Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 13/02) - If they had preconceived notions of what constituted a whirlwind tour, they might have been challenged last weekend.

Likewise any assumptions about life in the North.

The 16 participants in the Rotary Club's Northern Experience 2002 dispersed from Yellowknife early Sunday morning.

They carry home with them the experience of a lifetime.

Arriving in Yellowknife last Wednesday, the high-school students didn't know one another. In four short days, they became fast friends, according to organizers.

Yellowknife Rotary president Austin Marshall remembers when the program was in its "embryo" phase.

He had just taken up with the Yellowknife Rotarians in 1993, and sat on the steering committee.

"We had just started doing the program, I think a year or two before I came on board," says Marshall.

Since those early days, the program has, "caught on like wildfire," he adds.

After meeting up in Edmonton last Wednesday for the flight up, the activities begin almost instantly. Early the next morning, the participants are touring Miramar Con Mine and the Arslanian cutting works.

By the time 4 p.m. rolls around, the students have attended the regular Rotary luncheon, and toured the museum and the legislative assembly.

The fun, however, is just beginning.

"I am so pumped up for this," squeals Gillian Rouleau, looking almost as excited as the dogs being harnessed to sleds at Grant Beck's kennel.

More than 200 dogs, bred to pull sleds, make an unholy racket as long traditional toboggans holding six people are readied for mushing.

In short order, Rouleau and her fellow participants are whizzing down trails in the Kam Lake Industrial Park.

By the same time the next day, the participants have been in the bush in Rae-Edzo. Members of the Dogrib Rae Band show them traditional skills for living on the land. Fish are gutted, everyone is ushered into a tent for a meal of caribou stew and bannock before being whisked off the Chief Jimmy Bruneau School.

George Mackenzie and the Jimmy Bruneau Drummers are there to greet them.

"This is the Dogrib way," Mackenzie.

"We are very proud of what we do today as we wish our guests well and see them off back to their loved ones," he adds as the drummers prepare to play a traditional prayer.

Once it is finished, Mackenzie, the drummers, and all the students make the sign of the cross three times.

All the exchange participants seem visibly moved by the welcome. Later on many of them will refer back to the trip to Rae-Edzo as a "highlight" for them.

"Amazing," according to Chloe Smith. The 12th-grader from Red Deer, Alta., says she and her colleagues went to Chief Jimmy Bruneau School and saw, "culture at its very best."

Trevor Cubitt had played hand games in his home community of Chetwynd, B.C., "but it was nothing like the way the Dogrib play them," he says.

Organizers have a surprise waiting for the group the next day. During outdoor activities on Vee Lake, participants are taken on helicopter rides, courtesy of Great Slave Helicopters.

That's in addition to snowmobiling and a tentatively scheduled fish fry.

By Saturday night, the 16 participants have gone from being complete strangers to a close-knit group.

Josh Ajohn is from Calgary. Throughout the four days of activities, he carries a 35-mm camera. Roll after roll of film is devoted to chronicling everything.

"The bunch of kids we had was just incredible," says Ajohn.

"It would've been different if we hadn't all gelled together the way we did," he adds.

As their last night in the North wound down, participants thanked their hosts with songs and skits.

Reflecting on their whirlwind tour, they reflected on what they had learned.

"My dad told me to do research before I came up, and I didn't," says Ajohn.

Like others, he was surprised by the size and sophistication of Yellowknife.

"It's as much a city as any other," he says.

Cubitt, like others, hopes to return. He's looking into environmental biology as an area of study.

"I hear they need a lot of those up here," he says.

Still, he hopes his next visit North will come during slightly warmer months.

"I want to come here for the summer," he says with a laugh.