Thanks to the efforts of the kids, parents and staff of Princess Elizabeth Public School (PEPS), a native school in the Land of the Midnight Sun will finally have some books in its library.

The native school, Inuujaq, is at a place called Arctic Bay, Nunavut, a settlement at the northern tip of Baffin Island - at least as far north of Orangeville as Calgary is west of here.

It might be geographically as far away from modern civilization as anyone would care to get, but the school teaches Grades K to 12 - and the kids there are as hungry for knowledge as any others, or maybe more so, but books are not exactly in plentiful supply, and the library at Inuujaq School is virtually empty.

The PEPS rescue operation began with a collection call earlier this month, and boxes of books kept arriving at the main office between April 9 and 16.

Then, on Tuesday morning, the parents personally took the collection to Ottawa, whence it would be airlifted to Nanisivik Airport, as close as the aircraft could get to Arctic Bay.

PEPS Parent Council chair Susan Martin said the plight of the northern school came to the attention of her council after Charlene and John Chamberlain went to Arctic Bay for a July 1 marathon last year.

She said the PEPS kids - who have been demonstrating their generosity every year through UNICEF and the annual Christmas drive for gifts for Third World children - came up with the idea of stocking the northern school's library.

The book collection started right after the Easter weekend. Within five days, she said, the kids had amassed 1,000 pounds of books. "If you estimate a half pound per book, that amounts to 2,000 books."

She said the principal of the Inuujaq School knows the books are coming, but doesn't know how many. She wondered what the reaction would be when 36 boxes crammed with 1,000 books arrive at the far north community of a mere 700.

Ms. Martin she believes in literacy as vital to affording the native children a postsecondary education, and books a significant factor in combatting addictions in remote communities.

She cited another advantage for the children of both schools. "This was all about kids helping kids." Ms. Martin said the two schools have been twinned in the sense that there's constant communication between the students of both.

"They talk about culture. Our kids tell about their lives, what their parents do, (and about the community generally). The (northern kids) tell about their lives."

It was also gratifying, she said, that the PEPS kids not only felt they should be doing something for their other Canadian peers, as well as for the Third World, but also that the kids themselves chose books to send out of their own collections.