Victor Thunderchild worked at Carlton Comprehensive High School for 29 years. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

'Outpouring of support'

Carlton honours Thunderchild

Apr 19, 2021 | 4:14 PM

Students and staff at Carlton Comprehensive High School are honouring Victor Thunderchild Monday and Tuesday by wearing ribbon skirts, ribbon shirts and hockey jerseys.

The longtime educator passed away Saturday after being hospitalized with COVID-19. He was 55.

After 29 years at the school – first as a teacher and later as a guidance counsellor – Thunderchild had been at Carlton so long that he’d taught the parents of some of his current students. Outside of the classroom he coached volleyball and initiated several cultural activities at Carleton like a powwow on National Indigenous Peoples Day and round dances.

“He was such a well-connected community member and touched so many lives not just in Prince Albert but across the province,” Principal Jeff Court told paNOW. “The outpouring of support over the course of the weekend and today is tremendous.”

Victor Thunderchild in 2018. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

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Grief counsellors and Elders are on-site to support students and staff at Carlton. Court explained the school felt it was particularly important to bring in the latter.

“With what Victor stood for he was such an advocate for Indigenous education and Truth and Reconciliation,” he said. “He really championed a lot of that at our school and having those supports available is just a really important part of how we move forward here.”

Stickers and posters have also been created bearing an apple and a feather, part of the Apples for Victor initiative that has taken off on social media.

“I think it just speaks to Victor as a teacher and very connected cultural educator,” Court said of the symbol, explaining it was created by someone outside the school.

A bus decorated with ‘Apples for Victor.’ (Submitted photo)

Cree Kindergarten

Thunderchild was a powerful advocate for Cree language education beyond his work at Carlton and was the driving force behind the creation of the division’s first Cree kindergarten program.

The program launched in fall of 2020 with the hope it would be expanded by one grade each year so students beginning with the inaugural class will have the opportunity to complete their entire elementary school education in a bilingual Cree-English classroom setting.

“The fact that they’ll be able to be fluent or semi-fluent to speak to others, especially Elders, in their language is very important,” Thunderchild told paNOW in May. “There are a lot of people who are losing the language and we want that language to not be lost, to reclaim something that at one point in time was attempted to be taken from us.”

“I’m very very happy it’s coming through,” Thunderchild said speaking ahead of the program’s launch. “Simply because it’s something that’s needed and it’s time.”

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom