TEACHING IN NORTHERN ALBERTA COMMUNITIES The Importance of Place, Past and Present Campbell A. Ross Instructor Emeritus Grande Prairie Regional College This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Contents 1. Schools in a landscape: northern Alberta schooling’s ‘big history’ a. Two norths b. Winter is for schooling c. Falling for snow d. Necklace of stars e. The story of the rocks f. The dark northern woods g. Prairies of the northwest h. Animal aboriginals i. Man and nature in the provincial north 2. Teaching in a northern urban setting: life in a northern town a.Urban midst the largeness b. Measuring northerness c. Grande Prairie city d. Northern urban students as ‘millenials’ e. Sociologies of a northern town f. Northern urban Native g. Fort Mac: unique northern urbanity h. Teacher surveys of ‘The Fort’ i. Peace River town j. Northern Alberta’s smaller towns 3. Your students’ parent’s memories: human history of northern Alberta a. Indigene and immigrant b. Before European contact c. Stages of post-contact experience d. 1670-1778 2 e. 1778-1821 f. 1821-1871 g. 1871-1899 h. Treaty #8 1899-1900 i. Half-Breed Commission 1899-1900 j. 1900-1970: the Euro-Canadian experience k. 1900-1970: the Native-Canadian experience l. 1970-present 4. Teaching in a northern rural setting: moving to the north-country a. Overtones of ‘rural’ b. Realities of ‘rural’ c. Rural sociology d. Expectations about teachers e. Teacher readiness f. Surveys of teacher perceptions g. Valuing rural teachers h. Islands of Euro-Canadianism i. Minuses and pluses 5. Non-Native memories of frontier schools: the northern Alberta ‘ little white schoolhouse’ a. The long tradition b. The basic timeline c. The classic model of rural teaching d. Early rural students and teachers e. Early learnings f. The rhythm of the school year g. School and community h. The northern difference i. Northern cases 3 6. Teaching in a northern remote Native setting: the north is Another’s country a. The crisis in Native education b. The challenge of tradition and change c. Schooling and the ethic of non-interference d. Schooling and learning styles e. Knowledge versus wisdom f. Linguistic misalignments g. High and low context communication h. Punctuality and attendance i. Ps and Qs j. Cross-currents of schooling k. Moving ahead 7. Northern residential schools: the evolution of the institution a. The long delay in storytelling b. Issues of ‘voice’ c. Aboriginal ethos of schooling d. European ethos of schooling e. Early schooling in the fur-trade era f. Assimilation: enduring objective g. Dominating the landscape h. The routine i. The evolution of compulsion j. Abuse k. Neglect l. Not entirely unanimous m. The right to forgive 8. Northern residential schools: Native testimonies a. Roll call of schools 4 b. Special case of Metis c. Trauma of separation d. Harsh punishment e. Sexual abuse f. Forbidding of Native language and condemnation of Native culture g. Poor food h. Emotional coldness and loneliness i. St. Xavier IRS j. St. Bernard IRS k. Our Lady of Assumption IRS l. Henry Mission IRS m. St. Martins and St. Charles IRS n. St. Bruno IRS o. Holy Angels IRS p. Cautions 9. Northern residential schools: post-IRS strategies a. Overview b. Metis Settlement Schools c. Metis schooling outside the Settlements d. Northland School Division #61 e. ‘Integration’ into provincial public schools f. Band-run schools 5 Acknowledgements The author wishes to recognize the support received from Grande Prairie Regional College and the University of Alberta in this enterprise, along with the assistance of a grant from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation. 6 Rationale This work is intended as an introduction to how school-teaching in northern Alberta may be affected by past and present conditions of nature, human settlement, and history of schooling in the region. Teacher education in Canada is served by different programs that reflect their provincial location. It is necessary for these to include mirror images of the curricula and school governance legislation of their respective provincial jurisdictions. It is usually thought not necessary to include descriptions of the impact of physiographic features and historical schooling memories as elements that importantly affect the conditions of being a teacher in that region. However, this may create a situation of “ necessary but not sufficient”’ the further north one goes in anticipation of teacher service. Awareness of location may be essential to informed anticipation of teaching in northern regions outside the larger conurbations of southern Canada. This small book is designed to provide for beginning and incoming teachers to northern Alberta just such a sense of “place”. Alberta’s provincial north is part of Canada’s huge boreal north, the largest physiographic region in the country, stretching from British Columbia to Quebec. It broadly occupies the latitudes between 55 and 60 degrees north. In