Kevin Libin, National Post.
Are private schools the answer for Canada's struggling native kids?
You may have heard of Wilcox, Sask., for one of two reasons. The village is home to the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a top-drawer private school and incubator for some of the finest hockey players to ever put stick to ice. Also, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale grew up there. But who cares about that, when Wilcox helped launch careers for NHL heroes Wendel Clark, Rod Brind'Amour, Curtis Joseph, Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards?
Wilcox is 5,000 km from Sheshatshiu. Labrador's largest Innu community, you may have caught wind of Sheshatshiu some years back when reporters profiled its unfortunate distinction of having Canada's youngest, most pitiful addicts: six-year-olds huffing gasoline.
Wilcox might as well be a different world from Sheshatshiu -- exactly what Atshapi Andrew required.
"My mom knew I had to move to change schools in order to get my education," the Grade 11 Notre Dame student says. At school in Sheshatshiu, many students couldn't understand English. "My friends drank back home. And some days you wouldn't see them there. Some days they would come smelling like booze," he says. "It was a very up and down kind of school.... Some days you couldn't even do any work."
Notre Dame, Grades 9 through 12, may be as renowned among First Nation parents as it is among hockey fanatics, as a place where young aboriginals have come for decades to get a superior education.
Notre Dame aims to ensure that "100% of our graduates are eligible to attend university," explains David Howie, the school's president.
In a given year, estimates Patricia Selinger, the school's registrar, there might be as many as several dozen students from First Nations as far away as B.C. and the Maritimes, not an insignificant number for a school of roughly 300, offering little by way of native culture, deeply imbued with Catholic values -- Sunday Mass is mandatory -- and charging tuition running $17,000 a year for in-province students and nearly $24,000 for those outside.
"I'm sure every main leader from all the main bands has sent their kids here. We've had the Fontaines, the Bellegardes, the Sandersons, the Montours and Hills from the Six Nations, the Ahenakews, the Goodstrikers from Alberta," says Terry O'Malley, the school's former president who taught there since 1978. "It was never intended that would be a special niche for the school," Mr. Howie says. He suspects the reputation among First Nations began in the '30s when Olive Dickason, a Métis from Manitoba, met Athol Murray, a priest whose devotion to sports, classics and the Almighty made Notre Dame what it is (his personal credo: "God, Canada, and hockey -- not necessarily in that order.") "Père" Murray -- as he was, and still is, affectionately known, although he died in 1975 -- admitted Ms. Dickason to Notre Dame, a school focusing as much on rigorous liberal education as sports (in addition to its Olympic-size hockey rink, the school boasts several rare 15th and 16th century European manuscripts that would make Ivy League universities jealous). Ms. Dickason would become one of the country's most prominent First Nations historians and a member of the Order of Canada, happily crediting the school for her success.
Ever since, aboriginal students have been coming to Wilcox, some for hockey, or the strong football and baseball programs, and some for other reasons.
"I went to Notre Dame because I was a bad ass," says Shauneen Pete, vice president of academics at the First Nations University of Canada. A member of Saskatchewan's Little Pine First Nation, Ms. Pete says she had stopped attending her Regina public school in the 1980s as she struggled with her aboriginal identity, and began hanging out instead in pool halls on the wrong side of town.
Her university-educated parents packed her up -- she admits she didn't go willingly -- and sent her to Notre Dame. Had it not been for that, says Ms. Pete, now a PhD, "I certainly would have had a very different story. When I think about the people who I hung around with in grade 10, there's a number of them who aren't here anymore."
Back then, aboriginals received funding for private schools directly from the government. When Ottawa downloaded educational matters to band councils in the early '90s, First Nations enrolment at Notre Dame dropped dramatically as bands created their own schools.
"Families were coming back to us after two or three years saying they were not happy," recalls Ms. Selinger, the longtime registrar. "Their children were not getting the strong education they had been getting here. They were doing a lot of native studies but not enough of the other things that were important academically."
Today, she's invited to reserves by students' parents to promote the school to fellow members. "I think these families want to show it's really possible that you can actually get access to this wonderful and unique educational opportunity away from home," she says.
On rare occasions band funds subsidize tuition, with parents paying room and board. But chiefs generally resist, preferring education dollars stay on reserve, leaving parents on their own. Students Gisele and Jillene George, of the English River First Nation, say their mom was so set on seeing them graduate Notre Dame she moved their family to Wilcox, seven hours away from their Meadow Lake home just so they could afford to attend (students not boarded pay $5,670 a year).
However they get here, Notre Dame "Hounds" past and present say the school, with its emphasis on independence and achievement, is nothing like the public or reserve schools back home.
"It's just a lot easier to learn here ... they keep you focused. I think this is one of the best learning environments in Canada," says current student John McKay, a member of Saskatchewan's Lac La Ronge Indian Band. "La Ronge really isn't the greatest place to develop a strong future."
At Notre Dame, "there was no offering of remedial courses," as in public schools, recalls alumnus Jason Goodstriker, former Regional Chief of Alberta for the Assembly of First Nations and member of the Blood tribe. "You had to pass all the [top-level] courses. And the teachers would sit up and work with you until you did."
If he can manage tuition for his own kids, Mr. Goodstriker says "there would be no question" he would enroll them when the time comes.
But he and other alumni worry that without access to the funds they had, aboriginal kids are denied an important educational experience. "It was one of the places that set me on the right path," says Gary Daniels, an alumnus from Mistawasis First Nation, now general manager of the Dakota Dunes casino near Saskatoon. "I believe there are still kids out there that if they had the shot that I had and my brothers had that they could really make something of it."
Tom Dustyhorn, financial manager at Kawacatoose First Nation, says his parents could never have sent him to Notre Dame without financial help. Yet, he believes his Alma Mater's Latin motto, "Luctor et Emergo" -- struggle and emerge -- especially relevant for aboriginal kids, who often must transcend challenging circumstances. Reserves could only benefit from more graduates bringing home with them that attitude, Mr. Dustyhorn believes. "The more role models we have, obviously, that's what will mean a turnaround for First Nations."
Read more on the National Post's series, "Rethinking the reserve": http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/rethinkingthereserve/story.html?id=280528