Of Love and Loss in Paulatuuq

Words by Ray Ruben Sr.

The Early Days

I was born in Cape Parry, which was very much part of life for our people in Paulatuk. They used to go back and forth, about 100 kilometres, from here to there. I was born in Cape Parry and raised in Paulatuk.

Cape Parry was the main Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line site in the 1950s. We didn’t have any houses at that time. When we came to Paulatuk, we’d stay in tents. The only building we had was the mission house. That’s where they held the mass upstairs, and the priest lived downstairs.

When people would come by, we’d camp around the area here and put up tents. It was a good place certain times of the year for fishing, caribou and all the things we didn’t have in Cape Parry.

The Department of National Defence provided houses to people who worked at the DEW Line. I remember my grandfather worked there and those years we’d visit, we’d stay with him in the house.

I remember growing up in the tent. One of my dad’s older brothers had built himself a house, and when I was young, I remember camping with one of my cousins there. After about three days, my dad came over and picked me up and said I had to go see mom for a while and go to the tent. I remember running to the tent and smelling the fresh bread and donuts. I know my dad, as the leader those years, he was gone a lot, travelling, meeting with the government, meeting with officials and whoever it was then.

I don’t know how old I was, maybe four or five, when my older brother used to go to school in Inuvik and it was just myself and my younger sister with my parents most of the time.

The government had come in and met with people in the area to talk about housing. At first, they were talking about giving an option for people to move to Tuktoyaktuk because they said it’s too remote, too far to build here.

Some people were going to move because they were promised housing and homes, but then there were others, one of them being my dad, who decided this is home and this is where they’re going to stay. There was enough, according to them, to live off here. They didn’t need a wad full of money to live here. You’d get your sustenance from the land.

We’ve got caribou, fish, geese – you name it – and the ocean, the lakes. We’re right on the migration route of the geese in spring and then again in the fall, so they’re all over the place. Caribou, the same thing, used to pass by the peninsula or up in the hills. Char during the summer and fall. There were a lot of reasons to stay here.

The government got a family from Inuvik to move here for a year and live with the people and help them decide whether or not it was a good place to build. They eventually reported that Paulatuk could comfortably sustain a population of about 400 people, so they decided to build here.

When they came to get location data for building here, they met with different people from when they came here originally, because people travelled and followed the animals, so the people they met with officially weren’t the same as before.

Those people said they wanted to put the material 30 or 40 clicks to the east on the Brock River side, so that’s what the government did. When my father and others found out what was going on, they came with the community boat, I think it was called Roger at the time, and picked up that material and brought it back here.

Some of the little houses, I think they’re coloured blue now, they’re still the original houses that were built during the ‘70s. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the matchbox houses – they’re almost the size of the sea can containers – they’re just a square box, no rooms or nothing. They had a couple of those put up here and people were using them. It was a lot better when you only had tents back then. You’re inside, you’ve got windows, you’ve got doors. No running water and that but of course you don’t have any of that in the tents, and you’ve got insulation.

We didn’t get electricity until 1974 maybe. Growing up, it was always dark during the winter, no streetlights. The light we had was what God provided us. A lot of it was from the moonlight, which was a big part of us. We’d be playing out in the moonlight down on the beach, running around.

When we got the houses in 1974 by the nursing station, we didn’t have telephones. I remember because they got some kids’ battery phones and extended the wires so it could reach next door to one of my aunts’ houses. So I had this phone with a simple wire, battery operated. We didn’t have TV. I think that’s when they first started coming out with the Betamax. I remember my dad getting one and it was like $1,500 for this big monster Betamax player. That’s the only thing we had for TV.

Leaving For School

Most of us went to school in the earlier years. I think I was six when I went to Inuvik. There were between 20 to 25 of us in those years. We were picked up on the DC-3 plane and brought to Inuvik.

It wasn’t as hard for us at school as it was for my parents and them before us. They used to go to Aklavik and stayed there for many years because they went out with the boat. The mission boat would go around to communities, pick up kids and bring them to Aklavik. My mom was out for at least four or five years in Aklavik going to school. She always said when she came back home that she didn’t recognize her parents. She was crying to go back to school because she had stayed so long. It took her a while to get back into home life.

When we started school, we stayed the whole 10 months. We didn’t come home for any holidays. They flew us back in the summertime in June after we were done.

The hardest part was the first years, being taken away as a little kid, six years old. And then when we reached there, they took whatever we had, parkas, boots, mitts.

They’d give us clothes and jackets and whatever we needed. It was like that for the first couple of years. Our stuff would be taken away and they’d give us clothes, even Sunday clothes, blazers, shoes. I don’t think we were able to take them home. They had numbers on all our clothes, even our underclothes and socks. They mass laundered them and we’d pick up our clothes by the numbers.

