Roger Desserre, Cathy Burton, Donna Skinn and Lori Smith were saluted by the Rainy River District School Board during its meeting here Tuesday. Each has at least 25 years of service, nearly all of them in Atikokan schools, and is retiring this year.

(A fifth long-service retiree, Peter Burton, was unable to attend; he was with a school trip to Sibley.)

Ann Cox, the board’s manager of human resources, detailed career highlights for each, and relayed more some personalized comments from their principals.

Desserre started with the Atikokan board in 1988, and has been head of maintenance for Atikokan and Mine Centre since 2008. A certified member of the board’s joint occupational health and safety committee, his calm, level-headed and helpful approach to his work is especially appreciated.

Cathy Burton, a primary specialist, has been teaching here for 26 years, and is well established as a leader and master teacher among her peers. She is trained in Reading Recovery and has served as the student achievement teacher.

Donna Skinn came to AHS in 1990 after four years in FortFrances. Here, she has “truly been a well-rounded and flexible teacher”, always willing to take on a fresh challenge. Over the years she has taught English, history, communication technology, parenting, food and nutrition, man in society, law and visual art, and for many years has been the lead teacher and facilitator for the literacy test.

Lori Smith, program chair at AHS for math, science, physical education and health since 1997 (she was head of the science department for a decade before that), has been fully immersed in school life since starting here in 1982. She is committed to helping make high school a full experience for students with her support for regional academic opportunities (science olympics, cardboard boat challenge, etc.), as well as extracurriculars (she is a basketball coach and referee, has been involved in golf, cross-country, and more) and Outers (a regular trip participant).

Peter Burton’s 26 years at AHS have included many highlights, both in the classroom and in extracurriculars.  He led the introduction of a fully-fledged Geographic Information System program at AHS, giving the school strong links with Lakehead University, the MNR and Atikokan Hydro in the process; has been a huge supporter of the Outers program as a leader and committed participant; put together the Ahousaht exchange in 2011; and, in his early days, coached AHS volleyball into a NorWOSSA power.

Board chair Mike Lewis, who was involved in hiring three of the retirees, noted their retirement was an emotional experience, and praised them all for their commitment to Atikokan students.

To seek partnerships

AtikokanHigh School scored the poorest among the 14 RRDSB schools in the province’s latest report on the condition of school buildings. The ranking came as a surprise; AHS was fourth-best among ten buildings in the 2004-05 report.

“The building is in good shape,” said board chair Mike Lewis.

It is structurally sound, has new windows, and is reasonably energy-efficient. There are issues, as with any older building, but nothing good maintenance and prudent investments can’t take care of. The age of the building, and the different standards it was built to, seem to be major contributors to the poor facility condition index (FCI). (For instance, the FCI docks schools for wooden doors.)

The poor score led the board’s finance committee to take a long look at the school building situation in Atikokan. It very briefly considered, then dismissed, the idea of somehow amalgamating the schools. (North Star has a 363 student capacity, and the AHS student capacity is 564, so both are very under used by provincial standards.)

Board officials have started searching for opportunities for suitable partnerships (like the existing one with Contact North) to help maximize the use of AHS.

New superintendent

Al McManaman was appointed superintendent of education. McManaman, who has been acting in that role since August 2012, has been an educator in the district for over 20 year, as teacher (Lac La Croix High School, 1992 to 1996), a teacher and guidance counselor (Fort Frances HS 1996 to 2004), then vice principal (Robert Moore School, FFHS) and principal (FFHS). He acquired his supervisory officer’s certification in 2012.

During his tenure as acting superintendent, he led the development and implementation of early learning programming, and contributed to the development of board-wide special education action plans and the integration of information communication technology at the school and system levels.

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“We’ve got a huge problem in Atikokan with trees growing into power lines, and we will continue to be aggressive in cutting back trees that [encroach on] power lines,” Atikokan Hydro CEO Wilf Thorburn told the Progress last week.

Safety regulations require that no tree branch be within three metres of a power line (in some cases, it’s four metres). Despite spending $45,000 a year trimming trees that encroach on power lines, tree-related problems continue to plague Atikokan Hydro. About one-third of power outages here over the past decade were caused by branches taking out power lines; as well, two fires (one at Charleson, one on Maple Crescent) were caused by tree branches contacting power lines.

