Nunavik

A memorable junket, Part IV: my 2003 journey with the GG

/ Jane George / Leave a comment

As the days went on, some delegates on Governor General Adrienne Clarkson’s 2003 state visit to Finland and Iceland, started to worry about their weight. Not me: I ate little, drank nothing and concentrated on collecting a stash of the organic chocolate bars that were handed around the airplane after meals so I could take these home as gifts.

Polar Gambit, published Oct. 27, 2003 in Maclean's

Polar Gambit, published Oct. 27, 2003 in Maclean’s

I patched up things with Sheila Watt-Cloutier, then the president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (now Council), who was worried I’d somehow portray the presence of Inuit on the trip badly in my stories.

But because I was the only journalist on board, my presence also sparked a perceptible unease amongst Canada’s royal envoys — with John Ralston Saul, Clarkson’s husband, coming back to chat me up on the airplane, to quietly sound me out on how I had found the state visit.

While I toiled to finish my Maclean’s piece (due while I was in Iceland) and to meet my relentless Nunatsiaq News deadlines, I managed to fend off all other pressures — after all, I had experienced much worse in Nunavik.

But I also missed out on many opportunities during the state visit: for example, a lunch in Iceland where my table companions included noted photographer Ed Burtynsky and author Jane Urquhart. However, instead of talking to them about his art or her writing, we were obliged to make small talk with the other person at the table, the local mayor’s wife.

I attended only one or two of the many concerts or art exhibits which were included on the agenda as I tried to meet my deadlines.

And, much to my regret now, I don’t even remember meeting author and fellow delegate Wayne Johnston, whose books I continue to read.

However, while travelling on the airplane from point A to B, I did talk to the wild salmon marketers from B.C., Ontario wine producers and an architect from Toronto. Most of them weren’t even sure why they were asked to be on the trip.

And I also passed the time with many of the academics who had with an interest in the North, among them, François Trudel from Université Laval, Peter Johnson, then chair of the Polar Commission, and Shelagh Grant, author of many northern histories.

However, in my professional coverage of the trip, I managed to leave out its many high points for me (as a person, not a journalist) — which I still recall today:

  • talking on many occasions with Gen. Romeo Dallaire and his wife, Elizabeth Dallaire, (who were on the Finnish portion of the junket) about his experiences in Rwanda and post-traumatic stress;
  • returning to Helsinki again in the autumn, where the damp smell of wet yellow birch leaves reminded me of studying in Helsinki;
  • privately interviewing Finnish president Tarja Halonen and visiting the palace, which I used to walk by every day where I lived in Katajanokka;
  • catching a glimpse a Saami friend from Tromsø, Norway in Rovaniemi, Finland, from our bus (hei, Marit!) and talking briefly to her;
  • taking in the site of Iceland’s first parliament,Thingvelir, with its towering natural forum of rock; and, last, but not least,

    Governor General Adrienne Clarkson holds an algae bar near Lake Myvatn, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

    Governor General Adrienne Clarkson holds an algae bar near Lake Myvatn, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

  • stopping in Myvatn in northern Iceland where I held an algae ball (priceless) and also encouraged Clarkson to do the same.

You might wonder why a glass jar with a silly algae ball somehow still sums up that 2003 state visit for me.

But you just had to love those “lake balls,” the strange, ball-shaped algae called “kúluskítur,” or “balls of shit” in Icelandic, or “Cladophora aegagropila” in Latin, which only exist in two lakes in the world: Lake Akan on Hokkaido Island in Japan, and in Myvatn.

Seeing those algae balls made up for all the frustrations and fatigue of the 2003 junket and made me smile— who could ask for more?

I hold a jar with an algae ball from Myvatn, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

I hold a jar with an algae ball from Lake Myvatn, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

You can read earlier instalments of A memorable junket here:

Remembering a memorable junket: Siku girl’s 2003 travels with the GG

Remembering a memorable junket, Part II: Siku girl’s 2003 travels with the GG

Remembering a memorable junket, Part III: Siku girl travels with the GG in 2003

Did you miss A Date with Siku girl’s Like an iceberg? You can read it all here:

Like an iceberg: on being a journalist in the Arctic

Like an iceberg, 1991…cont.

