Yesterday’s News: Fireworks, festivities marked the creation of Nunavut in 1999

Music! Dancing! National and international news coverage! All to mark the official birth of Nunavut as Canada’s newest and largest territory.

The front page of Nunatsiaq News’ souvenir edition for that day featured a beautiful photo of fireworks over Iqaluit — just one site of many celebrations across the new territory on April 1, 1999.

As Nunatsiaq News celebrates its 50^th anniversary, each week we are taking readers on a walk through the past half-century by showcasing some of our front pages from years gone by.

The paper started out in 1973 as Inukshuk, a community newsletter published in Frobisher Bay (before the city’s name was changed to Iqaluit). Inukshuk was sold in 1976 and renamed Nunatsiaq News.

At the start of April 1999, Nunavut’s official status was so new that the first sitting of the legislature had to be held in the gym at Inuksuk High School in Iqaluit because the legislative assembly building was still under construction.

In addition to Nunavut Commissioner Helen Maksagak and Premier Paul Okalik, prime minister Jean Chretien and then-northern affairs minister Jane Stewart made appearances.

Also in attendance was former governor general Romeo LeBlanc. It would take another 22 years, but on July 26, 2021, Canada’s first Inuk Governor General, Mary Simon of Nunavik, would be sworn into office.

While the front page of Nunatsiaq News on April 1, 1999, celebrated the birth of the territory, some of the headlines on inside pages provided a look back at the road to territory status.

Articles from as far back as 1975 were reprinted in this edition, and for readers it was like opening a time capsule of the steps taken toward the creation of the territory of Nunavut.

Buried at the bottom of page 4, for example, “Electoral division proposed,” originally published in 1975, noted the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission of the Northwest Territories was recommending the N.W.T. be divided into two electoral districts.

“The Eastern district is to be called Nunatsiaq and includes all of the area generally east of 100 degrees longitude except for the settlements of Spence Bay, Gjoa Haven and Pelly Bay.”

Nunavut, of course, eventually did gets its own federal electoral riding — called Nunavut.

Then deeper into the paper still, on page 11, a column reprinted from 1979 written by then-editor Monica Connolly headlined “Idea for Nunavut territory a sound one” proved prescient. And she correctly predicted the name for the new territory, too.

Meanwhile, the souvenir edition was filled with ads celebrating the creation of the new territory taken out by businesses in Iqaluit and around Nunavut — some of which survive today, and others that readers might remember from the old days.

Names like Northwest Territories Power Corp.; Titiraruk Printing; Peterson and Auger, billed as “Nunavut’s bottler of Coca-Cola and other quality soft drinks”; The Navigator Inn — they all published their best wishes, many written in Inuktitut.