In 1963, my mother Ida was screened for tuberculosis on board the government ship C.D. Howe, which had pulled into the bay off the coast of Paallavvik, Nunavut. She tested positive and was told that she needed to leave her community of Qikiqtarjuaq in eastern Nunavut to go south for treatment. My mother was allowed to take her infant daughter, but when she arrived in Ottawa, my sister was taken away from her and placed in foster care. My mother was not asked for consent and did not know how long she would be separated from her child. She ended up spending the next three-and-a-half years in a TB sanatorium in Moose Factory in Northern Ontario, where nobody spoke her language. She was traumatized by the harsh treatment and witnessed the deaths of fellow patients. The entire time, she had no contact with her family.
Finally, my mother was declared cured and allowed to return home. My sister did not recognize her mother when she picked her up from the foster family and by then, my sister only spoke English. She had to learn Inuktitut and get reacquainted with her birth family and culture when she returned to Nunavut with my mother – only to be taken away to a residential school a few years later.
I rarely saw my mother smile growing up. Recently, she apologized to me, saying that she was not a good mother and that she had passed on trauma to her children. Finally learning what had happened to her helped me understand better how we were brought up.
Thousands of Inuit like my mother were sent to TB sanatoriums in southern Canada between the 1940s and 1970s, often without understanding why they were being taken away. The evacuation split families, leaving many people without information about their loved ones’ fate for years. Many Inuit patients died and were buried without their families’ knowledge.
This and other harmful colonial policies have contributed to intergenerational trauma in Inuit communities, to an ongoing mental health crisis, and to mistrust in the health and education systems. It is one of the root causes behind the ongoing TB epidemic in Nunavut, alongside stigma and other social determinants of health such as housing and food insecurity. Despite federal promises and efforts to eradicate the disease in Nunavut by 2030, the rate of active TB among Inuit in 2022 was a staggering 455 times higher than that of Canadian-born, non-Indigenous people.
In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to Iqaluit to apologize for the mistreatment of Inuit TB patients. He announced the launch of the Nanilavut Initiative which helps families find and visit the graves of loved ones who did not return home from the sanatoriums. My mother was present when Mr. Trudeau made his apology. She was happy that the historic injustice was finally being acknowledged – but she wanted to know what the government was doing to support the survivors. She told him that they too need healing and closure – not just the family members of those who died. She did not receive an answer.
The organization I work for, SeeChange, together with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), organized a historic healing and closure visit in July, 2023, for a group of Inuit Elders who survived the TB sanatoriums. They were accompanied by Inuit youth to visit the site of the former Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium, where over 1,200 Inuit were treated for TB from 1958 to 1962. The returning survivors were moved to tears when they visited the site. One of them told me that she felt like an ice dagger she had had in her back for decades had finally melted. The elders appreciated the opportunity to share their story with Canadians through a public event. It was also an eye-opener for the young people accompanying them who often learned about this traumatic history for the first time.
Other TB sanatorium survivors, like my mother, also yearn to revisit the sanatoriums to find closure and healing, but they can’t afford to undertake the costly journeys to locations like Moose Factory. On behalf of my mother Ida and other Inuit TB sanatorium survivors, I urge the Canadian government to provide funding for these visits. Time is of the essence, as most survivors are in their seventies and eighties today.
Finding the graves of those who died and setting up memorials is important. I was very moved when I accompanied a group of Inuit to Quebec City in June, where they honored loved ones who had died in a TB sanatorium there decades ago.
But it is not enough. We also need to help our elders find healing and closure, and allow Inuit youth to understand and address some of the root causes of the issues we are facing in our communities today.
The op-ed was published in the Globe and Mail on September 30th, 20
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