Skip to main content

Site Banner Ads

Site Search

Search

Up Here Publishing

Mobile Toggle

Utility navigation

  • Shop
  • Contact Us

Social Links

Facebook Twitter Instagram

Search Toggle

Search

Main navigation

  • Magazines
    • Latest Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Up Here Business
    • YK Guide
    • Move Up Here
  • Sections
    • People & Places
    • Arts & Lifestyle
    • History & Culture
    • Travel & Tourism
    • Nature & Science
    • Northern Jobs
  • Newsletters
  • Community Map
  • Contests
    • Arctic Adventure Sweepstakes
    • Sally Manning Award
  • Subscribe
    • Magazine
    • Digital Edition

‘You Can Just See People Need Help.’

Up Here Magazine - March/April 2022

Gail Cyr founded, led and fought for organizations devoted to helping Indigenous Northerners. Recently appointed to the Order of Canada, she has spent her entire professional life in the service of others—and she has no plans to let retirement slow her down. 

By Meaghan Brackenbury

Photo by Pat Kane

Gail Cyr

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. ‘You Can Just See People Need Help.’

The memory still gives Gail Cyr chills.

It was a sunny–and thankfully bugless–mid-June day in 2007. That morning, nearly one hundred Yellowknifers, clad in red shirts and toting protest signs, joined together to begin a march down the highway out of town. They intended to walk 116 kilometres from Yellowknife to the Tłı̨chǫ community of Behchokǫ̀, on the same stretch of road where, 17 years earlier, a 15-year-old Dene girl from Łútsël K'é had gone missing while hitchhiking. 

Cyr was one of the forces behind the march that day. As an advisor to the NWT’s Minister Responsible for the Status of Women at the time, she had helped to organize the event to bring attention to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in the territory. She looks back on everyone’s determination admiringly. “There was a real sense of camaraderie amongst the marchers,” Cyr says. 

The group was only 10 kilometres away from Behchokǫ̀ when a caravan of cars approached. 

“All of a sudden, the doors opened, and all of these people got out and joined us,” Cyr says. There were men, women, little kids atop their parents’ shoulders, all welcomed with smiles and hugs. “It was just a wonderful show of support from the community, and it made the march that much more special.”

The moment was a testament to how one action can snowball into something larger, and it’s one of many examples Cyr can point to from the decades she’s spent immersed in community issues. Since moving to Yellowknife from Manitoba in 1974, the 69-year-old has taken up cause after cause. She was even appointed to the Order of Canada last December for her dedication to making the North a better place—a passion fuelled by experiences from her younger years that still burns today. 

When unpacking how she got here, Cyr always looks back to her childhood. She’s a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, born in Nelson House, Manitoba, apprehended from her Cree parents, and put into the foster care system as an infant. She never knew her family, community, or culture. “There were a lot of rough times, and there were a lot of lonely times,” she says.

Cyr says these feelings of loneliness as a child, as well as the racism and sexism she experienced when she moved to Winnipeg in 1970 for university, shaped who she is today. It’s where she got her deep sense of compassion and empathy for others. “You don't have to have identical experiences, but you can just see when people need help.”

When she came North in search of work, Cyr was drawn to projects that let her put that compassion into practice. One of her first and proudest achievements was founding the Native Courtworkers Association in 1975. The organization was formed to help Indigenous Northerners navigate a brand-new legal system being imposed on them. 

“The NWT government just started up in 1966,” Cyr explains, “so the Legislative Assembly was passing lots of statutes.” Northerners were overwhelmed with all these changes, she says. With the new statutes being enforced, more and more people were getting charged. 

“Everyone in the legal community basically said, ‘Okay, we need to create some kind of program here to help out.’”

Cyr admits she may have seemed an unlikely candidate for this task. She had no formal legal background, but she was well-read and saw a need within her community. She didn’t give it much thought before taking on the challenge. 