“It’s not negotiable. We have to have that clearance between the power lines and tree branches,” said Thorburn. “What if we don’t have that clearance and someone is hurt or killed as a result?”

For the most part, Atikokan Hydro tries to trim tree branches whenever possible. Sometimes, however, the trimming has to be so extensive that completely removing the tree is a reasonable alternative. Hydro crews have been told that if more than three significant branches have to be removed from a tree to keep it out of power lines, then removing the tree needs to be considered.

Town role

The issue is a hot one right now, because of the removal of close to thirty trees from the Mackenzie Avenue cemetery.

Atikokan Hydro started that project in March as a trimming job. The trees there had grown into the power lines (on both Frank   Street and Mackenzie), so the trimming had to be very extensive. (This particular project faced a major delay when Hydro’s chipper failed. The trimmed branches were left at the site (which still had several feet of snow) until the chipper was repaired.)

When Councillor Bob Gosselin (a member of the cemetery board) saw the extent of the branch removal, and learned from the work crews that more than half of the branches removed were dead, he told Hydro to remove the trees completely.

Monday, at least three members of Council expressed distress at that decision.

“This has become quite an issue in the community,” said Councillor Bud Dickson. “In my opinion, a lot of them [the trees at the cemetery] weren’t dead. We need to consider trimming trees, rather than removing them.”

“We know how people felt about [what happened at] the cemetery. Frankly, I agree,” said Councillor Mary Makarenko. “We need to have a plan; I don’t think we want to be cutting down all our trees.”

“This is one of the hottest issues with the public I’ve seen since I’ve been on Council,” said Councillor Marlene Davidson. “At the very least, we need to have some kind of public notice when we are going to remove trees.”

CAO Angela Sharbot suggested the Town bring in an arborist (tree expert) to advise it, and Atikokan Hydro, on how to best manage trees on Town-owned property. Treasurer Lonny Maunu said the City of Thunder   Bay might be willing to loan its staff arborist for the job.

Atikokan Hydro funds the purchase of about 40 nursery-raised trees each year for planting here to make up for the trees that have to be removed. Councillor Marj Lambkin said on Monday that these trees will be going to the golf course for the next three years.

On Wednesday, deputy-clerk Pat Halwachs advised the Town will assess the condition of trees on boulevards and other town property, and “if the tree on the boulevard by your home is going to be taken down, you will be notified.”

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Atikokan hasn’t seen an April like that since 1950.

Although records at the Environment Canada website are sketchy for much of the 1970s, it certainly appears April 2013 in Atikokan was the coldest since 1950.

The mean temperature here in April was -1.5°C, over four degrees cooler than the normal (1971-2000). We were not able to find a cooler April since 1950, when the mean temperature was -2.2°C.

Dryden recorded its coolest April ever, with a mean temperature of -1.0°C. Sioux Lookout and RedLake registered means of -2.2°C, in both cases the coolest since 1950. Kenora’s mean of -0.8°C was its coolest since April 1956.

The mercury didn’t reach the 7°C mark here until the 26^th. (The average high for an April day in Atikokan is 10°C; it averaged 4.8° this year.) The only warmth came at the end of the month, as we closed with five days in a row with highs over 15°C.

Precipitation was a little above normal (56 mm versus 43 mm); the highlight was snowfall on eleven of the first 20 days of the month. Snow on the ground didn’t fall below 30 cm until the 26^th.

Thunder Bay got hit with 64 cm of snow during April, the most there for the spring month since 1950. Wawa (73 cm) and Moosonee (79 cm) set records for the month.

