Maskwacis students get trip to Calgary Flames game, others go on shopping spree

Junior high and high school studentsin Maskwacis, Alta., got into the holiday spirit last weekthanks to the local hockey teams and Kids Up Front.

Maskwacis Cree Junior High School students attended a Calgary Flames game on Dec. 7, while kids from both the junior high and high school went on a shopping spree in Edmonton, sponsored by a player for the Edmonton Oilers.

David McMann,a youth worker at the junior high,previously worked for the Vancouver Canucks in the early '90s.

He put out a challenge tostudents earlier this year that if they could keep their marks for their core classes at 65 per centor higher, they would go on a trip to see the Flames and visit Bow Valley College.

"By the end of the [challenge] we had nine students who made the cut," he said.

"In the last three or four years, I've only had one to two students in all of high school [who have] been at a dash onelevel. That's a great start."

While the kids were supposed to go to the morning skate with the team, it was cancelled due to thegame that night, but each student was given bobbleheads of Jarome Iginla and Mike Vernon. The kids went to the game that night against the Minnesota Wild.

"Calgary won in the end so I was happy," McMann said.

McMann saidthe visitto Bow Valley College, to introducethe students to a post-secondary education facility,was a fun experience.

He said Bow Valley hasmedia programs with equipment and studios the kids were excited to learn in. They got to view some of the Bow Valley students' projects, some of which featured intense special effects created by the post-secondary students, which intrigued the junior high students.

"My students were in awe," McMann said.

Other studentswent on shopping spree

Kyle Wolfe, a family and student support worker at the high school, said Kids Up Front let him know that a player for the Edmonton Oilers and Trent Brown, a lawyer, had donated gift cards for 100 kids in Alberta for a shopping spree.

Twelve students from Wolfe's school would get a $250 Walmart gift card to spend on themselves.

"One student in junior high and one student in senior high got their gift cards and went and bought their family groceries," he said.

"These are wonderful menwe would call them in Cree,oskpwis, and that means they're young helpers in the community."

Wolfe said Evander Kane, the Oilers player, noticed the kids were buying groceriesand along with Brown, loaded up two more $250 gift cards for them to spend on themselves.

"You really got to see the characters of these kids and what they would shop for," he said.

On the way back, Wolfe said one student said he had never had $250 to himself before and said "This was the best day of my life."

"In Indigenous communities a lot of our kids fall through the cracks for whatever reason," Wolfe said.

"There's so many social structures and systems that are failing our people still to this day.It was definitely something special because it was around Christmas time [and] Christmas isn't always a good time for a lot of people. It was definitely a heartfelt day and it was definitely well worth it."