Kugluktuk was plagued by suicide before a lacrosse program was started at the local high school. (Andrew Johnson photo)An old YouTube video about a Nunavut lacrosse team called the Kugluktuk Grizzlies has inspired a group of Ontario players to start a lacrosse camp in Iqaluit.

The NorthStar Lacrosse Camp in Iqaluit will run Aug. 23-27 and hopefully help steer 60 local young people toward a positive, healthy lifestyle.

"I probably wouldn't be here right now if, uh, if, uh, there was no lacrosse here," a teary Grade 11 student named Kyle Aviak is seen saying in an ESPN documentary filmed in November 2004.

The eight-minute video tells the story of how lacrosse turned life around for troubled students at the high school in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, a community of 1,150 where 15 people, many of them teenagers, killed themselves between 1987 and 1997.

Nepean, Ont., Grade 10 student Noah Hoselton, a minor-league lacrosse player, saw the ESPN video on YouTube at the end of June and was inspired to act, said his father, Bob Hoselton.

"My son asked if we could try to set up a camp for other Inuit communities, and hopefully, it would have the same sort of impact," Hoselton said.

They called friends who played lacrosse, including Jason Wiles, a former National Lacrosse League player who is an instructor at ProStar Lacrosse in the Ontario communities of Ottawa, Orillia and Barrie.

Lacrosse changed the lives of some young people in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, and inspired a young Ontario player to organize a lacrosse camp in Iqaluit this summer. (Anssi Koskinen photo)Wiles has done much of the planning for the camp. He said he understands how valuable sports can be as a tool to keep kids out of trouble.

"My parents always had me in sports, so I never had a free moment. I'd be so tired that I wouldn't really have time to do anything bad," Wiles said. "And then, once I started playing lacrosse, I saw a future in it. It opened up doors for me to go [into] other areas."

While the program is scheduled to run only in Iqaluit this summer, the plan is to expand it to other communities across the North in the future.

The organizers also plan to teach adults in the community a little bit about the game in hopes that the initiative will continue when the camp is over.

"Just teaching children the game of lacrosse for one week and then leaving isn't gonna provide them with a legacy," Wiles said. "What we wanna do is, on a couple nights, have parents from the community come in, where we can actually teach them what's going on in the game of lacrosse, how to coach drills.

"If we can teach these parents the game of lacrosse, when we're gone, hopefully, someone will keep teaching them throughout the year."

NorthStar is still looking for a venue for the camp, but the Hoseltons are sure it will be found and plan to be in Iqaluit for the duration of the camp.