Remembering Annie Ford, champion of Inuktitut broadcasting

Friends and colleagues are remembering Annie Ford, a long-time CBC North reporter and host who died this month, as a champion of Inuktitut broadcasting, a dedicated journalist, and a fun-loving character with a wild sense of humour.

"She was like a mentor, she was like a big sister, she was like a mom. She was a great friend of mine," said Madeleine Allakariallak, former host of CBC North's Igalaaq.

"I have many, many memories of that wild, God-praising, foul-mouthed, Elvis-singing, fun, dancing woman that we all got to know and learn from."

Allakariallak recalls taking her first job with CBC North in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, where Ford was also based at the time. She said Ford's professionalism, and her dedication to her work, was inspiring.

"She disciplined us without mercy, she would argue with you without mercy — and they were all life lessons," Allakariallak said.

"She made sure that she put us all on pedestals, and reminded us of our strengths and how we're going to get through things and surpass difficult times. And that was her gift to us."

Ford, 67, was born in Coral Harbour, Nunavut, and was a teenager when her family moved to Rankin Inlet in 1970. She attended residential school in Iqaluit, and later worked with the Arctic Research Training Centre with Inuktitut scholar Mick Mallon.

Ford's younger brother, Kono Tattuinee, said his sister got into broadcasting — first at CBQR-FM and then later the CBC in Rankin Inlet — because she was "a born entertainer," who also strongly believed in Inuit culture and identity. 

"She loved people ... she had a tremendous heart for all of us Inuit," Tattuinee said.

William Tagoona, another long-time CBC North broadcaster in Kuujjuaq, Que., worked with Ford for decades. He described how Ford was part of the public broadcaster's shift toward more Inuit language broadcasting in the early 1980s, led by the late Jose Kusugak, CBC's former area manager for the Kivalliq region. 

"Much of CBC was dictated by English, and Inuktitut followed — and Jose didn't like that. He felt, up in the North, it's Inuktitut that must lead and English will follow," Tagoona recalled.

"So he started to surround himself with people that he knew could make that happen with him, and Annie Ford was one of those."

Ford worked for many years at the CBC in Rankin Inlet before moving to Iqaluit in the late 1990s. Over the years, she covered plenty of big events, from the founding of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, to the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Greenland in 2010, and the Arctic Winter Games. She hosted several of CBC Nunavut's Inuktitut-language radio programs at various times, and presented the radio news in Inuktitut. 

Family was key for Ford, according to her brother — but so was hockey.