Kuujjuaq hockey program helps students spread their wings

Jeffrey Gordon, who is studying in the Montreal area, poses with a group of Kuujjuaq hockey players who visited him in 2014 as part of the Natturaliit program, which encourages post-secondary school success. (PHOTO COURTESY OF P.PARSONS)

Using hockey to encourage school perseverance isn’t a new concept to Nunavik.

But a new Kuujjuaq-based hockey program is hoping to prepare students for post-secondary education in the South, but also to show them what it takes to get there.

In 2014, Kuujjuaq hockey dads Paul Parsons and Danny Fafard helped to launch Naturaliit — eagles in Inuktitut — a project to help get young hockey players interested in pursuing post-secondary education, and maybe their hockey career.

Like the Nunavik Youth Hockey Development Program, Naturaliit relies on students who are attending school full-time. But while that program is regional, Natturaliit is Kuujjuaq-based and focused on players from age 11 to 13 — a group of about 15 students who play hockey with Kuujjuaq’s minor hockey association.

“It’s strictly for kids who are eager and wanting more,” Parsons said. “It’s to open their eyes and doors to help them strive to the next level, in hockey and in education.”

Parson’s own teenage son, Jeffrey Gordon, now 18, has been studying at Pierrefonds Comprehensive high school in the west end of Montreal over the last three years, where he also plays on the school’s hockey team.

Gordon’s own experience travelling south to pursue education at 15, and playing hockey, had Parsons thinking about how he could help other young Kuujjuammiut navigate the same kind of move.

From Parsons’ perspective, there’s not much of a support network in a big city, unless students have family they can rely on there.

His own son stayed with a billet family when he first moved south, but Parsons admits that “it wasn’t easy.”

“It was a lot to take for a 15-year-old,” he said. “A lot of the time, it’s very difficult for youth to leave the North, it’s a huge culture shock.”

So the idea behind Naturaliit hatched from there, he said.

In March 2015, Parsons and Fafard took a group of 15 hockey players — 12 boys and three girls — to Montreal to visit Gordon’s high school, and play an exhibition game against the Pierrefonds high school team.

“It’s the perfect opportunity to have that exchange,” Parsons said. “And the kids have someone they can relate to.”

The group also visited John Abbott College, which draws the majority of Nunavik’s English-speaking CEGEP students, and played a number of games with other hockey teams on the West Island.

“The kids loved it,” Parsons said. “We wanted to see if we could do it again this year, and we’ve have resounding support.”

Naturaliit has received money through different organizations to do a second trip to Montreal later this month. The hockey players have also been fundraising on their own by collecting cans around town and processing them in Kuujjuaq’s new can crushing machine.

“It’s still in the early stages, but we want to follow this group,” he said. “It may open up doors for them.”