Scott recently visited the IFTA head offices in Toronto to plan the coming season and to liaise with program partner Athletics Ontario. On his way back up North he called in on the Chippewas of Nawash community, otherwise known as Cape Croker which is on the Bruce Peninsular. Cape Croaker proved to be a great start to the season and he reported that as much as he enjoyed visiting Toronto “it felt very good to be back on the front lines working in the schools again”. His partner Elsie and daughter Anika are pictured (right) in front of the welcome sign and seem to have found the picture taking process quite funny something to do with the "Kick 'n' Turtle” sign perhaps?

More recently his team has been concentrating on the Western area of the province which comprises of mainly Treaty 3 communities and since this school year started they have visited an impressive 19 of the 28 communities and 12 out of 15 schools in the region. The main goal is to give all the children a fun and joyful experience of sporting activity but the team is also recording performance from each community and can easily tell what level of physical activity the children are getting. They particularly noted the above average performances of the children in the Wabaseemoong (White Dog) School, where teacher Harvey Hunter has a comprehensive physical education program in place. Scott noted “you can see it in the data right away the children took instantly to the activities and we saw some great performances. I knew that they must be doing regular programming and further conversations showed that to be the case. A long term goal of this project is to find some top level first nation athletes and it is our dream to eventually have some of the participating children representing Canada at the Olympic Games, everyone has to start somewhere! Over the next few years we  aim to find and assist children with talent and direct them towards mainstream competition via our partners such as Athletics Ontario, but it’s not just the select children who will benefit because with this program we can monitor and improve all the fitness levels of all those who are taking part”. The school obviously thought so too because they have purchased their own equipment and plan to continue the program themselves.

Pictured to the right is Lac La Croix School which is very nice inside and well kept but it is sometimes tough in these communities and this school was faced with starting their new year short of two teachers and a Principal! Fortunately, the staff managed to cope with our arrival despite the challenges the school faced and the students really enjoyed the event. Interestingly the old school (not shown) was a run-down version of the Cape Croker School, it seems when INAC built these schools the same design was given to a number of reserves whereas today every school has its own unique design and functionality.
We visited Nigigoonsininikaaning (Red Gut) where the children along with the Seine River students feed into Mine Center School. One of the things we enjoy about having the opportunity to visit all these communities is all the interesting details and differences, most First Nation reserves have large welcome signs  and we enjoy keeping a record of them and other interesting things such as the exceptional powwow grounds at Nigigoonsininikaaning afterwards we found this link showing their 6^th annual powwow http://www.nigigoonsiminikaaning.ca/powwow.php

Anyway that’s all for now! More news from the road soon as we are currently working on the ‘Fun in Athletics” school bus that will be used to visit more communities over the next few years.