Mathieu Gagnon moved to Yellowknife about 15 years ago. The principal of École Allain St-Cyr, a francophone school in the city, says he has “seen this community change tremendously – and for the better.”
Last week, the school held an event inside its gymnasium in which students from 38 nations were given flags and invited to parade around the building, high-fiving dozens of other kids as they went.
Each parade was accompanied by a song from the country. Adults representing those nations joined in, too.
While the idea had been to walk and maybe savour the moment, in practice some kids raced and danced their way through the gym, careening from corner to corner like a soccer player tearing off to celebrate a last-minute winning goal.
Some nations had just the one representative. (When it turned out nobody else English was in the room, a Cabin Radio reporter took that flag for a lap.)
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Others had dozens. By the time the parade had turned to Canadian provincial and territorial flags, Quebec and Ontario each had huge representation. The flag of Nunavut and flags representing Yellowknife’s Dene and Métis communities were also featured.
“Like our community, our school is changing. We want to make everybody feel at home, and we want to celebrate all the cultures of the people that come to Allain St-Cyr. It’s a family school, and we feel that it has to be celebrated,” said Gagnon.
“The fact that it’s becoming a multicultural community brings so much more richness to it. We live it every day here at school and we’re very proud of that as well. It’s much more cool like that.”
Yellowknife’s shifting demographics haven’t been without challenges, the principal acknowledged.
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“We have people that land on a Saturday directly from Cameroon and they come here on the Monday to school with their backpacks. We’ve had a family two weeks ago coming straight from Morocco,” he said.
“It brings challenges with adaptation but we do the best we can to make them feel at home. This is why we do these events, so people feel that they’ve made the right choice by coming here and that we’re there for them.”
Last week’s event was the first time École Allain St-Cyr has held a multicultural celebration like this, staff said.
“It’s a learning curve for everybody – not only the people just landed freshly in Yellowknife, but also the people who have been here for a couple years,” said vice-principal Lisandre St-Amant.
“It’s a learning curve for everyone, not necessarily to adjust, but just to learn from each other, and we are really better for it in the end.”
St-Amant is in her 11th year in Yellowknife. She grew up in Quebec and Ontario, while Gagnon is from Quebec and spent some time in Asia before moving to the NWT. (“I was in those shoes at one point in my life,” he said of moving to another country.)
Looking back at old class plans, St-Amant can see how teaching at the school has evolved to match the backgrounds of the students.
“It’s really changed,” she said, “in that we incorporate a lot more of the francophone culture and language from other countries throughout the world – not just the one from Canada and Quebec.”
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That is reflected in the food students bring to school, too.
“We had people from Morocco and different parts of Africa bring traditional meals. They came traditionally dressed with accessories. It was really nice to be immersed into that,” said St-Amant.
“Looking at the students’ lunches, I’m always very curious to see, ‘What did you use here? How did you cook it? What spice did you use?'”
Students who took part in the parade also spent time adding push pins to a giant world map showing their home community and country.
“The goal of that map is we’re going to connect all the different places to Yellowknife with a string,” said St-Amant, “Yellowknife being the heart of our school.”
Gagnon said the need as a school to respond to new arrivals “changes our perspective but in a very good way.”
“I just do my best to welcome people and I try to put myself in their shoes,” he said.
“How would I feel if I landed in another country with my children in the middle of winter?