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Atikokan Voyageur volleyball camp (for students born 1996 to 2002), July 8-12. Cost is $140; contact Ryan Bryk at 597-4675

Monday, May 13

Faith Lutheran food bank open, 1-3 pm

Council meets, 5 pm

Hort. Society: Local Healing Plants, 7 pm, Museum

Tuesday, May 14

Baby & Me, 10:30, ANFC, register 597-1213 x31

Pictograph Gallery silent auction starts (ends Friday)

Rainbow Centre birthday BBQ, 5:30 pm

Wednesday, May 15

Music and Movement, 9:45 am, St. Pat’s School

Speech & Language Hour, 11 am Sun Dog

Quilt Guild AGM & potluck, 6 pm, Riverview United

Legion general meeting, 7 pm

Thursday, May 16

Club M.O.M., 10 am, SunDog

Chamber of Commerce business awards, tickets 597-1599

Friday, May 17

Chamber seminar with Sandi Boucher, 9 am, Little Falls

Monday, May 20

Victoria Day (no paper until Tuesday)

May 21 – Council meets, 3 pm

Northwest Catholic DSB videoconference, St. Patrick’s School, 6:30pm

May 22 – Nor-West Animal Clinic visits, 9am-4pm, 101 Goodwin St.

May 25 – Safe Kids Week event, Voyageur Mall, 10 am-3pm

May 26 - Legion Volunteer Appreciation Day, Noon, (RSVP by May 18, 597-2190)

Jamboree, 2 pm, Pioneer Ctr.

May 28- Atikokan Diabetes drop-in clinic, 1-4 pm, 597-4215 x 352

May 30 – Pot-luck, Pioneer Ctr, 5 pm

May 31 – AHS prom, St Patrick’s hall, 7:30 pm

June 7 – Outers 12-day trip, departure

June 8 - Atikokan MX motocross, Charleson

June 12 – St. Pat’s grade 8 grad, Mass 6 pm, grad follows

June 13 – AHS grade 8 grad, 6:30 pm

June 18 – Outers 12-day return, noon, NymLake

June 21 – AHS grade 12 grad 6:30 pm

June 22 - Legion golf tournament

June 24-28 – Science North camp, 1-800-461-4898

July 20 - Atikokan MX motocross, Charleson

Aug. 16-17 – Atikokan Bass Classic

Aug. 24 - Atikokan MX motocross, Charleson

Sept. 7 - Atikokan MX motocross, Charleson

Sept. 14 – Equestrian trail ride, Charleson

Sept. 27&28 – Relay for Life, North Star, 7pm-7am

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Friends of the Museum Grace Mullner and Joan McIntosh in the new ‘old’ Mercantile Shop.

The Friends of the Museum and community volunteers have been busy this winter transforming the Museum entrance and turning the former flea market into a log cabin ‘Mercantile Shop’, which opens today.

The Mercantile hosts second-hand household items and toys, and is now in a log cabin façade just beyond the entrance in the first gallery. Museum board chair Jim Clark provided the logs and constructed  the vertical ‘trading post’ style structure with help from Tom Jarvis . The end result is “a really nice addition to the Museum,” notes Joan McIntosh of the Friends, a volunteer group that raises funds for special Museum projects.

It’s a small but attractively arranged shop, thanks to the hard work and creativity of the Friends’ Grace Mullner, she added. The Museum staff and volunteers have also revamped the main entrance (where the flea market used to be) with wildlife and a nature mural, that provides a neat transition to the log structure. An upcoming Aboriginal exhibit will include a large wigwam, which will be set immediately adjacent to the shop.

The entrance and gallery has also had a face lift, thanks to a new paint job and repairs by volunteers Barry, Colleen and Barry Smith Jr.

The shop’s new look was a way to keep the popular flea market, yet in a way befitting the museum’s obvious historical theme, said curator Derek Kowalchuk.

For the past few years “we had the flea market in the front and it encouraged traffic to the museum, but we decided that we would build a façade to maintain the material in a more aesthetically pleasing [structure],” he said.

The Mercantile is open weekdays, 10 am to 4 pm, and people can donate smaller items during those hours. (Clothing is not accepted; that can go to Forget-me-Not.)

Shoppers will have another opportunity to scoop some good deals with the Friends’ upcoming yard sale (with live music) on the front porch of Legion Point’s historical log cabin, May 24 & 25. Larger items that have been donated to the flea market in the past have been stored in the cabin but are being cleared out so the place can be used to host events.

