Yesterday’s News: Inukshuk newsletter is renamed Nunatsiaq News

The times, they were a’changing back in June 1976. They certainly were for this newspaper.

As was announced on our front page from June 16, 1976, the final edition using the original name, Inukshuk, would be published on June 30 that year.

Starting July 7, the paper would be known as Nunatsiaq News.

As a regular feature this year while Nunatsiaq News celebrates 50 years of providing news coverage to Nunavut and Nunavik, we are looking back at some of our front pages from the past half century.

The final edition of Inukshuk was published on June 30, 1976. (File photo)

The first edition of the paper rolled off the presses — a Gestetner photocopier, in reality — in 1973 as Inukshuk, a community newsletter published in Frobisher Bay.

On June 16, 1976, the front-page story explained not only the reason for the name change, it also noted the meaning of Nunatsiaq as “beautiful land,” to describe the area of the Northwest Territories above the tree line.

It was the first time that what became the Nunatsiaq News logo was published.

Nunatsiaq was also the name of the new eastern Arctic federal electoral riding.

A spokesperson for Frobisher Press Ltd., the new owner, said the name was selected in a contest and is fitting “because the North is indeed a beautiful land, partly because the paper hopes to expand to serve that whole area, as well as Northern Quebec.”

Some things have changed since then — Frobisher Bay is called Iqaluit now, Nunavut was granted territorial status in 1999, and Nunatsiaq News is now owned by Nortext.

Some things haven’t changed — Nunatsiaq News still publishes some of its articles in Inuktitut, one of the few news organizations to do so.

Also making news in our June 16, 1976, edition was a planning conference that was being held by the Frobisher Bay village council.

According to the story, organizers said it “did not expect to make decisions, just to get ideas on all aspects of planning.”