Yellowknife (Jun 14/06) - It was a journey to the past to make way for the future. Twelve students of K'alemi Dene school in Ndilo and two others from Fort Providence flew to Ontario to learn how to make birchbark canoes - and found success along the way.

"I think for a lot of the kids their self-esteem has improved," said Jane Arychuk, community school counsellor at K'alemi Dene school.

"It was a trip of a lifetime. They will hold it in their memories and will learn from it for a long time."

The trip to make the canoes was conceived by Guy Erasmus, a husband of one of the school's teachers, Eileen Erasmus.

According to Arychuk, he searched out all over Canada looking for someone who built birchbark canoes.

He found Tom Byers of Whitefish, Ont., who agreed to teach the students.

"We were already planning a trip for the end of the year as an incentive to stay in school," Arychuk says.

"And this trip fell perfectly into place."

The group of students and four chaperones - Arychuk and her husband Gordon, and the Erasmuses - flew to Sudbury, Ont., where they stayed, driving out to Whitefish every day.

"We had to go through a swamp to get there," said Brent Martin, a Grade 8 student.

Martin said some students were set to work splitting the cedar wood for the canoe while others stripped birch bark for the shell.

It took eight days for the boat to be built, during which time the students learned how to make the ribs and tie and sew the boat together.

"They were involved in the whole process," Arychuk says.

For Denna' Goulet, it was a great learning experience and she had a lot of fun doing it.

"I really liked sewing the roots in because I was good at it," she said.

Arychuk said the course was very helpful in building self-esteem, especially for the students who do not do very well academically.

Those students, she said, were extremely successful with the hands-on work that they learned.