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Whether or not construction of a proposed tenant-owned housing facility moves ahead is now in the hands of local seniors, says the AEDC, which put forward the plan to help address a housing shortage for that demographic.

About 50 people attended Tuesday’s session to learn more about the proposal, but now the agency needs to see solid interest from at least 20 potential tenants to carry forward, said AEDC executive director Garry McKinnon.

If that happens, the agency would be willing secure funding for a business plan to further investigate the idea.

The Town, AEDC, and Seniors’ Forum have come up empty after several years of seeking a solution to the seniors’ housing shortage.

“I have pretty much come to the conclusion that the solution is right here in this room,” McKinnon told the group Tuesday. “But before I expend more energy on this, there needs to be a strong indication that this is what you want.”

He said the project could be feasible if at least 24 tenants were willing to invest $25,000 each for the facility and form a not-for-profit corporation. The tenants’ initial investment would likely be enough to secure financing for the construction of the facility.

Tenants would then pay about $1,200 per month to the corporation to repay construction costs,  and cover ongoing maintenance and property taxes. The corporation would be governed by a board of directors made up of tenant shareholders, enabling residents to have a direct say both in the facility’s design and in operation.

The need for more seniors housing in the community is clear: A 2011 survey conducted by the AEDC and Seniors Forum found that 62% of respondents would consider moving to a high quality seniors housing community and 22% (approximately 50 of the 253 of those surveyed) would be willing to put up a secured investment for housing. The demand is predicted to increase over the next decade as the population ages.

Since that survey, the Town, AEDC and Seniors Forum have sought various funding avenues, and approached provincial and federal government agencies, all of whom indicated they “are not in that business,” said McKinnon.

The Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board (RRDSSAB) has had its social housing funding frozen since 2002, and doesn’t have funding for any capital housing projects currently, noted its CAO Dan McCormick. There is a waiting list for most of the existing accommodations. While some vacancies have come available in one of the apartment buildings, there seems to be a demand for higher-quality and possibly more spacious, seniors’ housing options, rather than low-income housing, said McKinnon.

The proposed facility could have two-bedroom, 1,000 square foot apartment units.

McKinnon and Town reps have also approached developers to gauge interest in condominium development here, but that would be much more costly than the not-for-profit proposal. The AEDC and Town hosted a developers’ open house in Thunder Bay last year, and of the 40 some companies represented at the event, it was clear they were “not interested in building or owning apartments for anybody” and suggested prices ranged from $200,000 to $300,000 per pre-sold unit.

However, if 24 tenants put up $25,000 each ($600,000), that would be likely enough of the total building cost (an estimated $5.4 million) for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. to guarantee a mortgage.

McKinnon has also met with RBC reps who have said the bank would consider that type of mortgage with CMHC backing.

If seniors sign on to further explore the idea (those interested can contact McKinnon at 597-2757), the next step would be forming a board to apply for CMHC for funding to cover the costs of creating a business plan and incorporation, something that would help determine whether or not it is feasible.

Of course, site selection is a key component. (Will the Town donate land? queried McKinnon.) Studies commissioned by the AEDC and Town last year show that there are several suitable sites for housing development available in the community; it would be up to the tenant shareholders to determine where they want the facility.

If the business plan indicates the project were feasible, proponents could then put forward their share in a secured investment, subject to agreed-upon terms, suggested AEDC lawyer Keith Jobbitt. The board of directors would then create detailed by-laws and policies for the corporation to cover all aspects of how the investment and rent revenue are managed, set age restrictions for tenants, decide whether ‘snowbird’ tenants could sublet their apartment in the winter months, etc.

The next step for the board would be to hire a project manager to oversee the design and eventual construction.

If the project did not proceed, the CMHC would not require the corporation to pay back the initial business plan funding.

The concept has garnered praise from CMHC, RBC, and DSSAB reps. “When I described it to our contact with CMHC in Toronto, there was dead silence and then they said, ‘I can’t believe this hasn’t been done before,” said McKinnon.

McCormick called the concept “innovative and tenacious.”

