 |
Picture of Joe giving the thumbs up with his dad and friends from Kwadacha |
More than a few First Nation youth are taking steps into the world of education to find their way onto bigger things. Joseph Syme, age 19, from Prince George, B.C., is a descendant of the Secwepmec Nation; Joe's mother is a member of the Canim Lake Indian Band.
Joe Syme spent this academic year at the College of the Rockies Fernie Campus in their nine month program toward the Adventure Tourism Degree. He took this interesting diversion after a year at University of Northern B.C. in the Environmental Planning department.
Fernie, "was amazing," said Syme, "Pretty much the best year of my life. It was nine months of extreme activity," and he listed off rock climbing, skiing, rafting, and other activities. "It was all-season, started in September with wilderness travel, hiking, and mountaineering." He said the winter portion included ski-touring, walking uphill on skis then skiing downhill, "It's all worth the effort to get some unbelievable downhill turns."
Syme was immersed in a program involving a lot of intense physical challenges, "rock-climbing is where you tackle a rock face, and mountain climbing is part of a package that includes ice climbing. Mountaineering is taking you to the top of the mountain. You go for the peaks."
The COTR program at Fernie is about training people to manage outdoor adventures. "In-class stuff was based on first aid and risk management," said Syme, "liability waivers, and so forth from the legal point of view," sessions conducted by lawyers.
The business end of Adventure Tourism classroom study included computer time on different applications on Windows in Excel and Word in particular, said Syme, "Another class on entrepreneurship included business people from Fernie. A lot of the times in adventure tourism the companies are pretty small, and we learned about a rafting company in Fernie, and a mountain bike touring company."
Mountain biking was not part of the course, "Next year they are integrating a portion about mountain biking. The certifications that I got help get jobs in the industry. First aid and ski-instructing, swift-water rescue, and life guard training," these are valuable certificates in seeking employment.
"We did a couple of hiking trips; most of it was oriented toward winter avalanche skills training and there was a deadly snowpack this year, kind of dangerous, people died." He also engaged in winter camping, staying in tents: "We hiked in our own tents and a couple of other trips were done where we stayed in huts.
"We did winter survival and dug snow caves and stayed in those. We burrowed out a cave and it was really warm. You can also trench-dig a shelter in the snow and it is faster but not as warm a shelter. Digging the snow cave takes about an hour and it might not be the best choice in a real blizzard."
They learned how to start fires the fastest and most efficient way. "We learned a technique called the bundle technique, bundle branches and break them off in a particular way and it is guaranteed to start a fire with one match. You pick the wood off the surrounding trees so it's not practical in alpine conditions."
In-class assignments included written tests, "For certification there was rigorous testing, especially in First Aid. The outdoor trips were tested by instructor observation with feedback sheets and group debriefing," and this composed part of the marks.
"My marks were pretty good," said Syme. "They talked to us individually to discuss the weaknesses. If we were doing our written assignments we were able to engage the instructors in the outdoors. And you had to have a certain percent on the tests like 80 percent on First Aid. A few students fell off in the marks in these areas," said Syme.