Beausoleil First Nation Wind and Water Monitoring Project recognized for research excellence

By Rick Garrick

BEAUSOLEIL — The Agaaming – Across the Bay: Beausoleil First Nation Wind and Water Monitoring Project was recently recognized during the Lakehead University Research and Innovation Awards of Excellence reception on March 4.

Nancy Assance, director of education at Beausoleil, and Chris Murray, associate professor in Physics and Sustainability Sciences at Lakehead University, Orillia Campus, were presented with the Indigenous Partnership Research Award during the virtual awards ceremony.

“It was nice — I was kind of surprised about it because we just took over the Wind and Water project,” Assance says. “I shared it with our Lands Department because it was the Lands Department that actually started the [project] under the climate change. This is going into the third year and it transferred over to Education last July.”

Assance says the community is also working with Lakehead University, Georgian College, Water First and other partners to develop curriculum for the Christian Island Elementary School.

“It will further enhance the cultural program we have already in our elementary school,” Assance says. “We have been approved for a project during the summer, and we are working towards it being a STEM-based (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) curriculum [so] our secondary students in Grade 9 or Grade 10 can actually receive a reach-ahead credit in the summer.”

Assance says the community’s goal is to encourage more students to study in the math and science fields.

“We need more environmentalists,” Assance says. “My daughter is in Ecosystem Management, we need more people like that taking care of the Earth, concerned about the Earth, concerned about water and following that path. I guess you would call them caretakers of the land.”

Murray says it was “great” to work with Beausoleil, noting that they set up four weather stations at different locations in the community over the first two years of the three-year project.

“I was really happy that Lakehead acknowledged [the project] because the Lands Department and the Education Department at [Beausoleil] have been doing so much work over the last couple of years to make this happen,” Murray says. “Maybe when more people hear about it, then other communities will be able to do the same kind of [project]. But more than anything, I was happy there was recognition for all the hard work they had put in.”

Murray says the weather stations measure wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, air temperature and humidity and the depth and temperature of the surrounding water.

“I also did work on the ice thickness device but we’ve just got a prototype,” Murray says. “We tested it for one year but it’s not quite at the place where we would make 10 of them and put them out and trust people’s safety to them.”

Murray says Beausoleil used to have a winter ice road to travel to and from the community throughout the winter.

“Because Christian Island is isolated, they are really susceptible to changes in the climate,” Murray says. “In the last few years, the ice has changed so much that it is really unsafe and unpredictable.”

Murray says they are now working on turning the information they gathered over the first two years into activities for the community’s elementary school.

“I’m trying to get that into the hands of the teachers and the students so it’s something that is taught in the classroom and the students will go home and tell their parents what they learned about the weather stations, what they learned about wind, and the hands-on activities they’re doing in class,” Murray says.