Toronto High School Students get a Taste of Atikokan and Quetico Park
Atikokan Progress,
Monday August 31 2015,
Jessica Smith
Six Toronto high school students toured Atikokan and met with members of Town Council before heading into Quetico Park, Wednesday.
The canoe trip, which ends today with their arrival at French Lake, is part of a leadership development course specializing in wilderness stewardship and urban citizenship. The Quetico Foundation, as a partner, provides the ecological research component.
The route took the students and trip leaders, Torie Gervais and Shayne Gordon from Stanton Bay through Oliphant, Sturgeon, and Russell Lakes, accompanied by Quetico Park biologist Brian Jackson and the Foundation’s summer intern Kiara Gannon.
Jackson and Gannon were assisting students with in-field research of the park’s ecology and heritage sites, including study of a wetland site at the mouth of the Pickerel River.
The Quetico Foundation’s Ridley Wilderness Youth Program has seen secondary students from southern Ontario trip in the park each summer for many years now, but the structure changed somewhat last year. QF now provides a portion of the wilderness/environmental component to a six-week intensive summer program run by Toronto’s arts and culture organization Trinity Theater Program (TTP).