A new facility in Montreal is making life easier for Inuit forced to travel south for medical appointments.
The provincially-funded rest house in Dorval is called Ullivik, which is Inuktitut for “a place to stay between destinations.”
Thanks to Ullivik, Inuit patients travelling south from Nunavik no longer need to stay at places like the downtown YMCA, a noisy hostel where officials say Inuit are “preyed upon.”
Jonathan Nassak, who has been coming to Montreal times a week from the isolated region of 12,000 people, is staying at Ullivik.
“It’s pretty big and there’s a lot of people and so much more cars than back at home,” he says of Montreal.
Due to high rates of chronic disease, Inuit men have a projected life expectancy that’s 15 years shorter than the Canadian population in general. For women, the gap is about 10 years.
There are other improvements aimed at allowing Inuit to heal, including traditional foods like seal, Arctic char and beluga whale.
Annie Eliyassialuk, 76, once spent four years traveling to Montreal for dialysis treatment. She called Ullivik “a joyful place.”
With a report from CTV's Genevieve Beauchemain
