The training program is called Our Life’s Journey, and it is unique in Nunavut
Donna Apak is crying so hard she can barely get the words out.
She has been asked to talk about a significant life event she overcame before joining this class for future Inuit mental-health counsellors. For Ms. Apak, 47, it was the suicide of her eldest daughter, Diane.
Ms. Apak was fishing outside her Baffin Island community six years ago when a small group came to tell her that Diane, distraught over the death of the grandmother who helped raise her, had killed herself. She was 21.
When Ms. Apak finishes sharing her story in Inuktitut, her first language, she wipes her eyes and tosses her Kleenex in a cardboard box that is already half-filled with the discarded tissues of her fellow trainees, all of whom hope to gain the skills to ease the suffering of Inuit like Diane.