Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 30/01) - Soon, the building that is Akaitcho Hall will be no more, but more than the memories will linger.
Bill Braden is one of the organizers of the Akaitcho Hall reunion. He talks to News/North about a "bittersweet" farewell to the place that thousands of Northerners passed through.
YellowknifeLife: You've obviously taken quite an active interest in the Akaitcho Hall celebrations that are coming up. Why don't you first tell me about those celebrations.
Bill Braden: Akaitcho Hall, probably in the next couple years is going to be demolished. The building's time is up, and there's no viable economic use for it, so it will go.
But you know, it's a facility that's played a very, very big role in the lives of thousands of Northerners in their high school education, so it's a period, it's a time, it's a facility in the North's history and development that should be celebrated.
So we're having a reunion of staff and students now, while the buildings itself is still standing. It seemed to be the right thing to do.
YellowknifeLife: So how and why did you get involved?
BB: I wanted to see if there was something I could do to back it up.
I'm a graduate of the school (Sir John Franklin). So's my wife. My children are there right now, and my oldest daughter will graduate this year.
So it's a place that has quite a significance for me and my family...I think it's important to take events, and times like this and make them into a celebration.
YellowknifeLife: What exactly are you doing for this?
BB: I've got two things I'm working on. I'm working on the fund-raising, and also...putting together what we're calling the "Gazette", which is going to be a yearbook, if you will, of all 37 years that Akaitcho Hall was operating.
YellowknifeLife: This must be a bittersweet occasion for yourself and for all these other people.
BB: That's a good question. Perhaps it'll be more so for the people who actually attended and stayed at Akaitcho Hall. I was a "townie," you know. But think of yourself, as a kid who was flown out of a community in the late 1950's or 1960's, not really knowing what to expect, not being from Yellowknife, and here you were leaving home as a teenager for virtually a whole year ... I'm sure for some people, it'll be a rather poignant time.
YellowknifeLife: You made an interesting point there. You mentioned that you had been a townie. Was there a big difference between the townies and the residents of Akaitcho Hall?
BB: Yes, yes. Akaitcho Hall, from the impression that I have, was very much a community. They developed their own sports and recreation programs. I have the impression that they were a tightly knit group and I think there was a degree of pride in that community.
I can't say, at during the time that I was going to Sir John, which was the early 1970's that there was a rivalry or a contest, or a conflict between the two, no not at all. Yellowknife, then to even a greater extent than now, was a pretty compatible place, no matter where you came from.
YellowknifeLife: We hear, especially in the last 10 or so years, a lot of stuff about residential schools. What is it about Akaitcho that elicits this very affectionate response from people who attended it?
BB: Geez. That's a very good question. It's really one that you should talk to somebody who stayed there and lived the life and ate the food and tolerated the dormitory life.
We knew the supervisors, and the staff, counsellors there. The impression I got was that they were genuinely friends of the students. Surrogate parents, in a lot of ways.
They were very committed to the job, they believed in the kids.
YellowknifeLife: So what years were you a student at Sir John?
BB: 1970 to 1972.
YellowknifeLife: Any incriminating photos of you in bell bottoms?
BB: Oh probably.
YellowknifeLife: Did you meet your wife there?
BB: Yes. She came North in her last year. We weren't high school sweethearts. That sort of picked up afterwards.
YellowknifeLife: What activities were you involved in while you were in school.
BB: Student council, the yearbook. Those were the two main ones. You see, I was out working during high school. I was working at the newspaper as a printer, and later on in photography and doing some reporting. I was also working at what's now Yellowknife Foto Source. It used to be Yellowknife Photo Centre at the time. I didn't get involved in a lot of school stuff like sports.
YellowknifeLife: That must have been quite a juggling act, handling your studies and all that work.
BB: Yes, and my academic record is proof of that, but I got my Grade 12 matriculation, and it was quite an average set of marks. But you know, going to school then...the opportunities we had to see things and do things were extraordinary then. For instance, the chances we had to travel, to go and do things, and you still see that today. Yellowknife is still a small jurisdiction in the rest of Canada, but it's still a stand-alone place.
There'd be conferences and sporting events, that the NWT would send teams and delegations to, and the chances to be involved in those things were that much greater because our population was so small.
We had opportunities to experience things and get close to people in a bigger centre. In southern Canada, those chances are so much fewer and far between.
YellowknifeLife: Being at Akaitcho, and by extension at Sir John Franklin, did the smallness and the intimacy of the community keep kids from getting lost in the shuffle?
BB: You know, you didn't have to be a super achiever to get to do things. And the staff, and I see it now with my own kids going through the school system, are wonderful. The dedication and the care and attention that they put into the kids was and is remarkable.
YellowknifeLife: Is there something that you did that you sticks out in your head that you remember about being at school?
BB: I have a good memory, but it's really short...You know, we had so much freedom, and Yellowknife was the capital and the city started to mushroom. There was lots of money, and it was a time of great optimism...and the teaching staff sort of reflected that excitement. There wasn't a heavily regimented and disciplined atmosphere, and we had so much freedom. I suppose in some places it backfired. In other places, it worked really well...I've just got great memories of growing up there.
