Kuujjuaq elder Dorothy Mesher remembered for work she did for others

Updated June 14 at 1:45 p.m.

Kuujjuaq elder Dorothy Mesher, who witnessed key moments in Nunavik and Labrador’s history all while raising 14 children, has died. She was 91.

“It was not a big surprise,” her son, David Mesher, said in an interview, adding she had been ill for some time.

“For 15 years, she was trying to get rid of all her belongings, saying she did not want to leave a mess behind,” he said.

“She was tough.”

Dorothy Mesher was beloved for the work she did in every community where she lived. Even in the hospital, she knitted for others.

This recounting of her story is compiled through the interview with David Mesher and an interview Dorothy Mesher herself gave to Kativik Ilisarniliriniq in 2023.

She was born in 1932 at a trading post about 10 kilometres from what’s now Tasiujaq. Her biological father, Arnt Carleson, was a Norwegian fur trader working for Revillon Brothers, a direct competitor of the Hudson’s Bay Co.

Revillon Brothers traders were shuffled across the Arctic every three years. For that reason, Carleson gave Dorothy to William Edmonds, his friend at the Hudson’s Bay Co., who with his wife raised her as his own.

From left, Freddy Edmonds, Dorothy Mesher, Susan Edmonds and William Edmonds sit on a dogsled in a picture taken around 1938. (Photo provided by David Mesher)

As a family, they travelled between Killiniq and Kuujjuaq, visiting trading posts in the region.

That was her life until two years before the start of the Second World War, when she saw her first aircraft, an American military float plane scouting the area for land near current-day Kuujjuaq that could accommodate a landing strip.

That strip, like others across the North, were used by American warplanes to refuel on their way to Europe.

David Mesher said the Americans left behind essentials like cans of food and supplies for locals to take.

“They used to get sealift,” he said of the locals, and “everything would be put in wooden crates, wrapped with metal wires.”

Dorothy’s older stepbrother cut the wire off the wooden crates and made knitting needles for her.

“It was her first Christmas present, when they were living in a tent,” said her son.

To practise, Dorothy took the clothes the military threw out, removed the yarn and made pairs of socks from it.

“Her first pair, one sock was bigger than the other,” said David Mesher, laughing.

Sewing and knitting became one of her passions.

After her brother drowned in the Koksoak River in 1950, the family moved to another American base, this time in Goose Bay, Labrador, where Dorothy married Victor Mesher and started a family.

The Americans offered her money to make parkas for them. Word of her skills got out, and she was asked to design parkas for the 1976 Arctic Winter Games in Schefferville, Que.

Dorothy told Kativik Ilisarniliriniq she made 35 parkas for $20 apiece.

But with few relatives nearby, the family moved back to Kuujjuaq in 1979.

In addition to her sewing, she worked as an interpreter at the hospital there, provided social services at the group home and taught kindergarten through Grade 3 at the school.

She continued as a social worker and was recognized with a certificate in social work and community practices from McGill University.

Dorothy Mesher, right, shows then-governor general Michaëlle Jean, left, and Jean’s husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, her autobiography titled “Kuujjuaq: Memories and Musings,” in the early 2000s. (Photo provided by David Mesher)

She kept sewing, too, providing hundreds of pairs of socks to Kuujjuaq’s hunter support program every year. Her children also received them.

“I remember being out when there was a blizzard, just lying in a snowbank watching the storm, real warm, real comfortable,” said David Mesher.

He said his mother was a strong woman who loved having kids around her. “It made her feel younger,” he said.

He said by the last count done about 10 years ago, Dorothy had more than 250 descendants including her children and their own children and grandchildren.

“What makes me the proudest are my children,” she said in her interview, also “my grandchildren and great grandchildren.

“All of them.”