The organization assisted with all sorts of cases: criminal trials, custody battles with child and family services, even helping people change government-issued anglicized names back to their Indigenous ones. The courtworkers—many of whom were Indigenous—would guide clients through these byzantine processes, in their own languages and at their own pace. 

The program has changed significantly over the years and doesn’t have the same scope as it once did; nonetheless, Cyr says the decade she spent as executive director was incredibly rewarding. “If you won on behalf of your clients, you just watched that weight come off their shoulders. Sometimes they cried, they were so happy it worked out. It definitely makes you feel good.”

Cyr has been chasing that feeling for more than fifty years. 

In every role she takes on, she’s become a voice for the voiceless: from sitting on Yellowknife’s city council, where she fought for more Indigenous representation in decision-making, to the work she did travelling to communities and helping them run their own elections, to her continued activism around family violence and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 

Cyr now likes to say she’s “semi-retired”—though in her case, emphasis is placed heavily on “semi.” She’s still a member of the NWT Human Rights Commission and is president of the Yellowknife Seniors’ Society. She has also been active in the local theatre scene, having acted directed, written, and staged a couple productions of her own. 

And it doesn’t seem that Cyr is quitting in her quest to help her community any time soon. She still gets calls from people asking her for advice or to lend her natural leadership to one cause or another. 

“People just kind of hear about you,” she laughs. “Oh, that’s Gail! But I don’t mind. It’s a lot of fun.”

Up Here Magazine - March/April 2022

Arctic Fox

Adaptable Mr. Fox

Appearing at home in any environment, arctic and red foxes seem adorable and even approachable. But be advised, they don’t make good pets.

By Page Burt

Photo by Page Burt

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

Up Here Magazine - March/April 2022

View of Iqaluit

Reframing Arctic Sovereignty

Free

A race for resources, control, and access makes the Arctic one of the hottest topics on the international stage in the 21st century. But if Canada wants to truly assert its sovereignty in the North, those who call it home say it needs to start with them. 

By Meaghan Brackenbury

Photo by Lisa Milosavljevic

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

Related Articles

UP HERE - SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023

Harvesting plants at the Inuvik hockey rink

Planting Ideas

In parts of the North, food insecurity is a national health crisis and finding solutions has been a slow process. Northerners are filling in the gaps, but they can’t do it alone. 

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

UP HERE - SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023

Inuvik to Tuk highway

Fixing The North’s Melting Highways

Can roads up here be built better? We did a deep dive to find out.

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

March/April Up Here

Nurse practitioner Michelle Wolsky

Learning Together

How nurse practitioner Michelle Wolsky became the most trusted health care provider for the Yukon’s trans, non-binary and two-spirit communities.

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

March/April Up Here

Metis midwife Heather Heinrich makes a home visit.

Call the Midwife

Despite the challenges that stand in the way of midwifery, advocates are determined to break through barriers and revive a practice that could change the way Northerners give birth.

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

March/April Up Here

Volunteer fire fighters learn the ropes.

What Makes A Northern Firefighter

When it’s minus 30 degrees and the alarm call comes in, they’re the ones who answer. Meet the volunteers who play a crucial role in battling fires across the territories.

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023

January/February 2023

Francisca Mandeya holds a mbira.

The bridge builder

How Francisca Mandeya has challenged racial and gender inequality in Zimbabwe and the Canadian Arctic.

September 29th, 2023 September 29th, 2023
Newsletter sign-up promo image.

Stay in Touch.

Our weekly newsletter brings all the best circumpolar stories right to your inbox.

Up Here magazine cover

Subscribe Now

Our magazine showcases award-winning writing and spectacular northern photos.

Subscribe

Footer Navigation

  • Advertise With Us
  • Work With Us
  • Write for Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimers & Legal

Contact Information

Up Here Publishing
Box 1343
Yellowknife, NT
X1A 2N9  Canada
Phone: 867.766.6710
Email: editor@uphere.ca

Social Links

Facebook Twitter Instagram
Funded by the Government of Canada