EABAMETOONG FIRST NATION — Progress is being made.
Dougall Media flew to Eabametoong (Fort Hope) First Nation on Aug. 1 and saw firsthand how construction is coming along on their temporary school building.
The new building will serve as an interim replacement for the John C. Yesno Education Centre, which was lost to a fire in January.
Danielle Yellowhead, director of Eabametoong’s Education Authority, told Dougall Media the site for their new temporary education facility is in the midst of prep.
“We are currently in the process of removing bedrock from the ground and then once we get that removed we can install the water and sewer lines,” she said.
In the wake of the fire, Yellowhead said she and her team were left with three portables in which they could operate, but this didn’t give them and their students much space.
As such, the education authority turned to more land-based lessons.
“Our staff did some training for the students — on how to teach them on the land — so there’s a lot of land-based activities where they went to camps around the lake and the community,” she said.
While prep work is still underway, Yellowhead noted some delays in getting the community’s temporary school up and running, but she did add that the federal government has provided funding for the building process.
Kurt Atlookan, one of the Education Authority’s board directors, said that despite delays construction of the temporary school is moving relatively fast.
He echoed Yellowhead’s comments and said, in the meantime, they’ve been keeping kids busy with land-based and recreational activities such as baseball – in addition to music lessons where they’ve been learning guitar among other instruments.
Atlookan also made reference to the birch bark canoe built by Grade 8 students at Algonquin Avenue Public School and said he was pretty impressed with their work and the thoughtful gesture.
“It’s really good for the community,” he said.
He went on to say Eabametoong has a five-year plan in place to get a new school constructed — something Chief Solomon Atlookan previously mentioned when speaking with Dougall Media in January.
Catching up with Chief Atlookan again on Aug. 1 to discuss the temporary school, he said the construction delays have mainly been due to the bedrock removal but, otherwise, the community has been extremely happy with what progress is being made.
“That’s going to slow us down a bit but we’re still not too far [behind] – we don’t want that gap to be any wider than what it is now,” he said.
