Jobie Issigaittuq

  1. QTAB07EN
  • Jobie Issigaittuq
  • Arctic Bay (Ikpiarjuk)

Jobie Issigaittuq was born in 1949 in Arctic Bay and then moved to a camp near Igloolik. He remembers seeing a white man for the first time at the age of six in the camp. The white man was a priest. Around the age of nineteen, he moved to Igloolik. Dog teams were his family’s only mode of transportation at that time. When they moved into the community, they did not have chains for the dogs so they left some loose on the ice. In 1965 or 1966, Ivaluarjuk shot some of Jobie’s dogs and it was not until later that Jobie learned that Ivaluarjuk was instructed to do so. Approximately a year later he received notice that dogs had to be tied up and he purchased chains. Owners would shoot their own dogs if they had rabies. He recalls the vaccination program starting only recently. He does remember other families being mauled by dogs. From 1974 to 1983 he worked in the mine. Today he works from his home as a guardian for the Baffin Correctional Centre.