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True North Calling

What if 'Wayne's World' met '30 Rock' in Iqaluit?

How do you put a TV show together? For the brains behind the TV show Qanurli, it involved a lot of Googling...and plenty of duct tape.

Stacey Aglok Macdonald says there's something special about creating a show about the North in the North

True North Calling ·

Growing Pains - Stacey on her low-budget, but very funny TV show

8 years ago
Duration 1:50
Stacey and her rag-tag team put together an Inuktitut comedy show.

Stacey Aglok Macdonald and her rag-tag team didn't know anything about making a TV show before shooting their first season of Qanurli. "We Googled a lot," she admits.

The low-budget outfit, currently shooting its six season, bills itself as "Wayne's World meets 30 Rock" held together with "a lot of duct tape and cardboard."

Qanurli, a comedy show that dishes the behind-the-scenes details of running an Inuk-style news show, centres around life in the North. The characters, for example, risk getting fired from a job for stealing toilet paper. Why toilet paper? "It's expensive up here," says Stacey.  
(Stacey Aglok Macdonald | True North Calling)

It's also entirely in Inuktitut (with English subtitles). With more and more youth only speaking English, Stacey hopes that this effort to make Inuit languages "cooler" will mean more interest in learning them.

For Stacey, there's something special about creating a show about the North in the North. People always tell her that she needs to move to southern Canada if she wants to make it as a producer, but she doesn't give it a thought.

"I'll spend the rest of my life in the North... I just love it here."

Meet more inspiring northerners on True North Calling Friday nights on CBC

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