The New Birds and Bees

How the North is reinventing sex ed for young people

- Sarah Liss

ASK ANY ADOLESCENT and they’ll tell you: even at its best, conventional sex ed is the worst. Candice Lys, a 38-year-old public health advocate in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, jokes that she’s still haunted by a birth video screened during an awkward Grade 8 health class. It’s one reason why she wanted to provide youth with thoughtful, accurate information about their bodies.

That’s an even greater challenge in the North, where distances between small, tight-knit communities create obstacles to accessing health services like STI testing and birth control. Chlamydia is seven times more prevalent among youth between 15 and 24 years old in the Northwest Territories compared to the rest of the country, and for every 1,000 young women aged 15 to 19, there are 103.7 pregnancies, which is nearly three times the Canadian average.