John Brady and Marley McDonald following an interview between father and daughter at Carlton Comprehensive School recently. (submitted photo/Melanie Merasty)

By Susan McNeil

Q & A at Carlton

Trying to be heard – Carlton student interviews dad to inspire peers beyond school

Nov 28, 2023 | 5:09 PM

At 17, Marley McDonald is finishing her final year of secondary education at Carlton Comprehensive in Prince Albert and is busy planning her adult life.

However, when she looked around at her fellow students, she noticed that not all of them were doing the same thing so she decided to do something about it.

“I wanted to do something to kind of open a door for Indigenous students here that don’t feel their voices are heard, that don’t feel the appreciation that other students might feel and the connection that you might have with teachers and parents and adults in our community,” she said.

That observation along with an incident during National Indigenous People’s Day led her to work with a teacher to invite her father, well known local writer and spoken word artist John Brady McDonald, to chat with her in front of other students in the school gym.

Marley said her family is very close and talks about everything, including her dad’s history and his time at the Prince Albert Residential School in the mid to late 1980s.

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“We don’t keep secrets. We don’t hide things from each other, even the dirty ugly things that have happened to us in our pasts. We believe that being honest and being true to what has happened and to yourself is the most important thing, so I’ve always kind of seen him as this person, rather than a parent,” Marley explained.

She used the close connection with her dad during their interview to try to show her fellow students that there are opportunities for them here in Prince Albert as well as in other places.

McDonald said he was blown away by the students and how involved they were as he answered his daughter’s questions.

“They were unbelievably engaged. It was an amazing experience to be able to talk to a room full of kids and have them paying attention, hanging on your words. It was very gratifying to see young people listening, not because they had to but because they were interested in what you had to say,” he said.

He said it was strange to have his eldest child asking him questions but they were thought out and very well organized.

One of the hardest questions was what he hoped young people would get out of his story as he went to school there himself and describes it as not very successful.

He encouraged them to write and not worry about their words. Poets tend to worry too much about the semantics and grammar that they lose sight of the purpose, which is to convey emotion and feeling, he said.

“My advice was to let the words flow. Don’t worry about the spelling mistakes. Don’t worry about whether this fits or not, just write and let the emotion and that raw first draft of your piece speak for itself,” McDonald said.

There is plenty of time later to go back and fix spelling mistakes and tweak the language, he said.

One thing he enjoys about speaking to teens is that they give very honest feedback. Adults are more polite where teens don’t pretend if they are bored or un-interested.

“You know your words are having meaning when the audience is listening and they’re not on their phones,” said McDonald.

He said he tries to be the person he was missing in his own life at the same age.

The school plans to have more speakers come in over the remainder of the school year. For upcoming speakers, McDonald has some advice.

“Speak your truth. Do not patronize the youth. You’re talking to them you’re not talking down to them. Youth are just as articulate, just as emotional, just as intelligent – and even more so – than adults.”

The series will feature community members speaking to students and being interviewed by them. They follow up the talk with a lunch so the students can interact with the speaker more casually.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com