Peerless Lake comes out for wellness days

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Many members of the community came together to listen, learn and heal as the Town of Peerless Lake hosted its first-ever community wellness days March 30 and 31.

A number of workshops were held, covering topics such as self-esteem, addictions, dealing with feelings, parenting, safety and accident prevention, Elders' storytelling, career development, baby-sitting, and the Peerless Lake Peer Support Program. Neegan Awas'sak Children and Family Services also took part in a workshop, and was also involved in organizing children's activities as part of the wellness days.

Rose Ferguson is a family therapist and counsellor with the Peerless Lake Community Association.

She said the idea of holding wellness days came out of one of the regular monthly meetings held with the many partners involved in program development for the northern community, including Neegan Awas'sak Children and Family Services, Family and Community Support Services, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, and the Red Earth RCMP.

One of the reasons for holding the wellness days, Ferguson explained, was to shift the focus on the community from negative to positive.

"Because of the incident that happened here 14 years ago, there was a lot of negative exposure in the community," Ferguson said, referring to the tragedy that struck in March 1986, when six people died after drinking photocopier fluid. "We want to start bringing out positive things that are happening in the community.

"Peerless Lake Community Association got funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to open up a healing centre, and that's where it all started. The healing centre promotes wellness, so we decided we were going to have wellness days to happen for the whole community."

The healing centre itself began operating in November of last year, Ferguson said, and is currently operating out of an addition to the community office. Organizers had hoped to hold the grand opening of the healing centre as part of the community wellness days, but that has been postponed, possibly until May.

Helen Starr is a program co-ordinator with the Peerless Lake Community Association.

According to Starr, about 50 people took part in the first day of the workshops. Starr said the response to the event was even better than what organizers had expected.

"There's a lot of courage in the community to attempt change," Starr said. She said whole families came together and attended workshops together, workshops dealing with subjects that were sometimes painful to talk about.