by Emmet Matheson
the Carillon

At a time when most of my age group were going to university or pursuing the highest paying career in the rat race, I was discovering Canada on a three-dollar-a-day wage as a Katima-Victim.

Katimavik (an Inuktitut word meaning ³meeting place²) was launched in the mid-seventies as the brain-child of Trudeau-acolyte Jacques Hebert, the now-retired Senator, author, Third World activist and idealist behind Katimavik international sister organization, Canada World Youth.

Hebert felt that young Canadians were in need of something beyond formal education. Katimavik was, in his words, ³an apprenticeship for life.²

Open to Canadians between the ages of 17-21, Katimavik assembles groups of eleven youths to work for non-profit organizations throughout the country. The make-up of each group is based on the make-up of Canada. It brings people together from all backgrounds (East/West, Franco/Anglo, Male/Female, Rural/Urban, etc) to live and work in three different communities in rotations of three months.

During its original ten-year run, Katimavik saw over 20,000 young Canadians serve 1630 communities. It inspired similar programs in New York City, Great Britain, and India and in 1985 received an award from the United Nations Environmental Program. An independent study by Econosult-Lavalin showed that every government dollar put into Katimavik produced $2.43 in the Canadian economy. Even the Business Council on National Issues declared Katimavik an unqualified success.

Nevertheless, in 1986, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney axed Katimavik in favour of increased military spending and youth unemployment. Senator Hebert protested with a hunger strike that lasted 21 days.

Finally, in 1995, Jean Chretienıs Liberals reinstated a scaled down version of Katimavik. With an operating budget of $3 million (about 10% of its 1985 budget), Katimavik quickly launched a recruitment campaign which was noticed by, of all people, my parents.

After the failures of Meech Lake and Charlottetown, the sale of the Nordiques to Denver and a looming referendum in Quebec, the future looked grim for Canada. Having just barely graduated from high school, aimless, and discovering that I have no capacity to sell people time-share houseboat vacations, things werenıt looking to good for me either.

My parents suggested I apply for this Katimavik thing. I looked at the brochure, seven and a half months of free travel and room & board, working for three dollars a day. I hadnıt thought it possible to legally make any less money than as a non-selling sales rep. Finally, after persistent nagging from my parents, I applied -mostly to get them off my back- fairly positive I wouldnıt be accepted.

To my dismay I was. I got a call from Katimavik HQ in Montreal on October 27, three days before the Great Referendum. I was to leave for my first project November 15, less than 3 weeks away. ³But what if there is no Canada left by then?²

³Then you will need a passport along with your steel-toed boots! Pending a physical examination, your plane ticket will arrive in about two weeks.²

³Where am I going?²

³Youıll read it on the plane ticket.²

First Stop Wawa, Ontario: The Armpit of the Canadian Shield

I met most my group during the eight hour layover we all had at Pearson airport. To my surprise, none of them lived up to my expectation of what the other participants would be like. I had imagined eager do-gooders intent on saving the world or something boring, like the people I had seen on TV at the Last Ditch Unity Rally. Instead they were like me, looking for adventure, but still nervous about just what it really was that we had committed ourselves to.

We were met at the Sault Ste-Marie airport by our Group Leader, Mario Heroux, a burly Quebecois with very limited English. The responsible adult, part guidance counselor, part drill sergeant, who was to oversee the first 10 weeks of our Katimavik experience introduced himself by saying, ³Hello, I am Mario and I am cool!²

During the three hour drive up the north-east shore of Lake Superior, Mario -himself a former Katima-Victim- explained the philosophy behind Katimavik. Unfortunately, we were all so fatigued from a day of travel that we slept through his speech and spent the next seven and a half months trying to figure out what was going on. Something about a code of conduct and the warm feelings that community service brings.

We arrived well after midnight to an unfurnished house with puke orange carpets and barf green curtains, but at least it wasnıt an airport.

The domestic duties were shared equally, every week two of us would stay home from work and tend to the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and shoveling as well as assisting Mario with whatever it was that he did as Group Leader.

The work projects were assigned: Most of us were hired out to the local cross-country ski club and the snow-mobile club. Trail maintenance. Outdoors work. Old Spice work. In total, we built or repaired four bridges, lodged several hundred trail signs, trimmed hundreds of kilometres of brush and froze all of our asses off.