I remember my numbers. I think one of them was 62. Then as the years went by, my last number was 211.

Even to the older days, like 10 or 11 years old, the first week was always the hardest one to get used to being away from home. We used to cry at night. Just that

lonely feeling, even though I had my older brother and all our cousins in the dorm. We all slept side-by-side in single beds. I remember one of my cousins beside me, three feet away, whispering and asking if I felt like crying, if I was lonely, and I said yes.

“You wanna cry?”

“Yep.”

So I just turned over, covered up and cried.

For some, it was hard. If you had problems with peeing in bed or something like that, some of the nuns were really strict. You had to be careful what you did.

Overall, it wasn’t too bad for us. My mother and them weren’t allowed to speak their language. Some of them didn’t know English well either, so they’d talk to someone and use their language and get whacked until they learned not to.

A lot of us growing up, we understood our language before attending school. I had friends who knew very little English when they went to school, but through the years, eventually all they spoke was English. A lot of us lost it. I can’t carry a conversation in our language. I can understand a lot of words. I can understand the direction of the discussion. But I’ve lost the language. We spoke English all our years at school.

When I think back to when we had no houses, we used to travel. I still remember travelling between here and Cape Parry during the winter. They’re like photo clips in my mind that I’ve captured. I remember a time my dad stopped right beside a trap and told us to look over the sled. There was a fox trapped inside it. I remember because I was bundled up in the sled. I think we were going to Cape Parry at that time. We were always happy to be home in the summer after school.

Instant Connection

I think I outgrew Grollier Hall, the residential school in Inuvik. I was 18. I was doing really well in school. I was taking the university-level courses. I was trying to get to university. I had a goal. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into management and administration.

Besides being the mayor, my dad was a manager for the Co-op in Paulatuk. He’d gone on a trip to resupply in Inuvik. It was a long weekend in early December and he asked me if I wanted to go home for a trip. Eighteen years old, initially I said I’ll be home for a couple weeks in the Christmas break, so I refused. My buddy from Yellowknife said you’re crazy, it’s a long weekend, go home. I rushed back to the Mackenzie Hotel, where he stayed, and just caught him outside the cab and said I’ll come.

When I came home, I would go to each of my uncles and aunts and say hi and meet with them. In one of my aunts’ houses, I met this girl who was sitting on the table. She caught my eye. Whoa, who’s this beautiful woman sitting here? My auntie wasn’t home and this girl was there with one of my cousins.

I met her then and that was it. I had a reason to go home.

She kept calling my cousin to tell me to come visit. We were visiting in my cousin’s house and we were on the bed in her living room, where her mom was staying, and we touched fingers. We couldn’t let go. It was just for a second but it was like forever. We were hooked. She was going to be my wife.

I went back to Inuvik and she followed. We started seeing each other. She was from Sachs Harbour. She’d come to visit some of her cousins and friends in Paulatuk. Her granny had passed away in Sachs, so she came to spend some time.

As a senior, we were allowed to stay out once a month on the weekend until 2 a.m. Friday night, I called my 2 a.m. leave and I stayed out where she stayed. Saturday, the next day, I asked if I could take next month’s 2 a.m. leave. I met someone special and I wanted to stay with her. But no, I had to go back at midnight to the residence. So I followed the rules.

Sunday comes, I spent the day with her. Monday comes, and I quit school. After suffering to see her on the weekend, I quit. It wasn’t the only reason, but it was the biggest reason.

I had received a call from my brother who worked as the housing manager back in Paulatuk. He was leaving his position and said there would be an opening. Perfect, I thought. That’s the direction I was going: administration, management. That, along with meeting the girl, just gave me more reason to leave school.

By 18, I was fed up and tired of the kids. There were 30 or 40 of us in the dorm. I worked upstairs supervising the junior boys, six to 13 years old, evenings and weekends. That’s how I supported myself for all those years.

When I quit, the administrator, he was a priest, he’d heard about my quitting so he called me and he confirmed that yeah I’m leaving, I’m done. He asked me if I could stay and supervise the bigger kids where I lived. He said they’re short of workers. I was making $180 supervising the kids. He said I’d make a lot more money and have a place to stay. I said I couldn’t. I lived with them for five years, I’m tired of them. I get cranky.

One time after they shut off the lights after bedtime, all of them started coughing to make fun. We had four beds in one room, so you’d be sharing it with others. I didn’t play around much. I guess I was more serious. So I screamed at everybody to shut up. It just got quiet, eh.

