Ontario school opens its heart to two young Nunavut athletes

Ruth Jaw,12, left, and Teresa Curley, 13, are doing their grade 7 studies at Northwestern secondary school in Stratford, Ont. this year, where the athletes will have access to a wrestling program. (PHOTO COURTESY OF P. FINKELSTEIN)

The charred rubble that remains at the site of where Peter Pitseolak high school once stood serves as a reminder of what the community has lost.

For Cape Dorset students Ruth Jaw and Teresa Curley, losing their school to a fire last month signalled a major disruption to their academic schedules this year because secondary students are forced to use temporary classrooms around the community until a new school is built.

Aside from academic work, Jaw and Curley, aged 12 and 13, are promising young wrestlers who lost their training space and equipment when the school burned down Sept. 6.

But thanks to a long-standing relationship with a high school in Ontario, the girls have relocated south to complete Grade 7 at Northwestern secondary school in Stratford.

Paul Finkelstein, a culinary teacher from the school, has led student exchanges between Stratford and Cape Dorset for the last four years. He’s kept in close contact with students and staff at Peter Pitseolak during that period, and more often since the fire.

“Part of it is that they’re great students, but it’s also that they’re part of a wrestling program [in Cape Dorset],” Finkelstein said.

“It’s a strong program, but they lost their resources. Northwestern happens to have a great wrestling program, so for those two at least they can continue wrestling here.”

Jaw and Curley both hope to qualify to compete in the next Arctic Winter Games, which will take place March 2016 in Nuuk, Greenland.

And they won’t just have the support of coaches at Northwestern. Finkelstein said the family who’s hosting them has a son who also wrestles. There’s a room in the house that’s been padded for wrestling practice.

Jaw and Curley have some company too; Northwestern was already sponsoring two other Cape Dorset students at the school this year: Parr Etidloie and William Rowsell.

Having four Nunavut students at the school is an incredible opportunity for local students to learn about Inuit culture, Finkelstein said.

“As part of these exchanges, my students take so much more than the community [of Cape Dorset] ever could, as far as learning about the North,” he said.

Hosting the Nunavut students is not intended to replace or offer a better education than what students received at Peter Pitseolak, Finkelstein said, but to enrich the experience for students on either end.

Finkelstein recalls the morning he awoke to see images of the burning school on his Facebook feed, receiving updates from students he’s come to know through past exchanges.

“Watching that school burn after spending weeks there… I was thinking about all the stuff in there, everything those teachers has brought in and set up,” he said. “It made me really sad.”

That same day, Finkelstein helped create an online fundraising campaign, which in the following weeks, raised more than $10,000 in cash and material donations for the school community in Cape Dorset.

That campaign will send calculators, textbooks and school supplies to the south Baffin community this fall.