Fort William First Nation celebrate grand opening of The Family Centre
By Rick Garrick
FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Fort William celebrated the grand opening of The Fort William Family Centre on Sept. 21 with a ribbon cutting and unveiling of The Family Centre logo contest winner.
“It’s an exciting time for us as we continue to work to keep our families healthy, and I think this is another step in that direction,” says Fort William Chief Peter Collins. “We’re excited about today and look forward to many more openings similar to this one.”
Chief Collins says the turnout for the grand opening was “great.”
“It’s about our families and it’s good to see them out here and enjoying the new [Family Centre],” Chief Collins says, noting the Family Centre used to be housed in the community’s administration building. “This [location] is more focussed on our kids and we are happy to have this opening today.”
The Family Centre is located in a building that previously housed the Anishinabek Police Service, Chiefs of Ontario, and Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation offices at different times in the community. It is located next to the Fort William First Nation Youth Centre on Mission Rd.
“I’m super excited that we have this new program starting,” says Rebecca Arthur, early years coordinator at Fort William, during the grand opening ceremony. “We’re going to be doing some early literacy, learn through play, some special outings. It’s just a great place for you to come with your kids and play in a nice safe place.”
Luanne Maki, manager of the health department at Fort William, says the medicine wheel carpet located in the centre of the building will provide an opportunity for children to learn about the medicine wheel teachings.
“It was very important for us to have our younger children to grow up knowing the medicine wheel,” Maki says. “And what better way to do that when you can’t teach them that because they are so young than to have them experience that by being a part of it right there incorporated into the building itself.”
Maki says the building also has areas set up for cultural programming, children’s activities and hands-on play, as well as reading with their parents.
“So it kind of encompasses all that is mandated for our programs,” Maki says. “We have a kitchen area so what we’d like to do is to have lunches for our families when they attend programs [and] also to have them to be able to do their own prep of the program foods, so when we are doing bannock they can have that access to the kitchen to be able to do that.”
Maki says The Family Centre is in an “ideal location” next to the Youth Centre.
“We can share the park in the back for the kids as well as keeping the kids kind of connected to each other — the older kids have one program to go to and the younger ones have another one,” Maki says. “I’m really happy for our community and our children that they finally have a place that belongs to them for their programs.”
Audrey Sawchyn, a parent of two children who attend The Family Centre, says The Family Centre is a “great opportunity for our children and our families.”
“We will be able to have somewhere to go that is safe,” Sawchyn says. “It’s geared to the young ones. It will be nice to have some programming out there that they can attend on a regular basis with their own space.”
The Family Centre logo contest was won by Nicole Morriseau.