So I quit and finally made it home. I applied and got the housing job in January 1981. It reminded me of one of my uncles back in the 1950s. He was a young man, he had a new rifle, he just got married, got a new tent and a new dog team. It was kind of like that. I got a job, I got a wife and I got away from the residence. That was good.

We were married for almost 25 years, 28 years together. Big family. Four boys and six daughters. She passed away 10 years ago in August. I remember like it was today.

She died from cancer, as my dad the year before her did. Not a very good story.

Her name was Bella.

The Pain Of Cancer

Before my wife got sick, we had plans to move out to a camp and live on the land full-time. For two years, she worked in the hamlet as our janitor, and I was the mayor. I was also working for the hunters and trappers organization.

I got time off from May until September, so we stayed on the land during spring and summer. The first year worked so well that we decided to do it again the next year, but this time, Bella wanted to stay until Christmas.

Being mayor, I had responsibilities and I couldn’t stay out that long. We came back the second year and said we’re going to turn the house over to the kids and we’ll go out and live on the land, because in Sachs, that’s how she lived.

She lived with her granny, so she knew a lot of things about the land. I learned a lot from her. She used to make me feel like I was useful. She always said she didn’t know how to make the dough for bread, so she’d ask me how much sugar and how much this and that, making me feel like I was part of it. I would always say, “You just did that to make me feel good.”

In 2007, we both got fired after we came back from camp, she from the hamlet and me from the hunters and trappers organization. There were new people on the board who weren’t aware that I had been afforded the time off. I made them ditch the letter and then resigned. My wife didn’t go back to work.

It was only about three months later she started having a problem. She felt pain in her side and a hard lump. We went to Inuvik on advice from the health station to get it checked and see what it really is.

We were there in the hotel for about three weeks. I didn’t rush her. I wasn’t going to push her to get a check‐up. I was scared and she was scared. She finally got in to get the check-up and then we left to Whitehorse to stay with some of her family.

I always said she died three times. She very much well have because of how she was treated. She finally got the call from Inuvik and she answered the phone. She should have given me it, but she answered it. She was standing in the hallway outside of the room. All I heard was the phone drop. I knew who called. I got the phone and took the information. They said she had cancer and she had to come back quickly. That was a realization of the worst fear we had. She was only 46.

They rushed her to Inuvik and on to Yellowknife. We had our two youngest girls with us, so I had to get them back to Inuvik.

She had already seen the doctor in Yellowknife when I joined her. The doctor sat with her and said, “Sorry, we’re too late.”

Who does that? I wanted the doctor’s name. I said I’m the mayor and I can speak to the ministers. Why are they insensitive in that way? Doctors are doctors, eh. They tell you what you got without feeling sensitive to that part of your life. Eventually, I forgot who the doctor was. That was the second time it felt like she died.

Every six weeks we’d get treatments in Yellowknife. After the fifth one, they said sorry, nothing more they can do. That was the hardest time, when they said go home, live as comfortably as you can. They advised me to keep her as comfortable as I could, work with the nurse to keep the pain down. That was hard.

When we got to Inuvik after this last visit was done, all she wanted to do was drink, drink and forget about it. I was in the hospital after a check-up. I didn’t come out right away. She called me from her brother’s hotel room and said, “Are you coming? I’m going to drink.”

I didn’t want to say no. I couldn’t say no. I was there to support her. I didn’t know how hard of a time she was going through. I didn’t know what to do.

But I took too long. I made my way there, and she met me halfway. She was mad at me. I never felt so alone as when she turned and screamed and cursed me. I didn’t know what to do. Where do I go? What do I do? So I just turned back and went with her.

By the time I reached our room, her suitcase and everything was gone. She’d moved into her own room because she was mad at me. So I took it out on whoever was supervising there. I told that woman don’t ever touch my belongings. I was a little overboard, but I was angry, because it was making me farther from my wife.

Generally I’m easygoing. I reason and work it out. But I didn’t see any other way then than to put my anger onto somebody. It just happened to be that supervisor. She waves and says hi today. She understands what I was going through and I’m happy for that.

Watching her deteriorate and get worse and worse and worse, I can’t describe it. We knew it was coming close. There were 15 or 20 people in our little house, just crowded. Our family and my mother, brother and sister-in-law were supporting us in her final days, too. When she finally quit moving and quit breathing, I broke down. I was crying, saying, “She’s not breathing.”

People started saying prayers. I didn’t know what happened. A lot of my boys weren’t there with me and I knew they had to know, so I walked to where they were and said mom’s gone.

Losing Bella And Apologizing

My number in school was 211. I don’t think I could find any of my clothing with numbers, because I was a young kid. But that was her birthday, February 11.

