Thank you, Madam Speaker. On Tuesday, September 16th, Tommy passed away in his home. Tommy was known by many others during his life. In the residential school in Aklavik, many of his friends called him Tommy Tucker. At Read Island, he earned the name Aqpaaq, for running messages camptocamp.
In Aklavik, he was told to help a single Gwich'in woman whom he didn't know. He would chop wood, haul ice, and trap for her. Before leaving Aklavik he finally learned that she was his aunt Caroline Moses.
He returned from school to Prince Albert Sound, where his uncle lived, to learn the life of a trapper and hunter until his father, Johnny Norberg, picked him up and took him to Read Island.
Tommy tells of his skating ability when he would skate on the river at Read Island to reach the trapline while Joe, his brother, would run the dogs. Sometimes Tommy would skate over 30 miles in a day.
Later in life, he was recruited for construction of the DEW Line sites. Wherever they were transferred to a site, there was no school, the children of school age were sent to residential school.
When their son Harry Maffa became of school age, Elva put her foot down telling Tommy to quit working because there's no more children that were going to be sent away to residential school. During that time they moved to Coppermine now known as Kugluktuk.
Tom and Elva went to visit their parents on Holman Island. While there, Tommy was offered a job of settlement maintainer. He maintained all the government buildings, including the school, nursing station, and operated the power plant. He built the first runway down the middle of town.
Eventually the government decided that the original site was not adequate to grow the community. Tommy was tasked with moving all the buildings to Queens Bay. The biggest piece of heavy equipment was a D4 Cat. He taught other men how to operate the equipment.
He’s always talking to his daughters about going to school, getting an education, and a career for themselves. He reinforced that his grade 4 education from Aklavik was not sufficient. He encouraged his daughters to move where the jobs were and that home would always be there to come home to. He taught the boys and men in the family how to be prepared for unexpected situations especially when whales arrived. The young men and grandsons loved having him around while they wrenched, built sleds, or did equipment repairs. Supervising the operation and always giving tips, He kept them entertained, too, with stories. The boys loved his oneliners or comebacks.
Madam Speaker, I had the honor to be adopted by Tommy and Elva when I lived in Coppermine. My sisters, his siblings, friends and extended family and I will sadly miss him. The saving grace is he is now in heaven with his loving wife Elva. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
