Canada's Coolest School Trip 2019

From teepee building to dancing Métis jigs, students from Teslin, Yukon, experience the best of Manitoba’s Parks Canada sites.

- Tanya Kirnishni

THE CLOUDS over Lake Audy threaten rain, but in the clearing on its shoreline there is laughter and a sense of accomplishment. Kids dart in and out between the braced poles of a teepee as a white canvas is unfurled around them, enclosing the wooden frame.

“The way the poles are leaning on one another, supporting each other, that’s very special,” says Desmond Mentuck, a Parks Canada interpreter in southern Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park. “It represents that dependence on one another and working together. I learned it from my Elders and it’s always had important meaning to me.”

Erica Keenan’s grade 5/6/7 students, from Khàtìnas.àxh Community School in the village of Teslin, Yukon, listen carefully as Mentuck guides them through the process of erecting a teepee and talks about the cultural significance it holds for the region’s Anishinaabe people, such as the fact that the 14 poles match the number of stars in the Big Dipper and Little Dipper.