Home at last

KIRSTEN MURPHY

Kathy Peddie holds a photo of Charlie Watt squeezing the hand of a teenage girl. The image was taken in Kuujjuaq in 1963, 21 years before Watt was appointed to the Senate. The girl in the photo is Peddie.

“There was nothing going on. He probably just grabbed my hand for the picture,” she says with a smile.

The photo is one of several documenting Peddie’s teenage years in Nunavut and Nunavik from 1961-65.

Peddie, 53, who lives outside London, England, recently spoke with Nunatsiaq News in Iqaluit after a five-day visit to Pangnirtung – her first trip to Nunavut in 40 years.

Seated in the living room of Joe Enook and Mary Kilabuk, she describes her 13 days between Iqaluit and Pangnirtung as historic and heartwarming.

“I never wanted to leave here in the first place. It’s been lovely to be so well received,” the green-eyed grandmother says.

Peddie was 12 when her diesel technician father, Ted Chamberlain, packed up his wife and three kids to move to Pangnirtung from southern Ontario in 1961. The federal department of northern affairs, as it was called at the time, hired Chamberlain to maintain the diesel power plant that introduced heat and electricity to the settlements.

“My mother nearly had a fit,” Peddie recalls.

There was no airport in the mountainous community back then. People came and went by float plane or ski plane, depending on the season. Mail was dropped by parachute several times a year.

The Chamberlains were not the only qallunaat in town in the 1960s. There was an RCMP officer, a few nurses, a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk, some teachers and Anglican Minister Sid Wilkinson. However, the British family quickly set themselves apart.

“We were different. We had such a strong bond. We felt part of the community and did everything the Inuit did,” Peddie says.

Her mother, Anne, worked part-time as a cook at St. Luke’s hospital.

A voracious reader who loved adventure, Peddie learned to hunt caribou and ptarmigan. Annie Kilabuk taught her to embroider duffel socks and gloves.

Peddie unfolds an envelope of photos and places them on the coffee table. One picture shows a beautiful Inuk girl wrapped in a red scarf.

“That’s Meeka Kilabuk,” she says pointing to the former Qikiqtani Inuit Association president as a teenager.

Also in her photo collection are pictures of past and present Inuit leaders including Peter Kilabuk, Abe Opik and Elisapi Davidee.

One person who repeatedly appears in photos is Geela Kilabuk Giroux, who died in 2000.

The two met as students in Pangnirtung’s one-room schoolroom in 1961. When a measles outbreak hit, the girls delivered water and food to people too sick to reach the hospital.

Peddie taught Giroux card tricks and knitting. Giroux showed Peddie string games and prime berry-picking patches.

“There was something that clicked from the moment we met and it carried on all our lives,” she says.

The two exchanged letters and photographs until Giroux, a suicide-prevention advocate, took her own life three years ago.

“I have all her letters tied with blue ribbon. Thirty-six bundles for 36 years. That’s one reason why so many people still remember me. Geela would read my letters to people. She kept my memory alive,” Peddie says.

The two women last saw each other in England in 1999 when Giroux was on her honeymoon with Dennis Patterson.

The last time they spoke was by phone, a week before Giroux died.

“She was over the moon because her daughter [Laura Gauthier] just had a baby and now she had three grandchildren. I had no idea anything was wrong,” Peddie says.

“All this time I’ve never really believed she was gone. I know the letters and the phone calls stopped but in my mind I just didn’t accept it. I guess that’s another reason I came. To visit her grave and say good-bye.”

A different kind of family

The Chamberlains were unique because they lived, camped and danced right alongside the Inuit, says Mary Kilabuk, Geela’s younger sister.

Although four years younger than the Peddie, Kilabuk remembers the legacy of the Chamberlains.

“They were open and didn’t make Inuit feel inferior. They had good friends, many friends,” Kilabuk says. Kilabuk accompanied Peddie to Pangnirtung this month.

“The older women recognized Kathy and said ‘piqatikuluk, my friend.’ They were so happy to see her. They had a lot of memories about the family and how welcome they felt when they were in that house,” she says.

Peddie says she never felt like an outsider. “I felt accepted. We had such a strong bond with the community. We did everything the community did.”

The Chamberlains’ three-bedroom house in Pangnirtung was a landmark. Not just because of its endless tea and bannock, but because of its red porch light.

“You could see us across town. A pink glow at the end of the settlement,” she says with a smile.

If a whale was harvested, the Chamberlains were invited to feast. The same invitations came for dances, Christmas celebrations and weddings.

Tensions existed, although not with Inuit. Fiercely independent, a young Peddie lost her temper at a teacher who hit students for speaking Inuktitut in class.

Peddie attempted to leave but the teacher barricaded the door. A scuffle ensued and the teacher’s false teeth flew across the room.

Peddie was suspended for two weeks. Her classmates skipped school until her return.

The teacher left town soon after, she says.

During her short time in the North, Peddie learned to speak and write Inuktitut fluently. Her linguistic skills were so good she listed Inuktitut as her second language when applying to McGill University in 1967. Her application was rejected because the post-secondary institution, which only accepted bilingual students at the time, only recognized French and English as official languages, she says.

Peddie lost most of her Inuktitut after an aneurysm in the 1990s.

The Chamberlains left Pangnirtung in 1963 when Ted was transferred to Kuujjuaq.

“My parents were blacklisted. They were told to leave because of our association with the community. The government didn’t want the Eskimos to get too advanced or see how much wealth other people had,” she says.

Peddie and her sister hid in the hills each time they heard a plane coming to pick them up.

After three flights over three weeks, Ted begged his daughters to say their good-byes and get on a plane. Begrudgingly, they agreed.

The family lived in Nunavik for two years. To this day, Kuujjuaq stirs fond memories for Peddie, but none as strong as her memories of Pangnirtung.

The blond Eskimo moved to British Columbia in 1968. She opened a successful restaurant, got married, had two children and got divorced. In 1975, she returned to England, where she was born.

She worked as a prison officer until her early retirement in 1989. Returning to the North has always been a goal.

As proof of her dedication to that goal, Peddie sold a collection of china teacups and figurines to the British television show Cash In the Attic. She made £2,000, the equivalent of $5,000, to pay for her trip.

During her 10 days in Nunavut, she visited elders centres, lunched with old friends and shed many tears.

“My regret is that we left here in the first place,” she says. “If we hadn’t left, I’d still be here today.”