Iqaluit (Oct 06/04) - Andrew Beveridge may have started his college classes a month late, but he almost didn't even make it.

The 22-year-old Arctic College environmental technology student from Repulse Bay arrived in Iqaluit the week of Sept. 20, well after the start of school.

Andrew Beveridge, as shown here at his graduation from Tusarvik school in Repulse Bay, is now an environmental technology student at Arctic College in Iqaluit. After spending two months in the hospital with a head injury received during a bike accident, he finally made it to class the week of Sept. 20. - photo courtesy of Leonie Aissaoui

Some teachers might have been upset, but Beveridge had a good excuse: he was recovering from a biking accident in a boarding house in Winnipeg. And if anybody wanted proof, he could show them the six-inch scar on his forehead.

At around three or four in the morning on July 10, Beveridge and some friends got the idea to try jumping their bikes off the end of an incomplete, physically disabled access ramp, which was part of the new hamlet office.

His friends were scared to try the four-foot-high jump.

"I was going, 'oh I could make that jump,'" he says.

But he didn't get enough speed on his approach and his front wheel fell straight down after leaving the ramp.

"I blinked and I was like this close to the ground," he says, holding his hand about eight inches in front of his face.

The last thing he saw was a rock. Then he remembers his bicycle seat hitting him in the back of the head.

"I never got knocked out, so I remember the whole thing. It's like a living nightmare for me," he says.

He says the skin on his forehead was hanging down in front of his eyes.

A fractured skull put him in a Winnipeg hospital for a month, then another month in the boarding home.

After he recovered, nurses and doctors told him they had previously thought he was not going to live.

The accident could have derailed his educational plans, but after the high school counted up his credits, he found he would be able to graduate.

At his high school graduation, he was presented with a school pin, a school ring, a new computer and a $1,000 scholarship.

A trip to Victoria, B.C., in 2000 helped him determine what he would study in college.

On the trip, he made friends with a student in an environmental course at the University of Victoria.

"That's what made me want to get into this," he says.

Unsure of what he wants to do in terms of a career in environmental technology, he may continue his studies at the University of Victoria, either on campus or through distance education.

What's good for the land

The best thing about studying environmental technology is "going out on the land, researching what's good for the land and what's bad for it," he says.

In his second year at the college, he will spend part of his time studying hazardous spills, which is something he thinks will be interesting.

Eventually, he would like to live and work somewhere in Nunavut, which is something he almost did not have the chance to do.

"I'm lucky," he says with a smile.