many ways the boreal north is Canada’a forgotten north, lying between the cosmopolitanism of the southern cities and the dramatic tales of Arctic adventure. Yet were one to ask most Canadians – and non-Canadians even more likely – for iconic images of Canada, then tocques, chequed shirts, loons on northern lakes, moose wading in reed rimmed ponds, tangled black spruce against setting sun, snow lying in dark northern woods would figure largely. These are actually all images of one region– the boreal north. The challenge is that knowledge of the regjon often stops at these images, importantly short of an informed introduction to the conditions of school-teaching there. As part of that boreal north, northern Alberta is essentially everything north of Edmonton up to the border with the Northwest Territories. It constitutes more than one third of the province, while making up only one-twentieth of the population, fifteen percent of whom are Aboriginal, one hundred times the 0.15% weighting for the province as a whole. There may not be such a thing as an entirely unique character to that schooling, but there has been its own experience. 7 That experience still affects teaching conditions today, especially among the Aboriginal population. This book is written in the belief that hiring and retention of teachers in the region, especially in the more distant communities, will be aided by candidates being provided with increased knowledge of this special land, its people and their hopes for the schooling of their children. In addition, some of the general descriptions may have broader application through parallels with the situation in other parts of our provincial norths across the country. The content is part of the teacher-education program at Grande Prairie Regional College in northwest Alberta. That program was developed collaboratively with the University of Alberta in order to enhance hiring and retention of teachers in northern Alberta, especially the more distant communities. It is believed that an increased knowledge of the region and of its experience with schooling will improve pedagogical decision-making. It is also hoped that such knowledge will encourage the belief that a teaching ‘life’, in the fullest sense of that term, can be found in our provincial north. Because no published materials existed in the form of commercial texts, the material was collected over many years, beginning with personal experience by the author in the classrooms of the region, including times of frustration and failure. That experience was gained most extensively in the Peace River Country of the northwest and most hauntingly in Fort Chipewyan in the extreme northeast. It is also based on wide-ranging research and interviews conducted with graduates and active educators in schools and communities of northern Alberta, work carried out over the last decade. There has never been a history of schooling in northern Alberta. Part of the reason may be the Cinderella like status of our provincial north, along with all other provincial norths within Canada’s provinces. ‘The forgotten north’ was the judgement of Ken Coates and William Morrrison in 1992; they saw its story as neglected between the political weight of the region of major Euro-Canadian settlement south of the 55th parallel and the exotic ‘otherness’ of the territories north of 60. (Coates and Morrison, The Forgotten North). The first and last general history of schooling in Alberta was written by John W. Chalmers in 1967 and it remains a valuable contribution to the history of schooling in Alberta.( Chalmers, Schools of the Foothills Province) It did incorporate specific references to events and conditions in northern Alberta in very discrete historical situations: the fur trade in the first half of the 19th century, the ordinances of the North West Territories in the latter part of that century, and the establishment of Northland 8 School Division in 1961. Apart from these exotic times ( before provincial status) and exotic people ( Native people) the impression is left that the development of schooling in Alberta has been a fairly uniform experience from the 49th to the 60th parallel. There are reasons to think that the experiences of schooling in northern Alberta might show some differences from the rest of the province. Issues of schooling linked to isolation and distance have always been even more marked. It is at least one climatic zone north of central and two zones north of southern Alberta, making the winter experience more prolonged and more severe. It is the region of the longest extended contact between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal inhabitants, having been the Eldorado of the fur trade from the late 17th to the 19th century. Its dark northern woods made it possible for some meaningful version of a traditional Aboriginal system of production , in turn supporting traditional culture, to survive well into the 20th century.