Honourary Toonik calls traditional title ‘something special’

Tommy Inookee won’t be dressed up in sealskin and caribou like the Toonik who used to attend the annual Toonik Tyme festival, but he says he’s “lucky” to have been selected this year’s Honourary Toonik.

“It’s something special to hang on to our tradition, that we still have the Toonik as a participant in the Toonik Tyme festival,” he said in a phone interview Friday.

Inookee, a 65-year-old corrections worker in Iqaluit, was named the Honourary Toonik at the festival’s opening ceremony Thursday night.

When the festival began in 1965, the Order of the Honourary Toonik was awarded to invited guests, including former prime minister John Diefenbaker and King (then just a prince) Charles. In recent years, it has gone to an outstanding volunteer or someone who shows community spirit, the festival’s website says.

Toonik Tyme is named after the Tuniit people, also known as the Dorsets, who lived in the eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland before the arrival of today’s Inuit, who came from Alaska about 1,000 years ago.

Inookee said he remembers when the Toonik would show up at events near the Road to Nowhere, dressed in caribou and sealskin hides. He arrived on a qamutik with one dog to greet the people at the activities.

“They don’t do that now,” Inookee said. “It wouldn’t hurt to try to do that one day.”

Having lived on the land, he said he knows a lot of Inuit traditions. He teaches hunting and how to use Inuit tools to inmates as part of the Department of Justice’s skills program.

When he’s not working for the Justice Department, he’s a hunter and raises his 11-year-old son Jaxon Thomas Inookee.

Inookee was born and raised in Iqaluit. He was a boy of about five when Toonik Tyme — which is celebrating its 60^th anniversary this year — began. He said he has fond memories of whipping contests and harpoon-throwing competitions he used to see.

He recalled an elder — an expert with the whip — putting on a show by setting up a stack of cans and telling the crowd he would knock just the top one off with his whip.

“Of course, like a magician or a shaman, he would do that.”

Inookee is no stranger to the whip and other Inuit traditions, himself. When he lived on the land, he used to borrow the dog team his brother kept.

In his teens, he lived at an outpost camp on Allen Island, about 60 kilometres southeast of Iqaluit. That’s where he learned to hunt and other aspects of traditional Inuit lifestyle.

The Honourary Toonik title comes with a lot of respect. Inookee said he’s getting used to people calling him “Mr. Toonik” and was surprised when a staff member bowed to him.

He said he planned to head to the children’s snowmobile races on Friday afternoon to greet people there.

The City of Iqaluit declared Friday a civic holiday to give people the chance to enjoy the first full day of the festival, which runs until April 20.