Like an iceberg, 1991…more

Like an iceberg, 1992, “Shots in the dark” 

Like an iceberg, 1992, “Sad stories”

Like an iceberg, 1993, “Learning the language of the snows”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., “Spring”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., “Chesterfield Inlet”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., more “Chesterfield Inlet”

Like an iceberg, 1994: “Seals and more”

Like an iceberg, 1994, cont., “No news is good news”

Like an iceberg, 1994 cont., more “No news is good news”

Like an iceberg, 1994 cont., “A place with four names”

Like an iceberg, 1995, “More sad stories”

Like an iceberg, 1995 cont., “No place like Nome”

Like an iceberg, 1995 cont., “Greenland”

Like an iceberg, 1995, cont. “Secrets”

Like an iceberg, 1996, “Hard Lessons”

Like an iceberg, 1996 cont., “Working together”

Like an iceberg, 1996 cont., “At the edge of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1996, more “At the edge of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1996, cont. “Choices” 

Like an iceberg, 1997, “Qaggiq”

Like an iceberg, 1997, more “Qaggiq”

Like an iceberg, 1997, “Qaggiq” cont.

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Qaggiq and hockey”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Brain surgery in POV”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont.: “Masks on an island”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Abusers on the pulpit”

Like an iceberg, 1998, “Bearing gifts”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “At the top of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “A bad week” 

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont.: more from “A bad week”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “Memories”

Like an iceberg, 1999, “The avalanche”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “An exorcism, followed by a penis cutting”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., more on “the Avalanche”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Robins in the Arctic”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Fossil hunting”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Where forests grew” 

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont.,”And then there was Nunavut”

Like an iceberg … the end

Language learning: not hard at all

/ Jane George / Leave a comment

Most babies can learn to speak a language or languages without even trying  — and so can older children, too, as I saw when I started to absorb, then speak, Finnish.

But my success in learning Inuktitut later, as an adult, was less successful.

Jocelyn Barrett, Sylvia Cloutier and Siu-Ling Han participate in an exercise during the 1999 Intermediate Inuktitut class at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, which involves "shooting" the right person, according to the command in Inuktitut. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Jocelyn Barrett, Sylvia Cloutier and Siu-Ling Han participate in an exercise during the 1999 Intermediate Inuktitut class at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, which involves “shooting” the right person, according to the command in Inuktitut. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Why? For one thing, I was never immersed totally in the language outside my Nunavut Arctic College courses. In Iqaluit there are many English- and French-speakers, and even when in more unilingual communities, there was always the presence of another language somewhere in the background — on television or the internet.

Had I been able to visit an outpost camp and hear no English for a few months, I believe my mastery of Inuktitut could have quickly improved — but that was hard to do with job and family.

On the other hand, although my mainly school-learned French was imperfect,  I quickly became fluent when I worked in a unilingual French-language office as a young adult in Quebec. Perhaps if Nunavut or Nunavik had Inuktitut-only work environments, people would get better at speaking Inuktitut more quickly.

And if all Inuktitut dialects in Canada used Roman orthography for writing,  it might be easier to learn and use the language without mastering an entirely new alphabet. Even now, I can read and understand more of something written in Greenlandic or Inuinnaqtun than in syllabics, which require an additional level of effort to understand.

Based on my experiences, here’s what I think the list of ingredients for language-learning — which could be applied to Inuktitut teaching (or as it’s now called by the Government of Nunavut ,”Inuktut”) — include, namely to:

• start language-learning early when the brain is more open to learning language(s) in schools and child care centres (as is the rule in Nunavik child care centres) and at home;

• provide immersion in the language, at home and in the community, if possible;

• make the language worth learning — that’s because if there’s a need to speak, then you’ll want to learn it;

• draw on the language skills of unilingual elders;

• put the language into situations like social activities, sewing or hunting or whatever —because  it’s much easier to remember that way;

• adopt Roman orthography ASAP;

• put less emphasis on dialects and work on basic communication skills; and,

• foster more publishing of books, magazines and other reading materials.

None of these ideas are new. In fact, the above list reads like the to-do lists of many language specialists in Nunavut and Nunavik.

But although these are commonsense, already-accepted ideas, many have gone nowhere in Canada’s North or moved too slowly to have an impact.

Money isn’t the only issue, either: it’s will — if you just talk to your children in a language, they will learn.

Look for future A date with Siku girl posts on Arctic talk, travel, thoughts and news.