Salluit man calls for new use for old rehab centre
One year after its closure, the vacant Sapummivik rehabilitation centre remains boarded up
The Sapummivik Rehabilitation Centre, built in 1999 atop a hill in Salluit, sits vacant a year after it was closed and boarded up. (Photo courtesy of Michael Cameron)
One year after Salluit’s Sapummivik rehabilitation centre closed, community members are asking that something be done with what they say is abandoned but still usable infrastructure.
Michael Cameron, a volunteer firefighter in Salluit, said in a videoconference interview that the building could serve many purposes “instead of letting it rot, and then having to be demolished down the road.”
The building is boarded up, even though the Tulattavik Health Centre website lists it as a service it provides.
Tulattavik Health Centre director Larry Watt said in an email it closed the building in December 2023 because of “extremely poor infrastructure” and because it was deemed unsafe.
The Sapummivik rehabilitation centre was built in 1999 to provide high-security beds for Nunavik young people who had broken the law and required full-day supervision and isolation.

Boards are set up on the front door of the Sapummivik Rehabilitation Centre in Salluit. (Photo courtesy of Michael Cameron)
The building had capacity for 14 boys between the age of 12 and 18 from both Ungava and Hudson coasts. It was staffed by six educators, one psychologist, a psycho-educator, cook, teacher and an executive secretary, according to the Tulattavik Health Centre website.
When it closed in 2023, all its youth and staff relocated to a rehabilitation transit site. In January 2024, they were moved to Kuujjuaq, Watt said.
But during the pandemic in 2020, clients at the centre were “doing havoc and breaking out” of the rehabilitation centre, Cameron said. He was asked to find people who had escaped, both for their own safety and the community’s.
“They were up in the attic, down in the crawlspaces,” he added. “It was a safety hazard.”
After this ordeal, Cameron asked to take a look inside and said his inspection found the inside was “not so nice.”
“The youth were held in the conference room in the main area, the isolation rooms were not being used, neither [were] the bedrooms,” he said.
Cameron, along with Salluit’s then-mayor Paul Papigatuk and Nunavik Police Service Capt. Tony Paquet, wrote a letter to the Tulattavik Health Centre that ran the centre, saying the young people needed to be in better homes.
“If it was down south, the building would have been shut down,” Cameron said.
The health centre responded to the letter, saying it had told staff the building would be shut down within five years and the clients would be relocated.
By the beginning of 2024, the building was “abruptly shut down” because the heating system was imbalanced and only one side of the building was warm.
Cameron said a heating system specialist could have gone in and updated the system, but “they shut it down completely.”
“That was a shock for all of us,” he added.
He said the community has urgent needs for multiple services, such as an elders home or a group home.
Cameron was told that for the building to be fully renovated, it would cost $7 million.
But Watt referred to a quote from about four years ago that said it would cost “tens of millions of dollars” to renovate Sapummivik for its original purpose as a youth rehabilitation centre. For a different use, such as office space, it would cost less.
“There are all these partnerships that could be in place and have this building fully functioning again,” Cameron said. “It is a nice building on the exterior, it is the interior that needs fixing.”
“I am just trying to put the seed in the ground for this project to start growing,” he said.
He suggested the building become a combined elders home and a home for youth in crisis, so that there could be an exchange of wisdom and knowledge between the residents.
“The youth would be in a safe space with the elders, and the elders would have somebody visiting them,” he said.
Watt said Tulattavik is in the process of transferring ownership of the Salluit rehabilitation centre to the Inuulitsivik Health Centre.
“I am unsure of what the plan is for the vacant building. [Inuulitsivik] is still looking at different possibilities,” he said.
Update: This story was updated after its original publication to include comments from Tulattavik Health Centre that were received after the story was published.
Michael should know better.
Placing vulnerable elders with troubled youth would never work. You’re putting 2 at risk populations together, where their risk factors would heighten risk.
How long would it take until the staff that allowed the sort of rot that led to the buildings decommissioned state take until there was an incident between those user groups.
The region needs a youth center. Focus on that.
The youth group home in Cambridge Bay should take a lesson from here, shut down and relocate the kids to somewhere they can get proper supervision.
House of horrors. Evil sprits. Sad lives lived and ended there. Bad memories
Nunavik needs its own health-care Infrastructure that is well equipped and staffed with Doctors. There is more than enough resources that can be found to fund this idea. We have to stop sending our own ppl to the south, where they become vulnerable to predators, addictions and homelessness. How much was spent on Ullivik? The airfare of all patients, and hotel rooms? Kiinaujalik. There is a vacant building in the middle of Ungava and Hudson? What a great opportunity! Plus, this vacant building is close to the local clinic. And staff house is steps away. We are already half way there ppls!