“I was still sleeping when the phone rang early that morning. It was Patricia Bell from the CBC saying, ‘Have you heard the news?’ Then it was non-stop interviews.” Being coupled with Al Gore felt odd, she says. “I’m different to him in every way. We have common ground on the environment, but I’m a woman, an indigenous woman whose culture is being challenged. He’s not living this life. He’s rah-rah-rah. I’m not that way. I’m calm in my interventions. There’s no hysteria around my approach. I don’t bring an alarmist side.”
At first, she was under the illusion that he’d call. He didn’t. Her friends thought he would come to Iqaluit. He didn’t. In fact, his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t show the face of the Inuit people. The map he used cuts off at the 49th parallel, leaving Canada out. At the historical hearing she attended on climate change a month later in Washington, Watt-Cloutier’s team tried to arrange a meeting, but Gore’s people said he was booked for the next six months. “Those indicators reminded me that being nominated with this man was an unusual connection.”
At about the same time, her health became a concern. She blamed it on fatigue, jet lag, the round-the-world meetings. But an unsettling anxiety and exhaustion plagued her to the point that she eventually sought medical intervention. “I was feeling overwhelmed. While someone might say, ‘Duh, you’ve just been nominated for the biggest prize in the world,’ I’m not one to be swayed by such things and continued to try to settle myself down.”
The day before Father’s Day in the midst of the international circus her life had become, her daughter came to the house with a gift: a photo of Watt-Cloutier’s father and his boot spurs from the RCMP. Sylvia had made contact with the man’s daughter, and she’d given her the mementoes. The gift was closure for Siila. “Forgiveness is freeing oneself,” she says.
By fall of 2007, all of Canada was behind her. It was 50 years since Lester B. Pearson had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Canadians wanted another. The hype around the coming announcement was building and, the night before the announcement, the CBC as well as media from Japan, Scandinavia and the U.S. were calling. She confided to Crowley, “Whatever happens tomorrow, this is the win – the energy coming to the Arctic, the focus on the issue.”
When the phone hadn’t rung at 5 a.m., Siila knew the prize wasn’t coming to her. Then, at 5:05 a.m., an e-mail arrived from New York announcing that Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. “I sat there and watched the sun come up. It was a beautiful, calm, peaceful sunrise, and I felt like something had lifted from me. For three more days, the Arctic sky was as peaceful as it gets. I thought I’m being released from this turmoil.”
Her comment on the day of the announcement was vintage Siila: “The Earth is the winner.” As for Al Gore, it wasn’t until several weeks later that Watt-Cloutier realized that being nominated with someone who shared a very different energy and approach to the issues was causing her inner turmoil.
