On eve of retirement, Nunavut recreation leader recognized with award

Dawn Currie was reading out the names of recipients for the President’s Award of Distinction for final approval when she learned that her name was not on the list.

As the chairperson of the awards committee for the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, Currie was helping to organize the association’s April 30 annual general meeting in Montreal.

She was also nominated for an award.

“I thought, well, it’s nice to be nominated,” Currie said.

“I asked for a motion from the board and they were like, ‘Just one minute we have to just change something.’”

Currie found out then that she’d actually been selected to receive the award, but her colleagues were trying to make it a surprise.

Now, she is one of the three Nunavummiut who have received the distinction “for contributions to recreation,” according to a news release from the Recreation and Parks Association of Nunavut.

Currie is an outgoing executive director of the Recreation and Parks Association of Nunavut. She has been in the position since the association’s creation in 2012. Since then, the Recreation and Parks Association of Nunavut has become the largest in the territory for promoting sports and recreation.

Currie is retiring, but still “hanging around and … not willing to give up the reins,” she said, laughing.

That work includes helping the new executive director Aaron Robinson get everything in order before she goes.

Currie first came to Nunavut from Manitoba in 1991 for a four-month summer contract to Kugluktuk (Coppermine at the time) running summer day camps.

That’s when she says she learned about the “big northern heart” that welcomed her to the community. Soon she got a job at Cambridge Bay, where she stayed for eight years.

“The community made me feel like one of them,” Currie said, adding that when she goes back people still recognize her.

“I was walking back to the hotel and people were stopping their vehicles in the middle of the road and jumping out,” she remembers about a recent trip.

And it’s those connections that mean the most to Currie, she said, especially as she is retiring and receiving this award recognizing her service and commitment to parks and recreation.

One her favourite memories from her long career is from last June when she and about 30 of her students travelled to Toronto.

They went to the Blue Jays game, saw the CN Tower and did some training.

At the end of the trip Currie asked one of the participants, 24-year-old Moses, whether he liked his week there. He said, “Dawn, I had the best week of my life.”

“It kind of broke my heart,” Currie said.

“He had the best week of his life with me. But I am glad we could give him the best week of his life. I am really proud of that.”