Manitoba caregiver worried wildfire evacuation will have lasting impacts on children
Wildfire evacuee Irvin Head from Cranberry Portage, who cares for his niece and two nephews, is concerned about what the evacuation means for children's education, socialization and well-being away from school.
Head and his family, who are among the 21,000 wildfire evacuees from Manitoba, were forced out of their home at the end of May and have been staying in Winnipeg since.
The family has mostly been cooped up inside with their electronics and pets, apart from a visit to the Assiniboine Park Zoo last week facilitated by the Canadian Red Cross, Head said.
The evacuation experience has been stressful and full of uncertainty for the children, he said.
"The kids feel it just as much as we do, but they express it differently," Head said.
"It's necessary for the kids to be able to have those activities and have some sort of normalcy, because if we're stuck in our, where we're renting, and there's nothing for them to do there, they lose that sort of schedule. Like, they say, 'Oh, I miss my school friends. I wish I could go to school again.'"
Head's 14-year-old nephew is missing out on core memories at school, including his Grade 8 trip to Churchill that's been cancelled.
"It's upsetting, and the best we could do is say, 'OK, we'll go to the zoo, this and that,' but you can sort of tell he was really disappointed," he said.
"It's going to be every kid's problem who had to miss out on that sort of stuff."
Cranberry Portage's evacuation last year due to a different wildfire meant some high school graduates missed out on their postponed graduation, he said.
Northern schools closed
Head's nephew and two nieces are among about 800 children in the Frontier School Division who've been displaced due to evacuation orders brought on by wildfires in the last few weeks.
They're from seven schools in Bissett, Cranberry Portage, Cross Lake, Lynn Lake, Sherridon and Snow Lake, Frontier chief superintendent Tyson MacGillivray told CBC News.
It's the most significant evacuation he can recall his division ever having to work through, he said.
"It's a very stressful time for families and students, and they're navigating and using their tools to make this the best that they can, given the severe circumstances that they're under," MacGillivray said.
In the last two weeks, poor air quality due to wildfire smoke has also forced some day closures at schools in Brochet, Gillam, Leaf Rapids, Norway House, South Indian Lake and Wabowden, he said.
"One day you may have great air quality. The next day, depending on the wind, the community can be blanketed by smoke, so it's really on a case-by-case basis … to make that call on whether we should continue with classes or postpone them for the day."
MacGillivray says for now, the division is focused on student wellness and getting in touch with displaced families scattered across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario to make sure they have activities and feel well supported.
He hopes most of the evacuees will be able to go back to their communities in the next week to 10 days, and children can return to school for the remainder of the academic year.
"As soon as we have the OK to get back into the community, we'll re-engage our kids," to make sure students are in a good place and prepared for their next grade level, MacGillivray said.
'We're in survival mode'
Frontier School Division and Louis Riel School Division are among those helping the Cross Lake Education Authority put on a field day in Winnipeg on Wednesday.
The event's activities include balloons and bouncy castles, along with games and learning booths for displaced students.
"That's at least something we can do," Pimicikamak Cree Nation Coun. Vivian Scott said Tuesday.
The chief and council have mainly been preoccupied with making sure community members are fed and have a place to stay for the night, since the First Nation declared a state of emergency last month due to a nearby out-of-control wildfire, Scott said.
They continue to deal with daily accommodation and payment issues with the Red Cross, she said.
"As for learning, I wish good luck to all our parents with that, because … we're in survival mode," Scott said.
Head is grateful his family was able to secure an Airbnb during the evacuation, although they're also plagued with questions and worries about whether they'll be reimbursed.
"If this continues on for longer than they plan, how is this going to pan out?" he said.
"Are we going to have to transfer the kids if we have to stay here for longer?"
Head would be open to having the children continue their education online, similar to COVID-19 pandemic times, or getting learning materials from schools, so they can resume their studies until they can go home.
"I don't know if this situation is going to get any better before it gets worse," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Grade 12 students read letters they sent to themselves in Grade 9
Four students graduating from Nelson McIntyre Collegiate in Winnipeg open the letters they had written to themselves in 2021, when they were in Grade 9.
