Dancing in the Snow

It was 1974 when I first encountered my unusual friend. I was interning at a big hospital that served as a kind of ‘dumping ground, for many odds and sods of people’. Those were the exact words that were said to me by my supervisor. This was his way of telling me who my patients would be, and the low opinion he had of them. He would have pointed to my friend as an example had he even taken any notice of him.  Fortunately, for both my friend, and for me, he did not.

My friend is a short man, but sturdy, dark, and weather-worn of skin, possibly in his early seventies. I would often see him standing outside the dirtiest, least attended wing of the old hospital as I would walk by from the bus stop to the main wing. Although the man’s body spoke of his years, his eyes had much life in them, a window to a livelier soul. One day I stopped to talk to him, as he interested me. I introduced myself as Dan. Then he spoke a name I could not understand. Even if it were a name in English, which it wasn’t, it would still have been difficult for me to comprehend. He had a strong accent that I could only guess was Native of some sort. But more than that I did not know at the time. He smiled at the confused look on my face, and said, with a much louder voice – “Call me George.”

He asked me “What do you do here?” I said that I was an intern. He smiled again and said, “Half a doctor, then.” I laughed. I had never heard that line before.

I asked what he did, and he said, “I cough a lot. I have TB.” I understood. He must be Inuit. I had taken a sociology course at university in which we learned that in the 1950s the Inuit had the highest tuberculosis rate in the world. Many people were taken from their families onto a waiting ‘hospital’ ship, and then deposited in hospitals in southern Canada. Many died,  and some were able to return. But some, like George I suspected, just disappeared from their families, friends, and familiar environment. They were left to reside in derelict hospital wards as permanent patients until the time came when they would die and be buried, nobodies in the south, lost souls to the north. There were antibiotics available by the sixties, but they were too late. The damage had been done.

Although we were of a different age and of a contrasting cultural history, we started to talk regularly during my ever-movable lunch time. I told him what I was learning, and I amused him by imitating the different doctors, particularly those that should not ever have been put in charge of interns.

Talking About Sila

He taught me a lot about what he had learned as a boy and the young man he was before he was shipped to the south. The thing that fascinated me the most was ‘sila’. He mentioned the word a number of times when weather was particularly sunny, rainy, or there was a strong wind.

When I asked him what it meant, he just said, “There is no word in English for sila. Sila is air, but much more than air.  Sila is good when it is sunny, and you feel warm. Sila is bad when it rains, and you feel wet.  When you take your first breath, sila comes inside you and stays with you until you die. You are wise or you are not wise, that comes from your sila. Of course, good teachers help too, and working hard, or you may be half a doctor for years and years.  I smiled at that last remark

A Year Later

It is now a year since my internship began. I have become and been hired as what George calls “a complete doctor” at the hospital. I work primarily in the long term ward of the “odds and sods”, where rookie doctors are often placed, a kind of test. I feel that I can make a difference there, though.

            I have decided to get involved with George’s ‘case’, believing that he should be given a chance to at least visit the northern shores of Baffin Island, where he was from. The name of his community is Pond Inlet, named colonially after English astronomer John Pond in 1818, by Scottish explorer John Ross, who strangely enough did not have an Arctic inlet named after him. The ‘real name’ for it, according to George, is Mittimatalike ‘the place where the landing place is’. I had to listen to and practice that word many times before I got it right. George is a patient teacher of his language, tolerant of mistakes.

 I told him that I was trying to arrange a flight for him back to his community. To my surprise, when I told him what I was doing, he thanked me, but at the same time seemed neither particularly positive or happy about the idea.

           “I have been gone for 20 years now. Perhaps no one would know me now. At this place I have friends.” He reached out and grabbed my hand in his. Then he brought out what had become an old joke between us. “Don’t worry. I will not try to rub noses with you.”

           Determined to succeed, I contacted people in Pond Inlet. He was right about there being no family of his there. Some had died from tuberculosis, the others had moved elsewhere.  The people I talked to did not know where they had gone

When I next spoke with him about his going north, he said, “I need something that tells me I should go. I’m just not sure. I need some sign.” He wasn’t procrastinating. I felt he was waiting for something to tell him ‘yes’ or ‘no’

There Came a Sign

Then there came a sign. I didn’t see it, or sense it in any way, but George did. When I saw him early in the morning there was a big, wide smile on his face. Before I could ask him what was going on, he answered my unspoken question with one word: “sila”. I asked him, “Does that mean I can get us tickets to fly there? He nodded his head, and said. “But we need to wait a little first.” I knew better than to ask him what we were waiting for, but I knew that somehow it would come.

           And come it did. The morning had been a typical warm July day in southern Ontario, but the weather began changing fast. When I went to see George for my late lunch, he was still smiling. It wasn’t long before the reason appeared. It started to snow. The two of us looked up and all around us, both of us with big grins on our faces. And then, as if by some unspoken agreement, we both started to dance in the snow, swinging each other around like in a square dance. We would be going north soon.  Sila had spoken.