“Welcome to the world. Wake up. You’re not alone. We’re all of us. We share the same planet. We breathe the same air. We eat the same food. Most of us anyway.” - Isaac Augiak
“Can I use your phone? I wanna call 9-1-1…I’m dying.”
-Isaac Augiak, to a passer-by while lying on the street
“I love my son. I see him. I talk to him. He looks like me, only younger…and more gorgeous…and more beautiful.”
-Thomas Weetaltuk
Isaac Augiak is an old man with the eyes of a child. Born in Cape Smith, a tiny Inuit fishing village on the shores of Hudson’s Bay, Isaac led a typical Inuit way of life in his childhood. As a kid, he spent the bulk of his time in northwestern Nunavik—in Akulivik and Puvirnituq—hunting and fishing with his father.
On most days, he would wake at dawn and crawl out of his family’s igloo. His mother, who worked as a manna (i.e. cook) at The Bay, left the boys for work while Isaac and his father were busy hitching their 14 huskies to the dog-sled. 
When the season came for hunting fox, their method was straightforward. They would plant fox traps and wait for a fox to go sniffing at the trap. Once its snout was caught, Isaac or his father would use a small club to hit the fox’s nose and knock it unconscious. The next step was the kill, which they did by slowly stepping on its lungs and suffocating the animal. After skinning the fox, its fur was sold to The Bay for the tidy sum of $25.
These stories are Isaac’s memories. He also likes to tell about his dirt-bike prowess: “I used to play Honda,” he says, “all day long. Nobody can beat me in those two villages [Akulivik and Puvirnituq].” When Isaac tells stories like these, his big angular face lights up, a warm smile full of the memory of innocence. In many ways, however, Isaac remains trapped in that child-like state. Today, along with the 10% Labatt Blue tall cans that fuel his nostalgia, stories are his lifeblood. As he puts it, “When I’m happy, I’m so happy. But the life is hard sometimes.” 
20 years ago, when Isaac moved to Montreal, he came for the easy access to booze. But after finding the booze, he also found Thomas Weetaltuk, a gentle man Isaac calls by his real name, Baru. Since both men lived on the street at the time, they met on Sherbrooke, on a bench outside a church. Since then, they have been life partners, having lived together on the street, in a crack house, and, during their better days, in apartments, where legitimacy and alcohol struggle to co-exist.
Like his friend Isaac, Thomas grew up in Nunavik, but as a young man questioning his sexual identity, Nunavik wasn’t the ideal place to be. From the time he was very young, his parents drank, which left The Church as his default refuge. Of course, Christians aren’t all saints, a fact that Thomas has come to realize. Looking back, Thomas takes particular issue with the rigid moral guidance he received; with homosexual ideas dancing in his young head, The Church preached self-discipline rather than self-exploration. The central message he received was that transgression was evil. But, as Thomas philosophically points out, “How do you forgive if mistakes are evil? I’ve forgiven him [Isaac] so many times. But they don’t want to forgive.”
The story of Isaac and Thomas is not one of will power or personal triumph. This is not a fairy tale where salvation saves the day and demons are conquered. Their story, though, is beautifully human. In December 2007, Isaac suffered a stroke that put him in a coma for four days. But while recovering in hospital, his faithful friend Thomas climbed back on the wagon in an effort to provide stability and comfort for himself and his life partner. His first step was to find work at Makivik, a development corporation that is mandated to manage heritage funds the Inuit of Nunavik receive as part of the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement (JBNQA). In effect, Makivik’s mandate is to foster economic development and the Inuit way of life throughout Nunavik.
With Isaac now out of the hospital, Thomas manages both their money and their substance abuse. Having greatly reduced his own consumption of alcohol, Thomas administers Isaac’s booze like the caring friend and nurse he is. Isaac manages his own cigarettes by smoking half-butts. And for the first time in a long time, they live in an apartment that is their own private space.
Over the years, Isaac and Thomas have told their stories to countless caring souls who have taken the time to go beyond sympathy, offering empathy or even genuine friendship. A year and a half ago, while Isaac was bundled up and begging in the middle of a fierce February snowstorm, freelance photographer Edouard Plante-Fréchette happened across the man with the warm smile. 
At that time, Edouard had just returned from Tibet, where a singular experience with a whirling dervish had pushed him towards documentary photography. In Tibet, while observing an old man, the man turned, looked at Edouard, and then unleashed a radiant smile that planted itself in Edouard’s mind. Upon returning to Québec City where he had grown up, Edouard enrolled in the Commercial Photography program at Dawson College and moved to Montreal.
It was during his first year at Dawson that Edouard met and took an interest in Isaac. Naturally, the first step in their friendship was for Edouard to hand Isaac a little money while snapping photos of Isaac smiling through the snowstorm. An hour later, though, when Edouard came back to see that Isaac had turned the money into beer, Isaac was even friendlier, and so the two new acquaintances walked back to Isaac’s room on Tupper. Since then, Edouard has been everything from a visitor and a photographer to a drinking buddy, a life line, and a friend. The following photographs document his friendship with Isaac Augiak and Thomas Weetaltuk. {w}
profiling: volume i, issue ii
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