It’s a day of celebration on Walpole Island as the Bkejwanong Children’s Centre is marking its 50th anniversary.
Supervisor Elaine Wrightman says the centre started as a way to fill some gaps.
“People who went to residential schools didn’t necessarily get the parenting that the people who would have stayed home – they would have got the parenting from their parents. but they came back and they became parents without any skills – only what they had learned at the residential schools,” says Wrightman.
When it first opened on November 17, 1968, the Walpole Island Day Nursery was located in a small house, then moved to the Social Services building.
The current, standalone facility offers early childhood education from infancy up to school-age programs.
Wrightman will be retiring at the end of the month after 33 years with the Centre, and has high hopes for the future.
“I wish we could have more speaking our (Anishnaabemwin) language and bringing our language back,” Wrightman explains. “I’d like to see us becoming an immersion program where we’re all speaking the language right from the infant room to school-age, and they go on to the elementary school and they learn more of their language there.”
