Community celebrates school opening.

Cross Lake First Nation celebrated the opening of the new Mikisew School and the completion of the community's water treatment plant on Jan. 15.

The 4,530 sq. m school project included the construction of 18 teacherages and seven hectares of site development.

Elijah Harper, Member of Parliament for Churchill, Man. was on hand to bring well wishes from the federal government.

"On behalf of the minister, I congratulate the Cross Lake community on the completion of these two projects," said Harper, representing Ron Irwin, Minister of Indian Affairs. "These will improve living conditions on reserve, one of the department's top priorities. The benefits of your efforts will be felt by the whole community for years to come."

And a great community effort it was, with much of the manpower generated from the community.

Over the 16 months of construction, 120,000 man-hours were performed by workers from the community, said Brian Hein, development manager for general contractor PCL. That translates into 45 men working 40 hours each week for 67 weeks. Forty-four per cent of the total construction contract has been left in the community.

"This should be a model for other communities," said Hein. `You shouldn't let the dollars leave the community."

And keeping the dollars and work in the community was just what the community had in mind when it set up its joint venture with PCL to construct the school.

PCL and Cross Lake's MidNorth Development Corporation worked together to create a new construction company and maximize the benefit to the community. What resulted was not only that much of the dollars from the project stayed in the community, but also the talent pool of workers was expanded with people being trained for particular construction work.

All the electrical for the school was handled by a local company -- Triple "R" Electrical Services -- and the mechanical on the housing for the teachers was done by another -- Double "R", said Hein. The camp cook -- Betsy Garrioch -- was local and, according to Hein, deserving of high praise.

"She was excellent. She looked upon all of these men as her family," Hein said of the employees who stayed at the camp during construction.

Mikisew School is a middle school which will accomodate approximately 355 students in Grades 5 through 8, as well as nursery and kindergarten students. The school houses 18 classrooms and all related support spaces, including home economics, industiral arts, a resource centre and a full gymnasium with related multipurpose spaces.

The school is built on three levels on a gently sloping site. The main entry was oriented to the southeast after consultation with community Elders who felt that the southeast orientation best described the dawn of a new generation in First Nation members.

The school design and functions radiate from the central space in which a circular storytelling area and semi-circular gathering space are located. The storytelling area is enclosed with a moveable wall so that it can be a separate space for the resource centre or opened for school presentations. This space and entry area are housed under a high roofed structure with exposed wood beams.

Natural light and visual contact with the sky is available at all times by way of the clerestory windows located in the main entry space and the corridor spaces. This was a particularly important feature, reinforcing the community's link to nature.

The school is a steel and masonry structure with a metal roof of sky blue color. The exterior is clad in brick. Three colors of birch were used to create patterns which are reminiscent of beadwork on the exterior of the school. The earth colors and sedimentary layering of the birch at the base recall the earth, as the metal roof color recalls the sky.

The water and sewer system will service the new school, the teacher's residences, and the trucked haul system which currently serves the northern part of the community.

Trees were cut and road construction was necessary as this was an area of the community that had not yet been developed.

Cross Lake is located approximately 520 air km northwest of Winnipeg along the shores of the Nelson River where it enters Cross Lake. The on-reserve population is more than 3,000.