The work day began before dawn with a 20 km ride in the back of the work sponsorıs pick-up to Hawk Junction, where we would switch to snow-mobiles, old snow-mobiles. Riding tandem, we would snow-mobile along the trail looking for damage on the way to the work site for the day, where the sponsor would be waiting for us, drinking hot coffee in the cab of his warm truck.

There was one snow-mobile that nobody ever wanted. Old Yeller was a 30 year-old Alpine machine designed for hauling. Which meant that it was slow and had only one ski on the front, making it very hard to steer. Because I was more mature than everybody else, or maybe just unlucky, I spent a lot of time with Old Yeller and eventually I had to kill it.

We were building a bridge deep in the bush across a small stream. We had to drag railroad ties along the trail and across the creek. The ties provided enough ballast to ensure the snow-mobile wouldnıt fall through the ice if you were going fast enough. We had just dragged the first tie of the day across and Wayne and Chad were arguing over who should perform the perilous task of zipping Yeller back across the creek. There was a lot of name calling. I jumped over and yelled at them, ³what a couple of little babies! Iıll do it!²

All fired up, and without putting on a helmet, I hopped on Yeller and threw the throttle on high. We jerked right across the creek and smack into a bare rock on the other side. Yeller was sputtering and smoking, her ski was bent all to hell and the work sponsor was teaching us all new swear words. I walked out of the bush that day.

By January, the eight of us on Trail Duty were getting a little tired of frigid manual labour and some of us began taking inside jobs a couple of days a week. Chad, Susy and Jenna all got placements working in the local elementary school. Their work was exciting, interesting and rewarding. I was placed in the public library. Great, I thought, I love books.

After two days of the most mind-numbing work of my whole life, I was happily out on the trails again, helping Wayne pry frozen stumps out of the frozen ground.

By the time the first rotation was over at the end of January, I had learned much about myself.

First, I prefer to have my toes succumb to frost-bite than to count index cards all day. Second, I have a great passion, though no skill, for dog-sledding and dawn-til-dusk games of capture the flag.

Drywalling and Class Wars in Ste-Agathe, Quebec

Ste-Agathe-Des-Monts is a picturesque town of about 10,000 in the middle of the Laurentian Mountains, about two hours north of Montreal. Itıs a tourist town, full of wonderful gift shops, cafes and creperies. So, of course, rent is steep. Itıs not so steep, on the other hand, in Ste-Lucie, a satellite town about 30km east of Ste-Agathe. It has two restaurants, a red one and a blue one (both shut down in the off-season), a convenience store, a post office and a Catholic Church. Less than 400 people lived there, though we never saw any of them, save the town teen-agers (all male, oddly enough), who hung out at the store, which was next door to us.

While half the group went to work at a nearby community centre/resort, designing an obstacle course, the rest of us were assigned the privilege of renovating Ste-Agatheıs dilapidated train station.

Our main goal was to remove all the drywalling from the walls and ceilings. It was dusty, dirty and cold work. By the end of the day the ³Gang du Gare² (the Station Crew) was covered in filth.

The Obstacle Course Group, who spent most of the day in offices, or taking leisurely strolls around the future site of the course, were abhorred by the way we would bring all the dust and dirt home with us, and once even suggested that we be hosed down before being allowed in the Katima-Van. Our group was beginning to have a Katima-Class War.

The designers resented the Gang for tracking our filth all over the place, and we resented them for continually planning strenuous leisure activities in the evenings when all we wanted to do was rest.

Eventually we all learned to respect one anotherıs work, as we took them on a tour of the train station, showing them all kinds of bizarre turn-of-the-century artifacts weıd found in the walls and they showed us their tidy office and very detailed plans.

On Wednesdays Chad (my room-mate and partner in all kinds of mischief and scheming) and I volunteered at the Ste-Agathe Heritage Society office. The Heritage Society was the work sponsor for the train station, but they also needed us to enter their files on a computer so old it may actually pre-date the card catalogue at the Wawa Public Library. Well, suffice it to say that two young dreamers such as ourselves didnıt get a whole lot of data entry done. Sure, our mornings were productive, looting through historic documents trying to guess at their monetary value if, say, a couple of unsupervised entrepreneurs entrepreneured their way to a pawn shop.

