'A great relief to know': Nunavummiut remember loved ones during visit to Charles Camsell Hospital

Natalie Pressman · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 26, 2025 6:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

The past clip Allen Kudlak saw his begetter Jacob was successful August 1965. The brace hugged each different goodbye, past Allen boarded a interval level that brought him to residential school. 

After 60 years, he's finally had the accidental to reunite with his father, who's buried adjacent the Charles Camsell Hospital successful Edmonton. 

Kudlak is portion of a delegation of Nunavummiut this week who visited the hospital where, for decades, thousands of Indigenous radical were sent for attraction during the tuberculosis epidemic that peaked from the 1940s to 1960s. During those years, immoderate made it home; many, similar Jacob, did not. 

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. brought 49 Inuit from Nunavut's Kitikmeot portion to the tract arsenic portion of the Nanilavut inaugural — a national task dedicated to creating resources for those impacted by the epidemic. That includes a database of Inuit who underwent aesculapian attraction astatine the time, commemorative events, monuments and compassionate question for household members. Nanilavut, an Inuktitut word, translates to "let's find them."

Kudlak brought immoderate flowers from location truthful his begetter tin person a portion of Nunavut with him astatine his resting place. He said it's hard to explicate the feeling of alleviation and closure that seeing his father's sedate tract brings, but helium feels lighter. 

"I volition consciousness better, knowing," helium said. "I'll beryllium going location knowing wherever he's resting."

Junna Ehaloak, different delegate, said she feels akin alleviation uncovering her grandfather's sedate site. She said her ain begetter spent astir of his beingness not knowing wherever his begetter was buried, and helium died wondering. 

"It's a large alleviation to know," she said. "My dada is astir apt afloat of smiles up successful heaven."

Karen Nanook said that impervious and acknowledgment of what families experienced is wherefore the Nanilavut inaugural is important.  

Nanook, primitively from Taloyoak, spent overmuch of her beingness researching the infirmary wherever her parent spent portion of her puerility and wherever her uncle is buried. She said she hasn't ever recovered wide accusation astir what happened there, and the accusation she tin find is sometimes incorrect — similar her precocious uncle's name, which she said was misspelled successful online records. 

She said seeing the tract first-hand and having a grounds of those impacted by the epidemic helps her look her family's past.

"The mode [my family] handled losing their loved ones is ne'er to talk astir it," she said. "Now ... they tin travel present and speech astir their loved ones that died of TB."

The delegates arrived implicit the play and spent Tuesday visiting the tract of the erstwhile infirmary and the adjacent cemetery wherever immoderate patients were buried. On Wednesday, delegates participated successful a memorial banquet and healing ellipse earlier a closing banquet brought everyone together.