You don’t realize it right then, but years later you put things together. After she passed away, I used to go out for meetings in Inuvik, Yellowknife, wherever. It happened more than a couple of times I was put in a hotel in room 211.

After the third time, I start thinking it’s happening again. I called my daughter, “Guess what room I’m in?”

“211?”

“Yep.”

Maybe I notice the number because it was her birthday. Being in the same room three times in a row, that’s something you would notice anyways.

In Paulatuk, we don’t have a funeral home or anything. We take care of the body ourselves. It was in summer, August, so it was still warm. We had no morgue or any place to keep her body cold until we got the casket and all that. Our family helped me take care of her. We kept her body in the blue church, but it was still too warm, so we’d pick bags of ice and put them around her.

My girls, the oldest ones were adults already, they helped me with the body. They’d dress her up, choose her clothes, fix her up.

We had a lot of kids and it was natural that I had to be strong for the kids, especially my youngest daughter, who was only eight years old then. She really had a hard time to leave her mom alone, her body in the church. She’d hang on and cry and cling. It was really hard for some of them.

The first couple of months, when I was leaving the house, I’d have a sense something was missing. There was something I had to do. I had to tell something to somebody. But there was nobody around. That part of it is the hardest, realizing that I’m alone and there is no other part of me there.

I had a friend, Ernest, out of Yellowknife. He lost his wife a couple years before I lost my wife. He’d phone me right from the day after my wife passed away about seven in the morning, every morning, calling me.

“How are you doing today?” he’d ask. “These are some of the feelings you might go through.”

Every morning he’d call and check in, see how I’m doing and try to help me along. It helped. When the feelings start coming in and I realize again that I don’t have my wife, it was exactly how he explained it, anxiety, loneliness, all these mixed feelings. He really helped.

We have a funny coincidence between us. He lost his dad and then I lost my dad. He lost his wife and then I lost my wife. Early 1990s, I was bringing my boy to Yellowknife for a leg operation. He had a home there and invited us over to visit. Walking toward his house, I noticed we had the exact same house. We started talking and realized we’ve got all these things in common. It was kind of uncanny. When my oldest son was moving back to the house, he said his older son was, too. I said, “Stop. You’d better not die. I don’t want to die yet.”

He made it a lot easier. He made me comfortable. I had something to look forward to in the mornings. Get up and get a phone call. It took a lot off my mind.

About two months after she passed, I started travelling for meetings again. This is when I started feeling for my kids. I started thinking back to how we grew them up. That’s when I started going through my mind about what I should say to them. I wrote a note to each of them about what I could have done differently, apologizing to them.

Maybe I was not doing it the right way. I was trying to take care of everything myself, working, hunting, getting the food, fishing while they went to school. I did most of the work without involving them much.

One of my older boys used to camp with my parents, and that’s where he picked up a lot of his knowledge about how to work with caribou, skin caribou, fish, all the things that I did for them.

Another one, 17 or 18 at the time, used to go out with his friends biking. This one time his mom asked him, “If you go out and see a caribou, can you get it for us?”

He looked at her kind of strange.

“Yeah, and then what?”

He had never skinned a caribou.

Those things came back to me, and I thought maybe I should have let them do more than just watch and help here and there. I should have had them doing the nets, fishing, cutting the caribou. That was the main message and apology I was writing to the boys.

The girls were a little different. They picked up a lot of the things their mom did because she’d have them help her cut up fish or meat, make dough or bread. When she passed away and they came to camp with me, they were able to do all that, so we were passing it on to my grandchildren. They’d be hands on, they weren’t watching. I was able to pick that up later on, that they should be hands on doing something, not just watching. The girls were able to do things because of their mom.

The Gift Of Forgetting

Here, it’s all about family. Don’t be alone, because family is always out there to help. Don’t go through it alone. You can put so many things in your mind when you’re alone. It can get out of whack and make you think in weird ways. Talk to people.

We have a support group now that we’ve started for cancer sharing in Inuvik, and I presented at one in Yellowknife.

Just simply listening is a lot of help. I know it because

I experienced it with my friend calling. It might take various amounts of time depending on your situation and how you handle it.

In the end, I’ve always heard that the good Lord gives us the gift of forgetting. Your memory fades and fades and fades over time. It gets easier. Time heals.

I am healing. I am forgetting.

----------------------------------------------

Mayor for 12 years and on council since the Hamlet of Paulatuuq was formed in 1987, Ray Ruben Sr. has seen his community change since the days of tent life and moonlit kids’ games. Along the way, he’s experienced the highs and lows of life, and all shades in between.