Around 11:30 we would tell the co-ordinators that we were going for a long lunch but weıd take our work with us. File folders under our arms, we trudged two blocks to the Dunkin Donuts and read the sports section of La Presse until 3:30. Then, filled with a vague idea of what was going on in the rest of the world we would go back to the Heritage Society office and generally goof around.

In the first week of March, the Heritage Society ran out of money to pay the bill to keep four block heaters going in the train station. So we were transferred over to begin work on building the obstacle course. Which involved cutting down trees and stripping the bark off them. It was an amazingly self-sufficient project. We cut down the trees not only to make space for the obstacle course, but also to be used as raw materials for it. It was a childhood dream come true. I was a lumberjack!

On our last day at that work project, Germaine, our supervisor, congratulated Susy, from Hamilton ON, on being ³un boucheron magnifique², a swell lumberjack.

³Hey, what about me?² I asked, pointing to my orange flannel lumberjack shirt and blue lumberjack toque.

³Oui, Emmet, you cut down the trees,² Germaine said, rolling his eyes. He shook my hand and hasnıt spoken to me since.

Tall Girls and Teaching in Salmon Arm, BC.

On April 15, 1996, we left Montreal. A snow storm was just moving in. Later that day when we arrived in Kelowna, it was 20 degrees. Thatıs positive, too.

Salmon Arm was quite different from our other postings. For one, the trails we worked there were for walking and biking, not skiing and snow-mobiling. Also, compared to Wawa and Ste-Lucie, Salmon Armıs population of about 15,000 seemed downright metropolitan. They even had a McDonaldıs.

In addition to the ever-popular Katimavik trails (which by now must be popping up all over Canada), our work projects included a day a week as teacherıs aides in an elementary school.

Every Wednesday I put on the nicest clothes I had (orange lumberjack shirt) and headed over to help Ms. Cookeıs Grade Five/Six split class learn reading and writing and geography. And at 11 we had gym class.

Ms. Cook let me play Kingıs Court (a more organized variation of dodge ball) with the students.

The girl to boy ratio in her class was about 3-2, so I helped to balance the scales for the boysı team. We were still consistently creamed. Ten-year-old Jimmy remarked to me after a particularly humiliating defeat, ³We canıt win, these girls are just TOO tall!²

And they were. Some of them were well past five feet even. Boys, it is said, mature later, and by 10 and 11 usually havenıt experienced much in the way of growth spurts.

But resilience prevailed and by mid-May the boysı team finally won one match. One match. Lindsay Hamilton, the sassiest 11 year-old in the whole world, put her hands on her hips and snarled at me, ³if you werenıt so much bigger than everyone else you wouldnıt be any good at this game!²

So I told Ms. Cooke that I heard Lindsay swearing at recess and she got hers.

As pleasant spring became sweltering summer, afternoons on the trail became unbearable.

Showing an unprecedented sense of self-sacrifice and leadership, I suggested that instead of beginning work at nine and suffering through the midday sun, we could hit the trails at 5:30 and be done by noon, before the sun scorched us.

When I awoke the next morning at 5am, I didnıt think it was such a great plan after all. But in the end it worked out great. We avoided sunstroke and had our afternoons free to do a workshop, under the guise of ³Work Skills & Training², on beer-making. We produced the most putrid ale ever subjected to hyperbole, but at pennies a glass, what do you expect?

July Third came faster than expected. By mid-June, everyone in the group was starting to think about what they would do once the project ended. And what they would do with the thousand dollar completion bursary. Though in December it had seemed unlikely, the end of Katimavik was upon us.

A lot of tears flowed the day our group was broken apart and everybody left Salmon Arm in different directions. Itıs hard not get close to 10 people that you live, work and play with for nearly eight months.

Though eventually we all went home after Katimavik, nobody from my group has been the same. Two long-lasting romantic relationships came out of it and one of them is still together, baby and all.

I still keep in touch with about half the group. In '98 four of us were all living within four blocks of each other in Montreal. I still scheme with Chad over the phone or e-mail once a week.

My Katimavik experience broadened my frame of reference and let me learn about the world hands-on. The work- and people- skills I gained there serve me nearly everyday now. I wouldnıt trade those 30 weeks for anything in the world.

For more info, see www.katimavik.org