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“If we’re going to pride ourselves on being one of Canada’s most northern professional sports teams, in the Oilers and the Eskimos, we need to act that way. And so we’re going back again for the Sunrise Festival,” said club spokesman Allan Watt, who was part of the initial liaison along with Rhodes, and has carried through in that capacity over the years. “And also recognizing that the second largest Inuit population outside of the North lives in Edmonton.”

The Eskimos are seeing what began as a call for change evolve into an expansion of the community-owned team’s borders beyond the city, beyond the Capital Region and even beyond the northern boundary of Alberta.

“The whole notion of doing what we’re doing now has evolved in stages,” said Watt. “It started with some of the feedback that we’ve been getting for a number of years with regard to our name.

“Our name is our name. The debate over whether it’s appropriate or not is going to rage and the consensus over whether it should stay? There is no consensus.”

Whatever ends up happening with the name down the road, whenever that may be, the club will continue to focus on making inroads of its own in the North.

“The next part of it was saying, let’s not just be the people who came up in the suits,” Watt said. “They said, ‘It would be really good if you came back with some players and get to our schools and talk to the kids.’

“And we said, ‘Done.’”

In October, players joined the journey for the first time, with Ryan King Godfrey Onyeka visiting Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, armed with 700 mini footballs, talking about everything from football to anti-bullying – just like they regularly do in Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

“You don’t have to do a lot, you just have to do stuff that’s important to them,” Watt said. “We have a real good relationship now with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and their leader, Duane Smith. He said, ‘You guys come up here and put smiles on kids faces and that’s pretty good stuff for us. We hope you come back.’”

Only, this time, they’re bringing flashlights.

Email: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge