Favourite Consulting Assignments: Inuvialuit Communications Society Television Training Program

Greg Smith, Senior Consultant

Every consultant has assignments that they remember with special fondness. We asked our team to reminisce a bit about their own favourite memories. Here's another one from Greg Smith:

One of my favourite consulting assignments was... Overseeing a television training program for the Inuvialuit Communications Society (ICS) in the Western Arctic in the early 1980’s. The Northern Native Broadcast Access Program was created to provide funding to 13 Aboriginal broadcasters for radio or television broadcast production as a way of helping to preserve language and culture. ICS was created to oversee this for six communities in the Western Arctic. An audience survey conducted by Rosemary Kuptana, who was originally from Sachs Harbour, indicated that the Inuvialuit wanted television in their own language, Inuvialuktun. So ICS developed a one-year training program, and built a new production studio and offices in the Semmler building on Inuvik’s main street. We recruited an eminent broadcaster, Ab Douglas Driediger, to lead the training. Although we interviewed Ab in Toronto, he was based on a ranch near Medicine Hat at the time.

ICS was incredibly lucky, because he was perfect for the job – which was to help recruit and train nine Inuvialuit to become television producers. Ab was a former national Parliamentary Bureau correspondent and later national TV news anchor for CTV (with Peter Jennings), and a national and foreign correspondent (including Moscow) for CBC, as well as a former professor of journalism at the University of Regina. Besides being a true professional with an impressive background, he was a very likeable and adaptable person who earned the respect and admiration of all of his trainees and other colleagues. We became good friends during the time we worked together, and have stayed in touch since.

One of my most vivid memories of working with Ab was travelling around the six communities in the depths of January. We arrived in Paulatuk, population about 120 or so, in the dark with the temperature at minus 40 degrees and a cold wind blowing. Unfortunately our intended accommodation at the transient centre wasn’t available, there was no hotel, and we didn't know anyone who could put us up. While we stood out in the snow trying to figure out what to do, someone took pity on us, and escorted us to the RCMP lockup, where we shared a small cell for the night. Because he was older and much more distinguished, I gave Ab first choice of bunks (he took the lower one).

Ab Douglas Driediger at a Tamapta taping in the ICS studio in Inuvik, around 1985, with young Inuvialuit guests and television trainees Stan Lee Ruben, left and Willie Stefansson, right.

Equally memorable, and extremely moving, was our first broadcast in 1985. When they were hired, the only thing most of the Inuvialuit trainees knew about television was what they had watched on their sets at home. But within a year, the first ICS broadcast produced by them was going to be aired by CBC North. For most Inuvialuit, this would be the first time they heard their language on television, and the first time ever that a local – Renie Arey from Aklavik - was the producer. We booked Inuvik’s log Friendship Centre, Ingamo Hall, set up two or three large televisions tuned to CBC (pretty much the only choice in those days), and hosted a feast for anyone who wanted to come in and watch the launch. By air time, the hall was full and when that first ever show in the Tamapta series came onto the screen, it was a very powerful moment. The room alternated between silence and animated chatter in English and Inuvialuktun. Following the broadcast, which was about “ratting” (muskrat hunting) in the Mackenzie Delta, there was lots of country food, music and dancing to be shared by all.