Six students from Flin Flon made their mark at the Red River Heritage Fair.
Four projects completed by École McIsaac School students received honours at the Winnipeg event, held from May 2 to 4 at The Forks and the University of Winnipeg’s Duckworth Centre.
Ethan Patterson earned the St. Boniface French Culture Award and Hong Kong Military Veterans Commemorative Award for his project about his great-grandfather, a World War II veteran. Patterson’s project was presented almost exclusively in French.
Joel Williams’ project on the history of his family’s military service received the Juno Beach Centre Heroic Stories Award.
The two attended last year’s fair together, where they presented a joint project on Flin Flon-born hockey player Ken Baumgartner.
“My project is about my great-grandma, Margaret, her six siblings and her father. They all went to World War II,” said Joel. “It’s about their stories, what they did and our family history.”
Cassidy Alexander and Niki Keramydas received a honourable mention from the Manitoba Historical Society for their project on Greek culture in Manitoba. The pair also received an honour at last year’s fair for their project on Métis people.
Ava Williams and Sara Mansell earned the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame Award for their project, which profiled Manitoba curler and Olympic gold medalist Kaitlyn Lawes.
“Me and my partner Sara both know a lot about curling. We saw a lot about Kaitlyn Lawes on Jennifer Jones’ team and we thought it would be good to do something different, something about someone we see but don’t know much about.”
For their project, the pair sent an email to the Winnipeg-born curler, who responded to the students following the mixed curling event at the Winter Olympics in Korea, where Lawes won her second gold medal. The two hoped to meet Lawes in Winnipeg during the fair, but were unable to due to a scheduling conflict.
During the group’s time in Winnipeg, the students, teachers and parents attended multiple cultural workshops and visited cultural sites, like the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, a part of the Whiteout Street Party near the MTS Centre and The Forks.
Christine Williams, a teacher at École McIsaac School and Joel and Ava’s mother, attended the fair with the group. Going to the event as a teacher, a chaperone and the mother of two students attending, Williams came back to Flin Flon proud – not just because of her kids’ awards, but because of how the school’s students handled the event.
“I definitely feel very proud, proud of the fact that our little school from northern Manitoba can walk into a fair in Winnipeg and come out of there with multiple awards,” she said.
“When you look around at some of the projects, even knowing our fair here, I know we left behind projects that I feel were better than some of the winners from Winnipeg.”
For Flin Flon projects, awards like the ones earned by the Williams, Patterson, Mansell, Alexander and Keramydas are the pinnacle. Unlike other student research showcases, there is no national level heritage fair competition available for accomplished students.
The only opportunity students would have for a nationwide showcase would be to make a video entry based on their original project, which could be time consuming work.
“From that video entry, one project from each province is chosen to go to Ottawa and present their video,” said Christine.
“It’s not really because they won, it’s just that anybody who enters can. It’s a whole bunch more work added on, because then you’d have to take your whole project and turn it into a video project.”
