Rare health services come to Metis at Kelly Lake

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Not much has changed in Kelly Lake since the CBC did a 1993 documentary exposing hard living conditions in their community and the lack of essential services, says Lyle Letendre, president of the Kelly Lake Metis Settlement Society. Except more Elders have passed and the people who remain are more disheartened.

Until Sept. 1, that is. For two days, the Kelly Lake Metis experienced a near miracle brought by some people from Ontario and the only audiologist in northern British Columbia. For a few days the Metis had some hope something can go right. A few with impaired hearing now have hope they'll even hear again.

"That was such a success," said Letendre. "Wow. That was so good. I was really happy. All the Elders were there."

Letendre sounded happy on the phone.

Frances Thornton, the B.C. doctor who travelled from Fort St. John to Kelly Lake tested 72 residents of mixed ages; the youngest was 19. Seventeen will soon receive hearing aids at absolutely no cost to them.

Thornton said, "I hope to return in the new year when the weather improves and hopefully we'll be able to assess the rest of the community who wish to be tested."

Letendre said some people who need aids in both ears will receive them. He added only one woman who is totally deaf could not be helped. "But she knows how to read lips," Letendre said, wanting to remain upbeat.

Provincial Hearing Consultants, owned by Martin Heinrich and based in Hamilton, Ont., is arranging for hearing aids donated by one of their suppliers and is co-ordinating all services to Kelly Lake. Although the lab work will be done in Ontario, it was a legal requirement to have a licensed B.C. practitioner oversee the hearing tests. Thornton brought an assistant with her to help with the tests, which had to be done in a private home because there was no clinic or community building.

Impressions were taken of the ears of people with hearing loss. Back in Hamilton the lab will make a mold, which will be matched up with the type of aid that suits an individual's hearing loss. Erin Milward of Provincial Hearing Consultants said their staff would return to Kelly Lake to fit the hearing aids, which will be as "low-tech" as possible to do the job so that maintenance will be minimal.

The ball got rolling because a 42-year-old Metis man studying Emergency Preparedness in First Nation and Metis communities at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario happens to know Letendre. Dave Bentley also works part-time in a restaurant next to one of Heinrich's clinics, where he got to know Provincial Hearing Consultants' staff. When they learned about the desperate situation in Kelly Lake, they offered to help. Provincial Hearing Consultants are old hands at organizing hearing aid campaigns, only usually they take their services to poor countries such as Mexico and Haiti.

Peterson, general manager of Provincial Hearing Consultants, is incredulous that a community in Canada is without basic services. She said she believed Heinrich, who owns several clinics, would visit Kelly Lake to see conditions for himself when they return to do the fittings.

"We'd be the first country to rush out and fix somebody else's problems if we saw the same thing somewhere else. Or try to. Give aid or something. ... "We do our little bit that we can by reaching out to help the hearing impaired people who can't afford it."

Peterson said hearing aids cost a minimum of $400 and range up past $2,000.

"The thing is, we had to do it in a house," said Letendre. "And it was just pouring, it was just raining." He said more would have come for tests but they had no transportation, "and the roads-I won't even go there."

Letendre is on a high, just the same. He said Thornton told them that when the snow is gone, she'll return to Kelly Lake. "And Dave Bentley said the same thing," he said with obvious appreciation. "And they're coming with a (ear, nose and throat specialist) and a dentist! The people ae ... I see a smile on their face. That's all I see on them."

"The community is remote and access difficult," Thornton said. "I've only been working in the North for a year and I was unaware that this community existed. I'm looking into how we can deliver better services to remote communities, but as I'm the only audiologist in the northeast of B.C. it's a case of using existing resources effectively. I certainly think the two days spent at Kelly Lake was a worhthwhile use of resources and I hope the community found this as well."

Government's excuse for not helping Kelly Lake is a simple declaration that no Metis community exists in British Columbia, Letendre told Raven's Eye. Even though they have a documented history going back 100 years.

Even though some can trace their genealogy back 200 years or more to French and Indian unions.

And even though the Cree-speaking descendents of Iroquois were still living self-sufficient lives in the bush into the 1980s.

Over the past few years, however, life as the Kelly Lake people knew it has changed, because of gas exploration, primarily.

That activity has brought roads and pipelines that cut through the community's hunting and fishing areas. The Kelly Lake people complain that the ground water is contaminated along with the animals, fish and plants that they still depend upon for food.

The Metis live with the results, even in the face of government denials.

Their only decent building, a school, has been closed and they have been denied access to it. Letendre said the school board refused to let them open up the school to conduct the hearing tests, which is why they had to do it in one of the houses.

The houses are falling down from lack of repair. Many of the people, including Letendre, have to live away from home in order to work.

Curtis De Silva, president of the Metis Nation of British Columbia and a resident of Mission, is familiar with conditions in Kelly Lake. "The moose are sick; we dont know why yet." But he added that roads have been built over the natural salt licks moose need.

De Silva echoed Letendre's complaints about the lack of education and health services in Kelly Lake. Dawson Creek is more than 50 kilometres away. The nearest township is Grande Prairie, Alta., an hour's drive. He said because they are not affiliated with the Metis National Council, neither recognition nor money comes their way. They can't pay lawyers to defend their rights while large corporations take over the land.