Catholic Mission In Canada

It is noontime in mid-November in the high Arctic. For the past two hours the sun has been crawling, not a finger’s breadth above the horizon. By end of November, we will have 24-hour darkness until January 13th.  

I have been the Roman Catholic missionary here in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, for the past three years. When I was posted, Bishop Denis Croteau, O.M.I., advised me: “Just be a presence.”  

And what does it entail to “just be a presence”? It means being totally busy!—not by saying Mass (I’m a Sister), not by spending hours travelling to the next mission (we have no roads to anywhere), not by spending hours fishing and hunting to supply dogs and self with food for the winter (dogs have long since been replaced by snowmobiles).  

Being totally busy for a missionary here in the 21st century means any one of these things: your home is an open door for children after school, a telephone that rings almost constantly, knowing the people and their traditions, visiting someone who might be depressed or lonely, preparing classes for baptism or for First Communion, baking your own bread to have something to offer for hospitality, constant tidying up and dishwashing. It means overseeing church services, doing finances such as ordering and repairing and upkeep (and learning it fast). It means doing your own water delivery and septic pump-out, and being prepared to run out of water or to endure power outages.

Being missionary in the high Arctic means getting used to either 24 hours of darkness or 24 hours of sun. It means isolation, making do without Internet service (as I did for nine months last year), and struggling with the limitations of health care (a shared lot of people in the North). It means aging buildings: the church was built in the 1950s, the old rectory in the 1940s, and the schooner donated to the Arctic missions by Pope Pius XI dates back tithe 1930s (and has now become an icon of the North). It means dealing with broken windows and toilet and pump problems. It means no plumber in town, no architect, no mechanic’s garage, no Home Hardware. It means tragedies from weather, from addictions, from violence.  

But being a missionary also means smiling faces in the midst of tragedies and a simple lifestyle that has no high expectations.  

Our greatest strength is we can cope. Our greatest treasure—our children who are ever full of hope and happiness. We value long-held traditions though they are constantly threatened by encroaching values from the South. Our deep faith pulls people through the hardest times even if this not expressed by churchgoing.