News
Île-à-la-Crosse home build project completed!
By Daniel Downs, DTI Program Coordinator
Nov 27, 2023
Posted in: achievement, Community Building, DTI, Education, Partnership
One of the most difficult aspects of educating in the North is providing suitable housing and accommodations for staff. Be it the general lack of available housing, the lack of ability to accommodate family circumstances or even the short-term nature of renting specific for programming, accommodations prove to be one of the harder barriers to delivering successful programs.
This problem is not unique to the DTI world. Institutions such as the Saskatchewan Health Authority, School Districts, and Government Agencies all struggle in providing quality housing to current and potential employees in the North, especially when it comes to housing for families. On the rare occasion, DTI is able to lease a rental from one of these agencies, but more often than not we are told that there is not enough space for their own staff, let alone accommodating DTI faculty.
One of the Northern entities that DTI has partnered with most over the last many years has been the Île-à-la-Crosse School District. Be it DTI’s use of classroom space within their facility for CCA, Level 3, Safety Tickets, or other programming, to the use of their off-site shop for trades-specific programming, DTI has benefitted from their ongoing support of our adult programs.
In late 2022, Île-à-la-Crosse School District began a dialogue with DTI regarding their housing needs. Both DTI and the district recognized that the best way to recruit the best faculty is to provide the best possible housing to staff. Housing can easily make or break an individual or family deciding to take a teaching role in a rural or remote area. With the ongoing partnerships that DTI has held with Île-à-la-Crosse School District, a decision was made to work with them to build a new home for them to assist with their teacher recruitment efforts.
Utilizing DTI resources, funding through the Indigenous Apprenticeship Initiative, training support from Prairie Arctic Trades Training Centre, and materials and supplies provided through the district, DTI began the process of building a three-bed and two-bath home for the school district in August of 2023. We knew that student training would be slower than a professional crew and that the home would not be finished by the time the snow flew, but it was our mission to complete as much as was necessary so that interior work could be done over the colder winter months.
DTI (with the help of an amazing student crew) was able to complete all of the exterior and interior framing, installation of trusses, roof, shingles, soffit/fascia, exterior windows and doors, siding, and interior insulation. Essentially, everything that is required for the sub-trades to work comfortably inside during the Winter and Spring months. This home was one of the largest projects undertaken by DTI students, and the amount of work they completed, given having limited experience in construction was nothing less than outstanding.
Île-à-la-Crosse School District will now be able to benefit from increased teacher housing, and DTI students will be able to use their new-found skills to accept and maintain employment within Saskatchewan’s construction industry.
