Ontario students give Kivalliq experience straight As
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Rankin Inlet (May 02/01) - A week in Rankin Inlet has made quite an impact on a visiting group from Ontario.
A total of 19 Grade 7 and 8 students and four teachers from Silver Springs public school in Toronto visited Rankin as part of an exchange program with Maani Ulujuk middle school.
Brad Parolin, one of the teachers from Silver Springs, says their visit came about after the Toronto YMCA contacted them last October to see if they'd be interested in the Exchanges Canada program it was running for the federal government.
"Once we were put in touch with each other, the whole process took about six months, with a lot of planning, phone calls and e-mails between the two schools," says Parolin.
The group didn't know what to expect coming to Rankin, but were quite excited to find the whole community behind the program, including Mayor Jack Kabvitok who went ice fishing with the visitors.
"Parents billeted the kids and drove them around, elders built iglus and the local students were just great.
"It's a small town and most of our kids have grown up in a big city, so it made quite an impression."
Parolin says almost everything the students encountered in Rankin was new to them.
He says hearing stories from elders and learning about the traditional Inuit way of life made a huge impact on the students.
"The Rankin kids were a lot more outgoing than we thought they would be, and that made the whole experience that much more fun for our kids."
A few days of -45 C (with the windchill) in late April also made quite an impression on the Ontario group.
"We couldn't get over how cold the wind here is. Even though we tried to prepare our kids for that, we found out you really can't prepare for weather like this until you're actually here and experience it and that's what an exchange program is all about."
The use of fur in the Kivalliq also had a dramatic effect on the students from Toronto, where wearing a fur coat tends to be more of a fashion statement than anything else.
"Out fishing, even though we all brought our own, everyone from Toronto was on the ice in a borrowed coat with a fur-lined hood. Our visit was incredible. We'd come back in a second."
