The world needs more Kugluktuk
Stories we loved to tell | Kitikmeot community has hope despite the struggles
Rita Pigalak, left, and Wilma Pigalak pick cranberries and blueberries for tea and muffins on a hill in what they call the “Kugluktuk prairies.” (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
In this year-end series, Nunatsiaq News reporters look back on their most memorable stories from 2025.
As I was walking on the shore of Coronation Gulf in Kugluktuk, a gang of five or six teenagers ran up to me — an obvious stranger in this community of 1,400 people.
I was carrying a big black camera, something the teens said they had never seen.
One of them, a guy in a B2Gold baseball cap, asked if he could try to use it — the rest followed, and soon they formed a neat lineup clicking away and taking turns photographing this year’s last sealift ship docked at the gulf.
A couple of them joked that they were tempted to run off with the camera, but none of them did.
As the B2Gold baseball cap guy was taking a second round of photos, he said he hopes to one day have a camera of his own so he can take more photos of his home — Kugluktuk.
“The world needs more Canada,” former U.S. president Barack Obama told the House of Commons in his 2016 address, borrowing the words of Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2.
Obama was one of the most popular U.S. presidents among Canadians in recent history, beating the current president by double digits.
No disrespect to Canada’s reportedly most popular U.S. president in modern history, but I have always had one concern — which part of this ginormous country do we need more of?
Since there is no official list of contenders, I’d like to pitch Kugluktuk, a place just above the tree line with great water and one of the Nunavut RCMP’s rare lawn mowers.
Yes, I know it has issues that none of us would want “more of.” Kugluktuk has no ambulance service; increasing drunk driving incidents; and Inuinnaqtun, the traditional language of western Nunavut, is in danger.
But hear me out.
When Karl Krüger, an American traveller and a big foe of current U.S. President Donald Trump reached Kugluktuk in 2023 after a two-week, 784-kilometre paddle-boarding trip from Paulatuk, N.W.T., he had a lot to say about the community that’s hopeful even at times of hardship.
“They fed me and talked to me about their stories — they were just warm and welcoming and loving,” he said.
Even a “hateful little man” like Stephen Miller — the White House deputy chief of staff — would have been changed by that experience, Krüger said.
“If that incompetent little wretch had clawed his way over the horizon and found himself there, I guarantee you he’d humble,” he said.
I agree. Not about Miller, but about Kugluktuk.
I have been to many places in the world, including a handful of Nunavut communities outside of Iqaluit, but nowhere have I seen so many people capable of finding hope even when things are not going well.
Christine Kuliktana stands by the metal memorial her family installed near the road to the Kugluktuk airport. It marks the spot of a fatal drunk-driving crash that took the life of her daughter Angella Rose Kuliktana in 2013. She hopes people driving by the memorial will slow down and drive safely. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
Christine Kuliktana, a grieving mother who lost her 22-year-old daughter to drunk driving, has been organizing marches, meet-ups and balloon release events every year since her “angel” died. All to promote safe driving.
Her hope is that fewer people will repeat her daughter’s mistake.
Rita Pigalak, a local teacher of Inuinnaqtun who lovingly calls Kugluktuk the “prairies,” doesn’t believe her language is doomed.
“It’s not gone, you’re speaking it right now,” she tells her students. “You just said a sentence. It’s alive right now.”
She hopes to bring back the language she loves.
Even the community’s jail, a rare open-custody establishment that marked 20 years of operations in April, works with the hope and knowledge that people can change and do better.
It’s a community of “do-ers,” said Nadene McMenemy, hamlet councillor and a big “do-er” herself.
So yes, at times when hopefulness is in decline, we need more Kugluktuk. Or rather, more Kugluktuk-flavoured hope with Kuliktanas, Pigalaks and my baseball-capped future-photographer friend.
I hope he was able to get himself a camera.
Kugluktuk does have an ambulance service and it’s in much better shape than a lot of other communities in Nunavut.
Alcohol problems have plagued the North since the dawn of time. It is not tied to the ambulance…They are a “restricted” community meaning they can order alcohol within pre-defined limits unless a new plebiscite is enforced in which they decide to go prohibited where no alcohol is in the community. I’ve lived in Kugluktuk years ago when it was unrestricted, then restricted. It is the responsibility of the community members to come together to decide where they ultimately want to see progress or not.
Ambulance service?? Fact is if you knew them is that the only service provided is transporting patients from the health center to the airport for a medivac.
Tell ALL old anonymous one
The reporter clearly did not dig very deep, and clearly did not speak to RCMP officers, nurses, school administrators or social workers. There is a lot of bad stuff happening in plain sight in this town.
Parachute journalism. In and out too quickly to gain real context.
The author ruined this story about a wonderful Nunavut community by bringing US politics and a smug opinion into this article, which have no bearing in Kugluktuk. He did not interview or investigate nearly enough to write an unbiased article, as this one is full of one-liners with empty meaning.
Kugluktuk is a wonderful community, and there are many more across NWT and NU just like it.
Agree with your assessment of the journalism, C29. Though there are many good people in Kugluktuk (and Canada) neither is a healthy society.
Alcohol is rampant in kugluktumi, bootleggers rule the drunk socienty
Hopefully itay chamge but I .yself havent seen any change for good , all southern flights carry booze coming into the community amd needs tobe stopped. We need security in southern airports going to every Nunavut communitie from southern gateways , i have seen sidearms inside a plane and it is not safe flying north to nunavut from a southern gateway the Community of Kugluktuk is a beautiful community and only a select few will actually return for a getaway to experience the lands and culture. Kugluktuk has much to offer and does notneed any more bootleggers and crack dealers.