Terry Ryan a.k.a. 'Man Who Sketches on Paper'

There is no word for art in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. Yet, largely owing to the vision of Terry Ryan, who was for almost 50 years the art adviser and general manager of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WBEC), art has become the economic engine of Cape Dorset, a community on the southern tip of Baffin Island in Nunavut.

Its population came together from scattered groups of Inuit, who faced starvation when the fur trade collapsed, before they found an alternative income stream.

The artists of Cape Dorset "rose to the highest echelons of Canada's art world with many, like Kenojuak Ashevak, Pudlo Pudlat, Pitseolak Ashoona becoming household names." Some people in Cape Dorset had trouble pronouncing Ryan's name, so he was given an Inuk name, Titiqtugaqti, which translated as "man who sketches on paper,"

To others, he was known as Tiuli, an Inuk way of saying Terry.

Terry Ryan died on August 31, 2017 in Toronto. He was 83.