SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Emma Willoughby wants Yellowknife's votes – all of them – to give her Grade 8 class the best chance of winning a trip to La Mauricie National Park, located in Quebec's Laurentian mountains.

Zoe Tucker, 14, back left, Ben Niven, 13, Kate Mendoza, 13, Paris Levavasseur, 13, Marimar Macusi, 13, front left, and Emma Willoughby, 13, are Grade 8 Weledeh School Students who have entered a Parks Canada video contest in the hopes of winning a trip to La Mauricie National Park, in Quebec. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo

The 13-year-old Weledeh School student said she and her french-immersion classmates entered a minute-long video into Canada's Coolest School Trip contest, which is being organized by Parks Canada. The video – a mock-news cast about the polar bear conservation area at Wapusk National Park, in Manitoba – has been posted online with 50 other entries from schools across the country.

Zoe Tucker, 14, who came up with the idea for the project with Willoughby, said their submission explores common threats faced by polar bears as well as how the Manitoba park works to protect them.

The video starts out with news anchors talking about polar bears going missing before cutting to a reporter on the lake speaking with a hunter lurking around in the background, said Willoughby.

Willoughby's teacher, Morgan Gallagher, said voting ends March 30 and it's possible to vote more than once.

"Hopefully Yellowknifers will give us lots of votes, because we're up against some schools in Ontario who have a much bigger population to draw on for votes," said Gallagher, adding that the idea to shoot the video and enter the contest came from the students.

"When students come to you with an idea for a project it's not too often that you don't do it. I helped guide but they decided what roles they were playing, what the script was going to be, and they did the editing process."

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