Igloo Dwellers Were My Church

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

This book is a refreshing change from many books about Canada’s Arctic
because it has no plot, no romanticism, and no political agenda. John
Sperry was the Anglican Bishop of the Arctic from 1974 to 1990. But his
ministry began in June, 1950, when a 26-year-old veteran of the British
Navy in World War II, newly ordained in Winnipeg, arrived in Coppermine
(today’s Kugluktuk) on the central Arctic coast. Igloo Dwellers Were
My Church tells of Inuit life as he experienced it in his 20 years in
Coppermine, although most of his descriptions and reflections are of
life in the 1950s.

The book is filled with photographs, both color and black and white, by
Sperry and his predecessor in Coppermine, Canon Harold Webster. Indeed,
the written text itself is like a series of photographs, panoramas, and
close-ups. Together they weave a rich, broad, and deep sense of
Aboriginal life and Anglican ministry in the Arctic before the full
force of southern Canadian technology and junk had transformed the North
and its peoples. We meet starvation and early “book learning”
education. We go on long trips (over 3000 kilometres a year) by dogsled
over frozen land and sea ice. We meet Inuit on their terms, with the
survival skills, oral traditions, and communal values that enabled them
to survive in a harsh climate for thousands of years and to prosper in
the fur trade economy that lasted for more than a hundred years.

While the text can seem disjointed because it is organized by topic,
not chronology, it is unified by Sperry’s obvious great affection for
and deep admiration of the Inuit people. He wants their lives to be
seen, their adaptations to a hard lifestyle to be admired, and their
voices to be heard. In the end, we know them better and a period of
Inuit culture is preserved.