weeks earlier, in late August, asking if she would commission a trophy with the help of her class and graduates.

“Even when she talked to me, I don’t think it sunk in that I’d be making the women’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup,” Biggs said.

Biggs broke the news to her class shortly before the official announcement on Sept. 14, beginning by asking how many were hockey fans, then mentioning how a new cup would be made for the top women’s team.

“Then I said, ‘And you’re the ones going to make it.’ They just roared. Everyone’s just on Cloud Nine.”

Clarkson follows in the footsteps of another governor general, Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley, who in 1892 bought a decorative bowl from a London silversmith, which became known as the Stanley Cup.

Just what the new cup will look like is still unknown. The class will spend the fall coming up with draft designs, and the final design needs to be approved by Clarkson.

“This will be the dreaming stage,” Biggs said. They aim to begin production in January, and to finish the trophy by May.

Each of the 10 students in the program, along with the eight or so graduates in town, will contribute something unique, Biggs said.

“At the end of the day, I want every single one to be able to point and say, ‘That’s the part I did.’”

Mathew Nuqingaq is one graduate who will likely help bang the new trophy into shape with his Teflon hammer.

It won’t be the first prestigious project he’s taken on — years earlier, he helped fashion a ring of silver loons that forms the crown of the ceremonial mace found inside the Nunavut legislature. Now a full-time silversmith, his work has appeared in exhibitions in Japan and across Europe.

Still, there’s something special about being chosen by the governor general to create a new hockey trophy, he said. “It’s a huge honour for us.”

He’s met Clarkson several times. On one occasion he helped make a gift for her — several silver fish — during one of her past visits to Iqaluit.
“She always seems to remember everyone,” he said. “She always has a little bit of time to talk. We consider her as a friend.”