Kuujjuaq’s notorious bar told to clean up its act

KUUJJUAQ — On a busy night, drunken patrons at Kuujjuaq’s Inuit-owned Ikkaqivvik Bar loll around, half-passed out, with their heads on the table.

At closing time, they stagger onto their feet and push their way through clusters of children loitering around the doorway. Then they get into their vehicles and drive home.

This situation has got to change, Quebec’s liquor board says.

At last week’s review of the Ikkaqivvik Bar’s liquor licenses, Jacques Dufour, president of the Quebec Liquor Board, told the management of Kuujjuaq’s bar that it has until Dec. 21 to produce a plan that will preserve social peace and prevent laws from being broken.

Dufour’s suggestions for this plan include putting a stop to the over-serving of drunken patrons, hiring more bouncers, and perhaps installing security cameras.

The board said the action plan, to be developed in collaboration with police and social workers, must be an official undertaking. This means the bar’s directors must agree to abide by it.

The board may suspend the bar’s licence if it doesn’t clean up its act.

Application for second bar

For their part, police say they just want the bar’s managers to live up to their responsibilities.

The same controls will apply to the management of a new smoke-free sports bar that’s planned for a recently finished, $1.2-million extension to the Ikkaqivvik Bar.

Liquor board commissioners say it’s important for the community to stand behind the plan.

“Six hours from now we’ll be down South. We have no illusions about our power and credibility,” liquor commissioner Michael McAndrew told those at the hearing.”We expect and hope these people make a commitment to make this undertaking work.”

The same objective — bringing the community on board in the regulation of booze — also inspired a meeting scheduled for January in Montreal.

The meeting will bring together mayors and representatives from the Société d’alcools du Québec, the Quebec liquor commission, Canada Post, and police.

Their aim is to develop a strategy for dealing with the flow of legal and illegal booze into Nunavik.

Kuujjuaraapik and Kuujjuaq are the only two communities in Nunavik that have bars.

The bar and lounge are operated by the Kuujjuaq Inn, but they’re the property of the Kuujjuamiut Society, a development group that controls money and land on behalf of Inuit beneficiaries in Kuujjuaq.

The liquor board came to Kuujjuaq to examine a growing pile of infractions against the bar’s existing licenses, and to look at a request for an additional license.

60 bar-related offenses

This was the board’s first visit to the community since the review of the bar’s first application for a liquor license in 1981.

During the last six months, the liquor board has received notice of more than 60 bar-related offenses, forwarded by the Kativik Regional Police Force.

By law, the KRPF, as the local enforcer of Quebec’s liquor act, must submit these infractions to the liquor board.

Many people in Kuujjuaq said they thought police wanted the board to shut the bar down and that certain police officers, in particular, were behind this move.

Others suggested the liquor board would never would have come at all if George Peters weren’t president of the bar’s board. He is now in the running for the leadership of Kuujjuaq.

Peters, who recently lost a bid to become the community’s mayor, is a former president of the Kativik School Board.

But he resigned from that job in 1998, following an arrest for drug trafficking and possession.

Defense lawyers did not call Peters to testify on the bar’s behalf during the two-day hearing.

But many local residents were called to tell the board that they support the bar.

Witnesses, who included a social worker and other leading citizens, said they feared that levels of drinking at home would go up if there were no bar, children would suffer, and that sexual abuse and family violence would increase.

One witness suggested it’s not so bad kids for kids to watch drunks staggering around outside the bar because it’s a form of amusement for them — and they at least know where their parents are.

Some people also said that without the bar, bootlegging and rowdy house parties would increase.

“If you prevent people there [at the bar], they will go somewhere else to get it,” said George Berthe, Makivik Corporation’s corporate secretary.

Neglected, surly kids

But Capt. Carl Pépin of KRPF had a different opinion.

Pépin told of encounters with unruly, drunken patrons and packs of neglected, surly kids who huddle around the bar’s exits.

In April, police asked the bar to tighten up on security, stop serving drunken patrons and maintain a free taxi service to take patrons home.

But in spite of these requests, the bar’s opening hours were extended, the disturbances continued and the taxi service was cut back.

Pépin said police are uncomfortable handing out tickets to visibly intoxicated patrons as soon as they leave the bar to head home.

“That’s repression. That’s making criminals out of our citizens in Kuujjuaq,” Pépin said.

Pépin fingered excessive drinking — not the bar — as the cause of the social unrest.

“We have to get to the real problem. I’m not saying the real problem is the bar, but over-consumption,” Pépin said.

“The bar is a need, it answers the need of the population. There’s also a need for a legal establishment where people can drink in an orderly fashion.”