Students taking turns learning how to operate the "selective fishing and science platform."

By Sam Bennison

Education

Fort St. James students take to the water in a unique environmental science course

Oct 9, 2024 | 4:33 PM

NORTHERN B.C.—When the bell rings most students head to a classroom but for the students in the Fort St. James Environmental Science program they start the boat. Kole Dame is in the course and says that he’s learning a tonne on the water, adding that it taught him “to communicate with your peers while working on something.”

Jaclyn Boyes is the teacher for the course and has been developing the program for close to a decade.

“We initially developed the course as just an Environmental Science and Physical Geography 11/12 course and over time it’s evolved to become more outdoors,” says Boyes. “We’ve really started to focus on our watershed. As you know, we’re on Stuart Lake here. We’ve got the Stuart Sockeye which is one of the most significant runs and recognized by United Nations as being really valuable and important.”

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To dive deep into the studies of the watershed the program needed the boat, which was also built by students at SD91.

Craig Houghton is the Principal of Fort St. James Secondary school and he hopes that through providing this experience more young people will go into fishery based careers.

The students have begun to familiarize themselves with the equipment to collect water data and count wildlife. In the future they will be providing that working data to scientific researchers in the North. Dame adds that learning hands on has helped him way more in the classroom adding that they should “Give Ms. Boyes a raise.”

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Email: sam.bennison@pattisonmedia.com