The Rev. Canon Aigah Attagutsiak, associate incumbent of St. Margaret’s Vanier and the first Inuit priest in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, retired at the end of June.
St. Margaret’s was full for her final service on June 28 with extra chairs brought in and standing room only at the back of the church. Parishioners from both the Inuit and non-Inuit congregations as well as family and friends wanted to honour and thank her, not only for her work, care and leadership in the church, but also in the Inuit community in Ottawa.
Ottawa has the largest population of Inuit people outside of the Arctic. People often come to Ottawa for medical care, education and employment. Attagutsiak has been an important support for Inuit who often have not travelled outside the Arctic before. She visits Inuit in hospital. She helped establish an Inuit sewing group and is one of the key organizers of a large annual Inuit gathering and celebration at Christmas time when people enjoy traditional foods such as Arctic char and caribou. St. Margaret’s also hosts a community meal after Sunday services.
In her sermon, Attagutisak reflected on her faith journey. She grew up in Arctic Bay in a family of 14. They lived on the land in traditional Inuit way, hunting and fishing. She previously told Perspective that her mother loved going to church and all 14 children studied the Bible at Sunday School. Her older brother was a priest in Arctic Bay.
She told those gathered how others saw that God was calling her to be a priest before she did. After she moved to Ottawa in 1998, she began attending services at St. Margaret’s where the Very Rev. Roger Briggs, who had served in the Diocese of the Arctic, presided at St. Margaret’s Inuktitut-language service. She became a lay reader, and Briggs asked if she would like to train for the ministry. So did the Rev. Jason Pollick when he served at St. Margaret’s.
And when Bishop Andrew Atagotaaluk visited St. Margaret’s, he too told her he felt that she would one day become a priest. She again said no, she couldn’t. He asked why. “I thought all about the ways that I have made mistakes, so I told him, ‘I’m a sinner. You’re too late to choose me.’” But the bishop answered her, “The more you talk about yourself, about how you’re a sinner, the more I like you.”
Eventually, she came to believe that it was not the other priests calling her, it was God.
After studying with Briggs, attending annual courses at Wycliffe College in Toronto, she was ordained as a deacon in 2014 and as a priest in 2015, but even then, she struggled. When she first was appointed as a full-time priest at St. Margaret’s, the Rev. Canon Rhondda MacKay asked her if she wanted to preach the sermon on the National Indigenous Day of Prayer on June 21. She reluctantly agreed but recounted how she ended up crying in the bathroom before the service.
“I was talking to God. ‘You chose the wrong person. Why don’t you choose one of those people who know everything, who are not afraid to speak, who have wisdom about the Bible? I know nothing, Lord. Nothing. I don’t know how to speak English.’”
But she knew everyone was waiting for her, so she washed her face to hide her tears and went into the church. To her surprise, a parishioner named Derek Hamilton came and sat beside her. “He said, ‘I’m here to say, ‘Aigah, you’re in the Holy Spirit. You are with the Holy Spirit.’”
“That shocked me a little bit,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘He doesn’t know me. I was telling God that he chose the wrong person.’” And I said, ‘Even when I try to argue, am I still in the Holy Spirit?’
“He said, ‘Yes, the first day I saw you, I saw that you were in the Holy Spirit. You’re with the Holy Spirit…. That’s all I have to say.” And he left.
Attagutsiak said she wondered about that many times later and questioned herself, “What does that mean?” Later, the answer came to her. “I’m with God. If you don’t know anything, ask God. It says in the Bible, whenever you ask, God will give it to you.”
And indeed, Attagutsiak went on to serve God and the community faithfully and with great devotion. In 2022, then-Bishop Shane Parker appointed her to the Cathedral Canonry of Saint Mary Magdalene.
“So,” she said to everyone in the church at her retirement service, “I’m giving those words to you. … God used Derek to speak to me, and I pass it on to you. The more we can be in the Holy Spirit to help people, to help one another… Jesus will come again.”
The emotional service included drumming by Timothy Erkloo, and ‘Amazing Grace’ sung in Inuktitut. After the Eucharist, the service ended with many tears and hugs and gifts of appreciation for Attagutsiak. Then everyone was invited into the parish hall to enjoy lunch with delicious caribou stew and cake.