“I’ve been across the province and [housing shortages are] not a new problem, especially in rural communities. Our needs and wants are not being met by our buildings,” he said, adding that with frozen capital funding for DSSAABs, aging existing social housing infrastructure is becoming an increasing burden for taxpayers.

“This is probably the best concept I’ve seen. Typically, the difficult part is getting funding [for new housing]. I hope this serves as a shining example for the province that can be mirrored in other communities.”

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7,000+ km in 210 days

Rocky Mountain House to Montreal?

Just a warm-up paddle for Mike Ranta.

The Canoeing Capital’s most intrepid paddler is beginning preparations to go all the way across Canada, Victoria to CapeBreton, in 2014. As always, Spitzy will travel with Ranta.

He and Spencer Meany are heading to the West Coast later this month on a reconnaissance trip. Ranta wants to get a first-hand look at the three mountain ranges (Cascades, Monashee and Columbia) he will have to deal with as he paddles through southern B.C.

Those mountains present a physical challenge he did not face in the 2011 trip, extremely long and arduous portages. “The route into the Cascades from Hope is about 60 km, with an uphill grade of eight degrees… and that’s not even the longest; the Columbia bush trail is about 145 km,” said Ranta last week.

He’s going to steal a page out of Joe Meany’s book: he’s working with Souris River Canoes now to develop a wheeled canoe cart so he can pull his canoe over these long portages. (Meany, with paddling partners Gene Tetrault and Art Morris, kayaked the RMH-Montreal route in 1967; they used a wheeled cart for the long portages.)

The trip will involve a lot of walking beside the highway, and Ranta notes “this will be one of the most dangerous parts of the trip”. He’s planning to have a pilot vehicle accompany him there for safety’s sake, and has already started contacting media and officials in B.C., all of whom have responded positively.

It’s a very different physical challenge than marathon paddling, so “I will have to train for this one,” he says. He lost almost 25 kg (over 50 lbs) during the 2011 trip, and the extra elements in this one mean he will have to be even better prepared.

“I have to put myself into a unique frame of mind to do this trip,” he said.

While the mountains, the long portages, and the Western wildlife (“I’ve never had to worry about Grizzly bears or mountain lions before.”) will present new challenges, he’s convinced the toughest test will again be negotiating Lake Superior.

“Superior will always weigh on my mind; it’s has taken many, many lives. I’ve seen that lake change so fast, and it’s so cold you don’t dare flip. It’s the most beautiful part of the trip, but the most terrifying.”

During the 2011 trip, he was twice forced off the lake for days at time because paddling conditions just weren’t safe.

Ranta is also planning a reconnaissance trip to the East Coast this fall to scope out the route past Montreal, and has had some talks with members of the cross-Canada Canoe Odyssey group. (He met up with them a couple of times during the 2011 trip. They covered the 7,000 km route in 165 days, but only went as far as St. John, NB.)

In addition to the cart, Ranta is working with SourisRiver on building a specially reinforced canoe that will also double as a shelter.

He plans to set out from Victoria on April 1 (more than a month earlier than the start of the 2011 trip), and aims to be in CapeBreton by September 30.

“I know I can do the Rocky Mountain House to Montreal trip in thirty days less, just on all I learned [on the 180-day 2011 trip],” he says. “I’ll allow myself 210 days, until the end of October; I won’t be out there any later than that.”

Youth Centre

Ranta is again planning to make the trip a benefit for the Atikokan Youth Centre, and the AYI board has started planning how it will support the effort.

“We want to be more organized this time,” said Eva Shields. “We’re preparing a video from the last trip that we can include in a media package, and we’ll use that to let the communities he’s going through know about this trip.”

“We’re also hoping to organize people who would like to be part of it… There are so many people from Atikokan all over the place, we’d like to be able to contact them and let them know when Mike will be coming.”

“If we could get people to have his supplies ready, so he doesn’t have to spend so much time off the water… We have to work out how to handle timing, and payment,” said Shields.

A search for sponsors has begun, and the longer lead-up, combined with Ranta’s track record, are already generating significant interest among potential major sponsors.

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Ed Fukushima, Larry Levchak, and much of the team behind Atikokan Renewable Fuels, including those here, will likely remain involved in the project.

