Waiting Turns for the goods from Canada Goose. © Eldred Allen
A Feast of Fabric
ITK hosts Canada Goose Resource Centre in Nain
TECHNICAL FABRICS, PARKA LINING, thread skeins and coyote fur stretched across one end of Nain’s Jeremias Sillett Community Centre for a pop-up material giveaway last fall. A shipping container full of fabric arrived in the community just in time for the first Canada Goose Resource Centre event in Nunatsiavut. The event was greeted enthusiastically by Nainimiut, who eagerly waited in line to stock up on precious sewing goods for the coming season’s parkas.
The giveaway, hosted by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in partnership with the Nunatsiavut Government, the Nunatsiavut Group of Companies and Canada Goose, was a highlight of ITK’s annual general meeting held September 27 and 28 in the Nunatsiavut administrative centre.
Nunatsiavut President Johannas Lampe says he is excited to see all Nunatsiavut communities benefit from the collaboration.
“Thank you for coming to Nain and making a lot of people happy. It’s putting light into the fire of people’s hearts,” Lampe says during the fall 2023 meeting. “Our young people need something to create confidence within themselves. My wife will be helping her grandchildren, showing them how to sew and creating that confidence that they need.”
There’s lots to go around. Mary Anderson. © Eldred Allen
Resource Centre events and projects like it are all ways Canada Goose works to “foster talent and craftsmanship,” and to “show up authentically” in the North, President Carrie Baker told ITK’s Board of Directors, Sept. 27. The program spans back to 2009 when two Pond Inlet designers visited a Canada Goose factory in Toronto and happened to ask what was being done with leftover fabric they saw.
“They asked to bring the materials back to their home because that was one of the biggest things people in their community did was to make their own clothes for their family and friends, and they didn’t always have access to the materials or the materials were much to expensive,” Baker says, adding their insight is what prompted the creation of the resource centre program.
Don’t forget the thread. From left, Steohanie Angnatok, Jessie Lidd, and Mary Lou Harris. © Eldred Allen
The Nain event was the 20th giveaway of sewing resources, with one held in Yukon last year and one in the planning stages for Inuvik. Canada Goose has also donated over 1,000 used and repurposed parkas to communities across Inuit Nunangat. Even parkas that can’t be worn are deconstructed by seamstresses to reuse the parts.
ITK has partnered with Canada Goose since 2018, with the creation of Project Atigi, which saw Inuit designers collaborate on three parka collections. Project Atigi not only created opportunities for entrepreneurship, it also garnered international recognition for Inuit parka-making as an artform.
“Inuit have had complicated relationships with industry. We appreciate that you have come to us and asked us how to partner and work together,” President Natan Obed tells Baker, in recognition of the company’s efforts to give back to Inuit and Inuit Nunangat – including a cash donation made by Canada Goose employees to the National Inuit Youth Council. “That is one example of the connection Canada Goose and it’s employees have with Inuit and Inuit Nunangat,” he says.
ITK is working with regional Inuit organizations to ensure Canada Goose has community level connections so that resources like these can continue to be shared with Inuit.
Silpa Obed. © Eldred Allen
