SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Alison Cartwright, the Career and Technical Studies food instructor at Sir John Franklin High School, retires at the end of this school year after more than 10 years of teaching at the school.

Alison Cartwright, the Career and Technical Studies food instructor at Sir John Franklin High School, stands next to a life-sized cut-out of herself. The food instructor is planning to retire from teaching at the end of the school year. - Adrian Lysenko/NNSL photo

She says the most memorable part of her career was getting the Career and Technical Studies foods program off the ground.

"For me the highlight was actually to develop this program into something that kids really fight to get into," said Cartwright.

Cartwright said the course doesn't focus so much on eating healthy as eating well.

"Eating well is knowing what real food is," she said. "So we cook from scratch, we use lots fruit and vegetables; I show them how to cook cheaper cuts of meat and how to make a small amount of protein go a long way."

She arrived in the North in 1984 with her husband Alan, who retired from teaching at Sir John last year. Their first stop was in Norman Wells.

"We were coming North to Norman Wells for three to five years and 26 years later we're still (in the North)," she said.

From Norman Wells they moved to Fort Good Hope for nine years. In those communities, Cartwright worked as the school's secretary.

In 1995 she enrolled at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, where she earned her bachelor of education.

"It just seemed like a sensible thing to do," she said. "I had a degree. I had worked in schools. I liked teenagers."

Cartwright arrived in Yellowknife in 1998 and began working at Sir John the next year.

"When the chance came to teach the foods program I thought, well I can do as much as social studies, health, science, math, English, history, through teaching kids how to cook," said Cartwright. "I tell them cooking is chemistry."

Cartwright said one of the highlights of the foods program is the culinary travel club which she had the idea to start five years ago.

"I was talking to (former principal Anne-Mieke Cameron) when she was principal. I said, 'You know, kids get to go on trips but some kids never go because they're not in the right categories.' I said, 'We need to go somewhere and look at food,' and she said, 'Go for it.'"

As a result 24 students travelled to Spain last March with the culinary travel club.

"I'm hoping my successor, whoever that might be, will keep this going," said Cartwright. "Looking at the possibilities, Japan looks like a really interesting food option."

For retirement, Cartwright and her husband are building a house about 100 kilometres west of Dawson Creek, B.C.

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