Inuit elders retrace steps to Hamilton sanatorium where as children they endured traumatic isolation

Naudle Oshoweetok was 10 years old when he and his father left their home in Kinngait, Nunavut, and boarded the C.D. Howe Arctic Patrol ship.

"Me and my father left our family, my mother and brother and sister," Oshoweetok said in an interview Monday. "I didn't know where we were going." 

They journeyed thousands of kilometres south for tuberculosis treatment, sailing to Quebec City and then taking a train to Hamilton. Oshoweetok said he was then separated from his father and sent to the Sanatorium on the Mountain for six months, with no way of contacting his family and confined to his bed. 

"We tried to pretend to sleep during the day," he said. "Only one time they put us in a wheelchair to watch Bugs Bunny. That was our favourite show." 

Sixty-five years later, Oshoweetok returned to the site, now a grassy field near the edge of the escarpment on Sanatorium Road, near Scenic Drive, as part of a historic, healing trip, and joined by 13 other survivors. The trip was organized by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), the legal representative of the Inuit of Nunavut, as well as the non-profit groups SeeChange Initiative and the Ilisaqsivik Society.

It is the first formal visit of Inuit tuberculosis survivors to a sanatorium in Canada, said Mayor Andrea Horwath at a reception at the Art Gallery of Hamilton Tuesday. 

Horwath said the city will be adding the Inuktitut translation on the street signs for Sanatorium Drive and a plaque beside the Cross of Lorraine that remains at the site.

"I'm here sharing in the memory and pain that was wrought upon Inuit communities so many years ago," Horwath said. "People were pulled from communities. We know the trauma this has caused, and the intergenerational trauma."

Over 1,200 Inuit were shipped to Hamilton for tuberculosis treatment in the 1950s and '60s as part of a Canada-wide colonial policy. 

Many Inuit lived there for years and their families were not told where they were, their condition or if and when they died. They were cut off from their culture and language, and in some cases psychologically abused. 

"I didn't expect to be in tears when I got here," said Oshoweetok, near where the sanatorium once stood. "I feel release. I cannot describe it. Now I feel like singing." 

His grandson, Iola Oshoweetok, 19, accompanied him to Hamilton. He said Oshowetok hadn't told him what he'd experienced as a child. 

"This is the first time actually hearing what happened," Iola said. "So far it has been good and emotional … to know what happened so we can forward that message." 

Eena Kullualik was two years old when she arrived at the sanatorium in 1956. She said she remembers "bits and pieces." She said she knows she wasn't allowed to touch the floor.