Sydney "Mick" Mallon (1951)

Sydney Tate (Mick) Mallon was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1933, and immigrated to Canada in 1954 after earning his undergraduate degree at Queens’ College Cambridge University. Along the way, Mick met Cynthia Caughey, who immigrated to join Mick, then teaching in Ontario. In 1959, the family, with baby Amanda, first moved north to Puvirnituq, a small Inuit community in Northern Quebec. During the four years he spent as a teaching principal, Mick studied and practised Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. Inuit often give non-Inuit who live in their communities names based on their character, habits, or other attributes. They gave Mick the name Pisusuuq – the one who habitually walks, because of the many hours he spent roaming the tundra around the community. In 2018, documentarian Janna Graham used that title in her RTE/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio documentary about Mick: ‘How a rascally Irish immigrant became one of Canada’s top scholars of Inuktitut’

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4417724

From 1963 – 68, Mick and his growing family, now with young Clare, moved to Southeast Asia, where he taught in Sarawak, Borneo in a program sponsored by the Canadian government. With son Matthew added to the family, they returned to Canada in 1968, moving to Rankin Inlet, an Inuit community in the Northwest Territories (NWT), where Mick established the Eskimo Language School.. Whenever Mick was teaching Inuktitut, he worked in collaboration with one or more Inuit who were fluent speakers of the language, often unilingual Inuit elders. Hundreds of teachers, government employees, linguists, and students from around the world studied at the Eskimo Language School, benefiting from Mick’s deep understanding of the Inuit language and his unique teaching style. 

In 1971, Mick completed a Masters in Linguistics at the University of Toronto. His studies included an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Inuktitut. Later in his career, Mick applied this research in the development of several courses for the Departments of Linguistic and Education at McGill University in Montreal.

In 1980, Mick relocated to Iqaluit, NWT, where he joined the newly established Eastern Arctic Teacher Education Program as Director of Bilingual Education. In his work with EATEP, Mick helped to establish a partnership with McGill University in Montreal. Through this partnership, in 1984 EATEP became the first degree-level program offered in the NWT. Mick was appointed Associate Professor of Education at McGill.  Since 1984, over 350 Inuit teachers have graduated from this program.

Following his early retirement in 1986, Mick regularly taught Inuktitut for Arctic College and wrote the first textbook on the language, Introductory Inuktitut, in collaboration with Alexina Kublu. This was published by McGill Queen’s University Press in 1991.

In 2008, Mick was awarded the Order of Canada for his ‘pivotal role in preserving and revitalising the Inuktitut language.’  This is Canada’s highest civilian honour.

Mick taught Inuktitut at the University of Washington, Seattle, from the Summer of 2005 until his last cohort in 2019.

Throughout his life, Mick was a passionate sailor and wooden boat aficionado, finding opportunities to sail or kayak in both Borneo and Rankin Inlet, often to the consternation of locals. This was a love that Mick  first picked up as a young boy in Bangor, where he spent many days “messing about” in small boats.

Mick passed away peacefully on 18 September 2023 in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia with his family by his side. Mick was 90 years of age. He is survived by his children Amanda, Clare and Matthew, his granddaughter Madeline, his second wife Alexina Kublu, her daughter Papasie and grandson Logan.