Mary won't be able to read her Tusaayaksat anymore

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Mary Carpenter woke up the other day and decided she would make her point.

Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born governor general, would have loved it.

Mary woke up and dialed the Office of the Secretary of State of Canada.

A woman came on the line and asked, in both official languages, if she could help.

Mary asked if she might speak with the Secretary of State, the Hon. Gerry Weiner.

Only Mary -- born an Inuit in the Western Arctic -- asked in her own Canadian language, Inuvialuktun.

"I beg your pardon?" the woman asked.

"No," Mary said in English, her second language, "I beg your pardon."

"What do you mean?" the woman asked.

"I mean," Mary said, "that I value my language just as much as you value the two official languages of Canada. And I want you to know that because you are cutting off funding, I won't be able to read my Tusaayaksat anymore."

Mary didn't expect the woman at Secretary of State to understand, not the way Vincent Massey had understood 34 years ago -- but she had to tell someone in the government, even if no one in the government is listening.

Tusaayaksat is an Inuit newspaper published in Inuvik. Once a month it comes by mail down to Vanier, near Ottawa, where Mary is living while she tries to write the book of her life, and it is probably more important to her than Weiner could ever know.

Mary lives alone. There are times, many times lately, when the words she puts down on paper turn into beasts that frighten her.

It is one thing to read a fictional account of a child being attacked by a polar bear, of the child's mother being taken away to die in a distant sanitarium and of this child being raised as an orphan by cruel nuns -- but it is something else to write down this account as fact.

When her paper arrives from home, it is like the family she lost coming to visit.

She spreads her paper out and sinks happily into the news. Mary can point to every picture and know every face, every history.

It is also the one chance she has in distant Ottawa to read the words of her own language.

She wanted Weiner to know what he and Finance Minister Michael Wilson -- who must think slashing a $3.4 million Native Communications Program will soon clear up a $30 billion deficit -- may be taking away from her.

There are times when she wishes there were more people in Ottawa like the late Vincent Massey.

Massey came to Inuvik in 1956 and little Mary Carpenter was supposed to present the governor general with flowers.

One of the sisters took her upstairs for a "special cleaning" and then a room where the most beautiful frilled and ribboned dress she had ever imagined was waiting.

Mary put it on, twirled excitedly and was told she could wear it only for the ceremony. It wasn't hers to keep.

The sister left the room and Mary took off her frilled dress and ripped it to shreds.

She attended the ceremony in her orphan's dress, the hand of the sister firmly tightened around her pigtail so she wouldn't act up.

The governor general noticed and asked if he might meet privately with the troubled girl.

They talked in the school dining room and the story came out of Mary: she had ripped up the dress because she knew it would have to be given back.

Massey heard her out, determined not to laugh.

"You'll do all right in life," he told her. "Canada was built by people with your spirit."

Mary remembered that when she made her call to the Office of the Secretary of State of Canada. She wanted them to know -- in English, in French, and in Inuvialuktun -- that they're breaking people's spirit for the sake of pocket change.

But it's unlikely they're listening in any language.

(Roy MacGregor is a columnist with The Ottawa Citizen. Reprinted by permission).