This forced them to go outside during the darkest months of the year, when the sun barely sets on the horizon and people go to their homes. For the women who curled, quitting was not an option because the team depended on them.
“They know they have to get out,” Ms Mayr said. “When they stay at home, they feel bad.”
The communities of the Northwest Territories, whose populations are descended from First Nations and white settler families, stand out for their mental health struggles, which in many cases are linked to Canada’s destructive colonial history.
This is the familiar story of Miss Lenny, the daughter of an Inuvialuit man and a white woman who moved to the Far North as a nurse. At the age of 7, she said, Ms. Lenny’s father was sent to a boarding school to “westernize” him, where he was taught by priests and nuns who punished him for using his native language.
There he learned silence, and it stayed with him into adulthood.
“You didn’t talk, you didn’t cry, you didn’t have emotions,” she said. “You grew up in a system that taught you this.”
She doesn’t remember anyone talking about mental health when she was growing up, even after her uncle and later her cousin committed suicide. The story has extended to a third generation of children who grew up with addiction and abuse, paying the price for what happened to their parents, she said. She wears images of dog tags her uncle and grandmother were supposed to wear, “Eskimo ID cards”.
However, when Ms. Lenny tried to live in the south, she was itching to return. She hated traffic jams and pollution. She is used to being near water bodies. Her husband from Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean, does not belong in the city.