The Anglican Church of Canada’s first Inuit bishop, Paul Idlout, lived through a period of massive change in the Arctic that affected his people’s way of life, their relationship to the settler nation of Canada and their position within the Anglican Church of Canada. He died Dec. 31, 2025 at the age of 90. Family and colleagues remember him as a skilled survivalist, a humble pastor and an open-hearted friend.
Idlout’s brother-in-law Titus Allooloo, former member of the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut, says he first met Idlout at age 3 when Idlout, 20 years older, came to take care of Allooloo after the latter’s mother was taken to a hospital in Hamilton, Ont. At the time, they lived in a traditional camp in a sod house, Allooloo says. Growing up, he remembers Idlout being an excellent hunter bringing in seals, caribou and other game.
“He had to be observant, adaptable, know the environmental conditions, know the behaviour of the animals,” says Allooloo.
Idlout grew up in a community that was nomadic, living in sod houses in the summer and igloos in the winter. In the 1950s, his family was moved from Pond Inlet on Baffin Island to Resolute, Nunavut as part of the federal government’s High Arctic relocation—a policy of forced migration that led to extreme privation for Inuit early on and that a 1980s claim filed by Inuit against the Canadian government said was motivated by a desire to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic.
There, Allooloo says, Idlout helped Inuit families moved from Quebec, also as part of the High Arctic relocation, learn how to survive in the harsher, pitch-dark winters of their new home. During this time, he was also filmed for the documentary Land of the Long Day, a still from which showing Idlout would later be printed on Canada’s $2 bill.
Idlout would go on to work for the RCMP as an interpreter and guard from 1963 to 1977 and after that as a kayak builder for Petro-Canada, which was doing oil exploration in the Arctic. During this time, Idlout began to drink too much and didn’t like what that was doing to him, Allooloo says. Idlout eventually overcame his excessive alcohol use and set out to change his life. In 1986, Idlout enrolled in the Arthur Turner Training School. He was ordained a priest in 1989 and elected suffragan bishop in 1996.
“I was very proud of him,” Allooloo says. “And even though he was the first Inuk bishop in Anglican Circles, he was very humble. I thought a great deal about him.” In an Inuit community that was at the time overwhelmingly Christian, he adds, many people he knew were proud of Idlout. “They were glad that they had a person that spoke their language that was a bishop and able to speak in homily in their language and totally understood the lifestyle,” he says.
Idlout never forgot the upbringing that taught him survival skills and a connection to the Arctic environment, Allooloo says—a bond that lasted the rest of his life. “Even when he was a bishop, anytime he had free time he would go ptarmigan hunting, rabbit hunting, caribou hunting.”
Allooloo learned much from Idlout, he says, looking up to him from a young age. “I call him my brother.”
Former diocesan bishop of the Arctic David Parsons did not know Idlout as well as Allooloo, he says, but similarly remembers him for his humility and kindness. Parsons was impressed by Idlout’s ability to make even strangers feel welcome.
“The sparkle of his eyes and the smile of his face, [he] was just a loving, caring person to me,” Parsons says. “He was always [one of the] people who don’t stand up over you but look at you as a brother.”
Archbishop Shane Parker, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, who travelled with Idlout in the Arctic for a week in 2003, likewise said he bonded quickly with the bishop. Parker first met Idlout when the former was serving as dean of Ottawa’s Christ Church Cathedral. Idlout brought bannock his wife had made, still warm after the flight down south, Parker says.
“As I travelled with him and listened to his stories and watched his face and eyes as we travelled by boat on the sea near Iqaluit, I was aware of being with a man whose life reached far back into the traditional ways of his people,” the primate says.
His funeral was held Jan. 6 at St. Jude’s Cathedral in Iqaluit. Idlout is survived by his wife, Abigail and their children and grandchildren.
