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INUVIK - A few students at Samuel Hearne secondary school learned about the legislative assembly this past month.

Allison Baetz, Meredith Baskin, Caroline Kaufman and Jessica Pierrot were put to work as pages for Inuvik Boot Lake MLA Floyd Roland and Twin Lakes MLA Robert McLeod.

Samuel Hearne secondary school students recently acted as pages for the Inuvik MLAs in the legislative assembly. They are, from left, Caroline Kaufman, Jessica Pierrot, Meredith Baskin and Allison Baetz. - Dez Loreen/NNSL photo

The first pair of pages went down to Yellowknife to serve Roland during the first week of October.

McLeod's pages returned last week.

"We got a good look at how our government operates," said Caroline Kaufman.

Being a page requires memorizing the names and the faces of the members of the assembly she said.

"You meet a lot of people and you've got to memorize their names," she said.

Pages take papers and messages back and forth from the assembly chamber and do other errands for their MLAs.

"We were refilling water, cleaning the chamber and running documents," said Allison Baetz.

Sergeant at Arms for the Assembly Brian Thagard said the page program is important.

"The assembly has always had pages," he said. "Without the pages, the assembly would grind to a halt."

Kaufman said the uniforms the pages were required to wear aren't ideal.

"It was a skirt with button-up shirt and nylons with a vest," she said.

"It wasn't very stylish or comfortable."

In their free time, the girls were able to do some shopping in between bouts of homework to keep them up-to-date with their classes back home.

"We were all given a bundle of homework before we left," said Kaufman.

Thagard said students apply to be pages through their schools.

"The members don't choose who they have. We send that out through the schools," he said.

Pages are selected a month prior to a session of the legislative assembly.

The next session is in February.