“I believe our core team of workers in Atikokan will be hired by Rentech. There will be changes, but we just don’t know what they’ll be yet,” said Fukushima on Thursday, several hours after the announcement of Rentech’s takeover was made.

“We have a long-term services agreement with Rentech, and will be involved in the electrical, automation and other work on the Atikokan plant. We want to work with them in Wawa as well.”

Fukushima and Levchak are involved in a range of service companies, including MGM Electric, Automation Now, and Great North BioEnergy, that have been heavily involved in the Atikokan project.

In its announcement, Rentech noted the partnership with Great North BioEnergy and stated it would “continue to work with First Nations in the development and operation of the Atikokan project”.

Fukushima said the engineering design work is complete for the Atikokan plant, and that the involvement of Rentech means much better quality machinery will be used here.

“We could not find a palatable Canadian financial deal… not one,” he said, referring to his efforts to finance the conversion of the former particleboard plant. “Rentech has a substantially bigger budget than we ever had. They are going to ged ‘r done.”

“This whole thing is huge for Northwestern Ontario. Most pellet producers are under 100,000 metric tons [of annual production]. Rentech is a well-funded, technically-skilled company.”

He didn’t disagree with the assessment that the Atikokan facility, under this change, would go from being something of a ‘mom and pop’ operation to part of a large, international corporation.

Atikokan Renewable Fuels has actually been working with Rentech for quite some time. A range of concrete work has been carried out at the Atikokan plant over the past six weeks to get it ready for the new wood pellet machinery.

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Purchase of Atikokan Renewable Fuels one small piece of a bigger picture

Rentech Inc., an American renewable energy and fertilizer company, has purchased Atikokan Renewable Fuels as part of a series of deals that will make it an internationally significant producer in the wood pellet business.

Rentech has secured a ten-year contract to supply Drax Power Limited of the U.K. with 400,000 metric tons of wood pellets annually, as well as the ten-year contract to provide 45,000 metric tons annually to Ontario Power Generation that comes with the purchase of Atikokan Renewable Fuels.

The company also has “exclusive rights to acquire, at a fixed price” a former OSB mill in Wawa which it intends to turn into a wood pellet production facility. The Wawa plant will produce 360,000 metric tons a year, employing 40, and the Atikokan plant will produce 125,000 metric tons annually and employ 25.

The company’s first delivery to OPG is scheduled for the first quarter of 2014, and its first delivery to Drax is due in the fourth quarter of 2014. It has transportation deals with CN and the Port of Quebec in place.

Rentech has signed a joint venture agreement with Graanul Invest, a European company that is one of the world’s largest wood pellet producers. It designed, built, and operates six pellet plants in Europe producing 830,000 metric tons of pellets annually. Graanul will partner with Rentech to develop and build wood pellet plants in the U.S. and Canada, help market pellets from those plants, and provide supplemental pellet supplies if needed.

Finally, the company invested over $100 million to purchase Georgia-based Fulghum Fibres, a leading American producer of wood chips. Fulghum has 32 mills (26 in the U.S. and six in South America) that process 15 million metric tons of wood and bark annually into wood chips and residual fuels.

“Today’s announcements launch us into the wood fibre and pellet supply business, with immediate cash flow and significant growth opportunities, and allow us to take advantage of our fibre relationship in the province of Ontario,” said Rentech CEO D. Hunt Ramsbottom. “Fulghum Fibres provides immediate and steady [earnings] and nearly 25 years of fibre processing expertise that we can leverage for successful execution in the wood pellet industry.”

“The wood chip and pellet industries are growth sectors with long-term contracts that should provide stable margins and attractive returns on project investments. With sustainable fibre supply from Crown forests, Rentech will continue to pursue First Nations partnerships and opportunities for economic development associated with our Ontario projects. With our long-term customer contracts, processing expertise, and logistics in place, Rentech is positioned to execute on our objective to be a leader in the rapidly growing global market for wood pellet production.”

Rentech stock, which is listed on the New York exchange, jumped in value by 17% upon the announcement of the deal.