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Site of deadly Manitoba bus crash was studied in 2006, but a major suggested improvement wasn't completed
Social Sharing With safety upgrade recommendations for the site of Manitoba's deadliest crash set to be announced this week, CBC has learned the province studied the intersection nearly 20 years ago and chose not to fix a significant highlighted issue because of the cost. The June 15, 2023, crash left 17 people dead, after a semi and a bus full of seniors from the Dauphin area collided at the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Highway 5, near Carberry. The tragedy spurred calls for the intersection to be overhauled, with residents in the area saying they had been warning of its dangers for years. The government ordered a full review of the intersection, with the aim of identifying longer-term safety improvements, and is set to announce its recommendations this week. But a 2006 study of the intersection said the median is too narrow and doesn't meet national standards — a cause of concern that still hasn't been addressed. "It's really heartbreaking that they've known this long and basically waited until there was a tragic accident two years ago to actually step up and do anything," said Jordan Dickson, whose home is just down the road from where the collision took place. CBC obtained the two-page 2006 document, which is a summary of the assessment of the intersection, through freedom of information laws. The assessment came after Carberry town council asked the province to examine the intersection, according to the report. The summary says there were 11 accidents at the intersection over a five-year period. An engineer with the provincial government's traffic engineering branch wrote in the report that rate was "below the level of concern" to meet the criteria for a traffic signal. The report didn't identify any single specific factor that contributed to the reported collisions, but there were "a number of items that may have contributed to an imperfect driving environment, thus leading to some of the events of concern," the engineer wrote. One of those concerns was the existing median width, which "doesn't meet today's design standards," the engineer wrote in the report, dated June 22, 2006. The report said the traffic engineering branch would address some identified issues — such as cutting tall grass that obstructed drivers' views, along with adding median stop bars and a divided-highway warning sign. But widening the median wasn't on the table, due "to the costs of localized improvements of this nature," the report said. Province will recommend 1 of 3 options Nearly 20 years later, widening the median is one of the three options presented in a provincial report released in January 2024. The province has earmarked $12 million to upgrade the intersection. Adding a roundabout was also presented as an option, as was a restricted crossing U-turn, or RCUT. That option would eliminate direct left turns from the Trans-Canada and going directly north-south on Highway 5. Instead, drivers would make merges and U-turns to get where they're going. How an RCUT would work at Manitoba intersection where deadly crash happened 1 year ago Duration 0:13 A restricted crossing U-turn, also known as an RCUT, is one of three options being explored to overhaul a highway intersection near Carberry, Man., where a crash killed 17 people and injured eight others in June. On Wednesday, government officials will announce their recommendation to the community at an open house in Carberry, just a few kilometres south of the intersection. A government spokesperson said it will not be the final decision. All three options have been met with protest by members of the community and local government, who argue the only real solution is an overpass. The government has previously said an overpass is not an option due to the current traffic volumes. Area resident Dickson is part of a group of concerned community members who recently organized a protest against the proposals. She worries the RCUT will be the recommended option and says it would be detrimental to the local agriculture industries in the area. She'd prefer to see an overpass built. The southwestern Manitoba area is home to many potato farmers, she said, which means during harvest, hundreds of semi-trucks cross the intersection daily to get to the McCain potato processing plant in Carberry. "For them to ask all these loaded potato … [trucks] to merge onto a very busy No. 1 [Trans-Canada] highway, possibly twice depending on if they're going east or west … they're not going to be able to get up to speed," she said. "It's just going to be more accidents on the No. 1." The mayor of Carberry says his council will voice its opposition to the RCUT at a stakeholder meeting planned Monday evening with government officials. "The long and the short of it is they don't live in this community, and they don't understand the traffic volumes, the impact that it'll have on agriculture," said Mayor Ray Muirhead, who echoed calls for the province to reconsider an overpass. 'Safety deficiencies' long known: prof Stuart Olmstead, Carberry's former mayor, first became a councillor in 2006. The safety of the intersection was something the town talked to the province about "year over year," he said. "Everybody in town has a story about the intersection. Some of them are quite tragic, some of them are scary," he said. Olmstead said the median is narrow because the intersection was designed decades ago with the idea of an overpass being built in the future. By today's standards, an intersection like the one at Highway 5 and the Trans-Canada would be built with a median wide enough to fit a truck and have a stop sign, said Ahmed Shalaby, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Manitoba. That gives a driver a safer way to cross the intersection, allowing them to safely stop at the median after crossing the first lanes of traffic. But narrower medians can be found all along the Trans-Canada Highway, he said. Fixing each one at a localized level would be tough, because "there is never a budget to do all the improvements that we desire," he said. "The safety deficiencies at this intersection have been known for a long period of time, but there hasn't been really an attempt to correct these." Shalaby says RCUTs can be an effective option, but he has concerns about one at the Carberry-area location. Vehicles from across the country drive on the Trans-Canada and drivers might be confused, he said. Currently, the only RCUT in Canada is on Highway 16 in Saskatchewan, but they are found throughout the United States. But Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor argued if the RCUT is chosen, people will get used to it. Naylor said officials gave her their recommendation on the intersection last month, but she wouldn't disclose their decision. As for the 2006 report saying the median was too narrow, Naylor said she "can't speak for a government 20 years ago." "There's lots of moving parts in government. Certainly we all wish that what happened in 2023 — that fatal collision that took the lives of 17 seniors — had never happened." Safety of deadly Carberry bus crash site was examined 20 years ago 4 minutes ago Duration 2:53 The province studied options for improving safety at the Carberry-area highway intersection that became the site of Manitoba's deadliest bus crash in 2023, but one major issue was not addressed due to cost, CBC has learned.
CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
I never expected I would lose so much of my Inuit culture when I moved South
I went from a small community of 400 in N.W.T. to a big city in Manitoba First Person columns are personal stories and experiences from kids written in their own words. For more information and to learn how to submit your own piece, scroll to the bottom of the page. My name is Kaia Kanayok, and I'm 17 years old. I live in Ulukhaktok, a small, isolated community of about 400 people in the Northwest Territories. It has two grocery stores, one convenience store and one big school from junior kindergarten to Grade 12 and a daycare. I haven't always lived here. Ulukhaktok may seem boring compared to a big city, but I love it here — and I realized how much it meant to me after I moved away. When I was 11, I went to live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for five years. The experience of being far from my Inuit community was challenging for me because we were far from family and friends. I suddenly had to deal with racism at a young age. A sudden change Moving to Winnipeg was a huge change. I hadn't been in a big city before, except for Inuvik and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, for medical travel. We moved because my mom wanted my sister and me to have a better education, as well as easier access to health care as I am hearing impaired. For a while, it was lots of fun. We got to experience new things and made new friends. I got into sports like volleyball, basketball and badminton. When COVID-19 hit, the house we were renting came off the market so we moved. After a while, my stepdad left my family. We didn't have any extended family around. Birthdays and holidays were isolated and lonely. Moving again made it harder to have friends because I was at a new school. There weren't a lot of Inuit people in Winnipeg, and the ones I met were from Nunavut. Our dialects are a bit different, and I didn't feel a connection to them like my friends back home. WATCH — How to say hello in 15 Indigenous languages Kaia, right, when she was 11, met Inuk singer Kelly Fraser in Ulukhaktok. (Image submitted by Kaia Kanayok) Explaining my culture When I would tell my class about my culture, I felt like many of the students were judging me. After a while, I just stopped. For example, I explained to a friend in Grade 7 that the way we survive off the land is from hunting and fishing. I told her that the fur on my parka is from a fox, and she told me that we were endangering the animals and that she felt sorry for them. My classmates made me feel like I was a bad person for the way we live. This bullying and racism really got to me. I felt so ashamed to be Inuit. I felt ashamed for feeling ashamed. Moving back home We first came back home for a visit in the summer of 2022, and we spent a lot of time with family. I didn't want to go back to Winnipeg. Eventually, my mom realized there was nothing for us in Winnipeg: no family, no real friends. We officially moved back home in the summer of 2023 and lived with my grandparents. Kaia, left, sometimes rides on her friends' snowmobile to get around her community in the winter. Here she is in front of her school. (Image credit: Marielle Ortañez Torrefranca/CBC) I didn't realize how much being in a city affected me until we moved back home. I didn't remember much of my culture. I had forgotten how to drum dance and do Arctic sports. Living in Winnipeg changed me and how I view the world. It made me realize that the only people who truly understand me are people at home. I no longer had to explain myself because everyone already knew our way of life. My home, my community Now that I'm back in Ulukhaktok, I'm grateful for the opportunities offered by my school that I missed out on in Winnipeg. We have game nights at the school gym. Twice a week, we play games, bake and hang out at the youth centre. On Thursdays and Saturdays, the arena becomes an indoor playground. On top of that, the school tries hard to have the kids learn more about the land and Inuit culture through hands-on experiences. The high school and junior high students go muskox hunting or fishing. We have Inuinnaqtun class where we learn our language and we also learn to sew or bead. Now I'm graduating from high school, and if I want to pursue my education, I have to leave again. It's scary because this time I'd be by myself. That's why I've decided to take a gap year to spend more time with my family, especially my grandparents. Maybe in a year, I'll be ready to leave again, but I'm in no rush. As time goes on, with fewer elders and more modern technology, it's harder to maintain those traditions. My generation hasn't had to learn things like hunting and fishing for survival, but they are still important for our culture. I'm grateful that the school and community offer these experiences so our culture can live on. Do you have a First Person piece you'd like to share with the CBC Kids News audience? Here's what we're looking for: A First Person columnist highlights a specific experience they have been through and how it affected them. The column has a clear focus, is backed up by personal experiences and facts, is tied to something happening in the news and will be of interest to other kids in Canada. To read previous submissions, click here.
