Edward Horne was so much in his own heaven when teaching school that if he stubbed his toe in class he’d surely forgive the furniture.

But the man described by author Kathleen Lippa is otherwise a monster who, for 14 years in Canada’s Arctic, sexually abused in every way possible quite likely hundreds of schoolboys in six communities within what is now Nunavut, the huge Inuit homeland carved off the Northwest Territories. Around 20 per cent of his victims eventually died by suicide.

Horne was by all accounts a dedicated and creative teacher, but had no qualms about sexually assaulting boys as young as eight, in many cases sodomizing them.

After his arrest in 1985 in Frobisher Bay, the RCMP estimated he had sexually assaulted 100 to 200 boys.

Lippa says the damage Horne caused has gone way beyond the criminal events themselves, his crimes having sparked long-lasting trauma passed down through generations along with violence, addiction and more suicides.

The Inuit communities involved were Sanikiluaq, Grise Fiord, Kimmirut (Lake Harbour), Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay) and in Apex just outside Iqaluit. Horne’s crimes were committed from 1971 until his arrest in 1985.

“It is not known precisely how many boys Horne molested, but there is evidence enough to make the claim that his crimes embody one of the worst cases of institutionalized sexual abuse perpetrated by one man in Canadian history,” says Lippa.

Lippa has been a journalist in newspapers across the country, latterly as bureau chief for Nunavut News/North in Iqaluit. After many years in the Arctic she now spends her time in Ottawa and St. John’s, N.L. She remembers the North fondly.

Horne was widely praised for his ability to speak Inuktitut. He had learned the language himself with some help. He was very intelligent. Horne designed computer forms in syllabics — the unique Inuit writing system — for early personal computers.

Northern educators and senior bureaucrats admired him so much that they may have been blinded by his reputation or were worried they’d be wrong if accusing him.

In reading Arctic Predator, the question keeps reoccurring: How did Horne get away with it, and for so long?

Lippa asks herself the same question and spends several pages addressing it. There is no easy answer, no quick fix.

A veteran educator in Frobisher Bay, Bert Rose, went and visited Horne in his cell in Frobisher when he was arrested for the first time in 1985. As Rose came into Horne’s cell, Horne confessed: “It’s all true.”

Horne, says Lippa, was finally exposed by, of all things, an old upright piano that was laying around unused in Lake Harbour. It had been shuttled between the school and the teacher’s house.

Horne was the principal in Lake Harbour in 1985 and sent the piano to newly arrived RCMP Const. Jim Raeburn and his wife as a welcoming gesture. Raeburn noticed the top was nailed shut. He pried it open and saw inside a roll of film. He sent it to the RCMP to develop and it contained photos of scantily clad boys. Some time later a judge agreed the photos belonged to Horne and “were the ‘paraphernalia’ of a pedophile.”

Meanwhile, about the same time as the piano discovery, the regional bureaucracy in Frobisher Bay was alarmed by the rape in Lake Harbour of a seven-year-old girl by three boys. One of them revealed “something to the effect of ‘Well, if the teacher can do it why can’t we?’’’

When questioned, one boy explained that he felt stigmatized as a homosexual and felt this way because “he had been sexually assaulted by the principal of the school, Mr. Horne.”

There had been a rash of sexual assaults by boys on girls in 1984 and 1985. When police and social workers questioned parents in Lake Harbour, they found out the children had been acting out with other children “what Mr. Horne had done to them.”

Horne’s victims in 2002 received government compensation, reportedly $15 million.

Horne served two prison terms, one in 1987 of six years for molesting a number of boys, then five years in 2000 for another group. He pleaded guilty both times.

Years later, Lippa found Horne in Toronto and interviewed him in person. He had been working as a bicycle courier.

Says Lippa: “Suicide is, of course, not limited to the victims of Ed Horne. But in the communities where he molested boys… his victims are disproportionately represented in suicide statistics.”

A great number of northerners felt Horne should have been sentenced to much more jail time. Some were mad he wasn’t. A total of 66 people living in Sanikiluaq called the judicial system racist.

Said Horne: “My guilt is overwhelming. But that does not justify a tsunami of accusations that were not and could not possibly have been true.”

One of Horne’s victims, now a man, described what happened to him: “They don’t want to talk it out in the open. It’s too shameful to talk about it. They don’t want to tell anybody about it, it’s very shameful stuff he did to us. It’s been very shameful in my brain trying to talk about it and it’s difficult how to explain to my kids now what I’m crying about.”

Lippa’s descriptions of Horne’s sexual conduct may upset some readers. She is frank. But reading her book is worthwhile because she has been able to do what few crime writers can — interview both some of the victims and the perpetrator himself.

Barry Craig is a retired journalist.