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Students get a real look at what high-risk behaviour can mean

Thanks to local sponsorship, the Atikokan Safe & Healthy Lifestyles committee brought the first-ever PARTY (Preventing Alcohol and Risk-related Trauma in Youth) presentation here Thursday, to give Grade 10 students a sobering look at the potential consequences of high-risk activities.

Local businesses, organizations, and individuals, gave $2,300 to enable the committee to purchase a licence to offer the program here each year.

During the day-long workshop at Atikokan GeneralHospital, 40 students toured the whole facility, from the emergency department to the morgue. They heard from first responders (paramedics, fire rescue members, and emergency room physician and nurses) about how they try to rescue, treat and stabilize trauma patients. The students even had a hands-on opportunity to use a high-tech medical simulation of what a trauma patient experiences.

Next, the youth learned about the ongoing challenges of brain or spinal cord injury. At lunch time, they ate (or attempted to eat) without use of their hands, instead relying on special equipment used by trauma victims. Later at the rehabilitation department, a therapist talked about that equipment, and the long, painful road to recovery for trauma patients.

Impaired – or just plain reckless – driving (cars, ATVs, snowmobiles) can also cause death, so two OPP officers took the students to the hospital morgue. Here the officers discussed the legal implications and the emotional effects on officers when they have to inform parents of their child’s death.

The most sobering message was saved for the day’s end: Students heard from a family member of a victim of a fatal accident, and listened as they described how their lives have been changed.

The day’s presentation covered some disturbing subject matter, and for that reason two mental health counsellors, who are also organizing committee members, Candace Green and Irene Mason, were on hand to offer support.

“It’s a small town, so probably everyone has been affected in one way or other by a tragic accident,” said Green.

What appealed to the committee here was that the stories may have more impact on youth because they were given by community members who have really experienced the results of needless tragedies.

“Real [fire fighters, paramedics, etc.] talked about being on-site at an accident,” said Green. “Real people talked about having a family member involved in a tragic accident…”

The Safe & Healthy Lifestyles committee runs Drug Awareness Week activities in the schools and has run mock impaired driving disasters in cooperation with local EMS, OPP and AGH.

“I think this was more real, more relative to their life,” said Green. “It was a pretty jam-packed day – they moved through it fairly quickly and I don’t think they got bored. It was very interactive… not just a lecture.”

This first PARTY session was run by John Beaton, a FortFrances paramedic and member of the district Substance Abuse Prevention Team, which runs the program at the FortFrancesHigh   School. There, the presentation runs twice each school year through the Civics class.

The PARTY program was founded in 1986 by an ER nurse at Toronto’s SunnybrookHospital (the largest trauma unit in Canada) in an effort to prevent some of the many risk-related traumas she witnessed in youth. After 27 years, the program now runs at 100 high schools across Canada and in the US, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Germany and has reached over a million young people. The committee is targeting Grade 10 because that ages is seen as mature enough to absorb the message and also “that population tends to [start becoming] more risk-taking,” said Green.

Provided by

“I appreciate the support and enthusiasm our community partners have shared with us in being able to bring the PARTY presentation to AHS’s grade 10,” said Green, who is also chair of the Atikokan Safe and Healthy Lifestyles Committee. “I was very much impressed and humbled by the stories shared by the presenters, and the knowledge and experience they brought to the presentation, making it more meaningful for all who participated.”

The following have contributed financially or in-kind donations: Atikokan Pharmacy, Atikokan Family Health Team, Northwestern Health Unit, Atikokan Kiwanis Club, Osisko HRG, Atikokan Labour Council, Dr. Ann Stevens, Critical Incident Stress Management Team, Atikokan Youth Initiatives, Atikokan General Hospital staff, and personal donations from many community members.

The following participated in the planning and facilitating of the program: AHS staff, AGH staff, John Beaton and the volunteers from Fort Frances Emergency Services, Atikokan Emergency Services (Kristi McQuay and Ryan Mosely), OPP (Sgt. Ann McCoy), Atikokan Fire Rescue (Graham Warburton and Roy Brouwer), Dr. Roberto Campanaro, Atikokan Safe and Healthy Lifestyles Committee

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