Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to welcome all my colleagues back to session here. Throughout the years as a Member, we as MLAs get invited to functions and celebrations. We also get invited to other events that are sometimes not so celebratory, such as funerals and wakes.
I want to rise today to talk about the specific losses that we’ve had in the Sahtu. I’ve heard from our other colleagues of some of the people they lost in their ridings. For example, up in the Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Frank Firth, a good friend of mine that passed away in Fort McPherson, or the pilot for whom we just had a memorial in Inuvik.
Throughout the years as an MLA, from time to time we’re caught in either sitting in Assembly here or at one of the committee meetings or we get called to go to our communities to pay respects for the elder or young person. Sometimes there’s a conflict for us to either go or stay here and do business on behalf of the people or show our support for the people back in our communities. We deal with that from time to time. Death has no appointment. That is one of the hardest parts in our small communities. We look, and they have their own customs; people have their own customs and traditions how to handle death.
I just want to pay our condolences to the people in the Sahtu for the passing of the elders. I want to name off Marie Boniface, an elder from Fort Good Hope who passed away recently; Mr. Antoine Kochon from Colville Lake; Marie Therese Kenny from Deline; Elizabeth Kodakin from Deline. Of course, we lost some younger people: Mark Collier from Norman Wells; my cousin Johnny Lennie from Norman Wells last summer; Nicole Horassi; and a young lady from Fort Good Hope, Faith Kochon. We offer our prayers to the families, and we’re thinking about them even as we’re working.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
