Médias

She moves mountains in Ladakh

BILL BROWNSTEIN, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006

A sobering if striking film will be screened at the Rhythms of the World gala cocktail/dinner bash tonight at the Montreal Science Centre. The Magic Mountain is a documentary spotlighting the efforts of Canadian Cynthia Hunt to empower the women of Ladakh in a remote Indian region of the Himalayas.

Hunt has left her Himalayan mountaintop to attend the gala and to receive the 2006 Velan Foundation Award, presented to a Canadian for humanitarian work overseas. The presentation is a prelude to the Rhythms of the World fest in the Old Port, July 28-30, which celebrates performing, visual and culinary arts around the globe.

Hunt doesn't consider herself a performer, but the Ladakhis are nonetheless mesmerized by her. She has lived in the area 22 years and has just about moved mountains. She created Health Inc. - an acronym for health, environment and literacy in the Himalayas - in one of the planet's most isolated, impoverished regions, in a Tibetan Buddhist community caught between feuding Hindu and Muslim neighbours.

"My mission is simply to give women access to information and skills which will allow them to regain control of their lives," she said over coffee. "Most development takes power and control away from the people."

Hunt reached the Himalayas after spending six years hiking 4,600 kilometres from Mexico to Alaska, most of it solo. "I just ran out of continent," she cracks. "So I decided to walk through the Himalayas." Which brought her to Ladakh.

Hunt cares not for convention. "Some people worry about bad-hair days," she says. "I have bad liver days." She suffers from liver disease as a result of a chemical spill near Ladakh, which killed 200 in the region. She has had continuing bouts of hepatitis, and her prognosis is not rosy. But she figures that she survived meningitis and typhus, so she can overcome this as well.

The $20,000 award Hunt will receive this evening represents half the annual budget of Health Inc., serving 250,000. "It's almost more than we know what to do with, but it will go to great use."

Among the initiatives she has orchestrated is a winter sports association in Ladakh. She prevailed upon the National Hockey League to send a container of used skates, sticks and equipment. "Hockey has become an excellent form of community-building for the area's disaffected young, who have lost hope and self-confidence," she said. She herself can usually be spotted in a Montreal Canadiens cap in Ladakh. "People in that area have a natural agility on ice, so the hockey has taken off well."

For Health Inc., go to www. health-inc.org. For Rhythms of the World, call (514) 789-2050 or go to www.rhythms.tv.

bbrownst@thegazette.canwest.com

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