Fort Smith's leadership factory

Editor’s note: Bob and Melody McLeod are Shaun McLeod’s aunt and uncle, and Ethel Blondin-Andrew is a close family friend, however positive stories about Indigenous and Métis history are always worth highlighting.

After attending Inuvik Roman Catholic Residential School, Grollier Hall for three years, 12-year-old Ethel Blondin-Andrew had enough.

She was tired of the punishments and the way the Oblates who ran the school were raising them. Sexual abuse was commonplace, the scope of which would later be revealed, and she heard about them in hushed tones through her brothers, it left her scared and insecure about what may happen to her.

So she ran away.

“I was lonely, I missed my parents who lived in Tulita,” said Blondin-Andrew, now 66. “I was used to being free, I was used to saying what I want…I can’t think of one thing good about that experience.”

The school had her brothers track her down, and they found her living in a tent town nearby. When she returned home to visit her mother in the hospital, her parents decided to not send her back to Grollier Hall, fearing that she would freeze to death if she ran away again, and they moved to Délįnę, N.W.T. shortly after.

One of the priests in the community, Father Jean Denis, was fascinated with Blondin-Andrew’s work ethic and proficiency in her native language of Dene, which she had spoken since she was a child, and offered to write her a letter that would change her life – a recommendation to attend Grandin College in Fort Smith.

Grandin College was born from the mind of Bishop Paul Piché who sought to improve the lives of people in the North and officially opened in 1960 under the guidance of Father Jean Pochat-Cotilloux, who would later be inducted into the Order of Canada in 2006 for his work at the school and the Western Arctic Leadership program, which followed the blueprint of his time at Grandin.

Although the school was intended to be a way to bring boys into priesthood, by 1962 Pochat-Cotilloux had shifted the school's focus to developing academic success among its students.

The school developed a generation of leaders in the Northwest Territories, from teachers to premiers, to members of parliament, and council leaders, roughly 400 students graduated from Grandin before it closed in 1985.

“Grandin was a very deliberate, definitive attempt at developing the capacity and potential of the young people that were there,” said Blondin-Andrew, who was the first Indigenous woman elected to Parliament in Canada.

Attending Grandin College was an accomplishment in itself. The church looked for potential in the community’s younger populations. Academically, spiritually, athletically, if they saw something in you, no matter how small, the Bishop wanted to develop the students called “the chosen ones” into the best versions of themselves.

Each student was hand-picked, but not all students were recruited by the church. Some students, like Bob McLeod from Fort Providence, N.W.T., sought to attend Grandin College because of its reputation in the North. His father Angus, and his mother Rosemary felt strongly about him getting a good education so that he wouldn’t have to worry about surviving.

“My sister had already been attending Grandin and loved it,” said Bob, who would go on to become the only two-term premier in N.W.T. history. 

Bob applied, was accepted and attended Grandin College from Grade 9 to Grade 12 where he met Blondin-Andrew and his future wife Melody McLeod, who came to Grandin in 1965 after attending Breynat Hall residential school just across the street.

“(Breynant Hall) was much different,” said Melody. “It was like starting out in a tent and ending up in a spa. That’s how good (Grandin College) was.”

Grandin College taught their students they could be anything they wanted to be, do anything they wanted to and if they tried hard enough, they would. The school gave them the support to pursue whatever their passion was, allowing them to create clubs for photography and music, and bringing in speakers like minister of Indian affairs, and future prime minister, Jean Chrétien to speak to the students exposed them to the world of politics.

Pochat-Cotilloux would tell them that they were the future leaders of the North and knew how important their culture was to them.  Unlike a lot of residential schools, Grandin College never stopped students from speaking their native language or cut their hair.

Students who attended Grandin were expected to pull their weight at the school by contributing to chores like cleaning the school’s gym, picking potatoes in the summer, church every Sunday morning and every day started at 7:30 a.m. with a prayer service.

“It’s like the best prep school that you have these days,” said Blondin-Andrew.

Grandin College emphasized the students’ academic success and students were expected to study two and a half hours each night from Monday to Thursday and given Friday as a night off before returning to study in the afternoon on the weekends.

This emphasis on studying would pay off for Grandin’s students, as several of them, including Blondin-Andrews, Bob and Melody went on to become some of the first residential school students from the North to attend a university with most going to the University of Alberta.

In 1960s, Grandin produced two future premieres, a federal cabinet minister multiple members of Legislative Assembly, and countless council leaders in the North.

"We never thought about politics (in school)," said Blondin-Andrew. "It was just what was expected of us."

By the time Blondin-Andrew, Bob and Melody had graduated from the school, Father Pochat-Cotllioux was on his way out. The school never returned to the production of leaders that it had in the 1960s and officially closed its doors in 1985.

“Things weren’t quite the same for the Grandin students who went later,” said Melody. “Those were the best years of our lives.”

For Pochat-Cotilloux’s 80th birthday, his former students gathered at the Yellowknife Ski Club to celebrate his life and the impact that he had on them – no small feat in 2008 when the internet had just started to take off in the North.

Word was sent out over email, and word of mouth, over 40 graduates ended up attending the event – many of whom Pochat-Cotilloux had kept in contact with over the years as he followed their accomplishments with pride.

The event featured dinner, a special mass and the former students presented Pochat-Cotilloux with a painting done by one of the daughters of women who had attended Grandin during his time as director.

 “It was really nice, we saw people we hadn’t seen for 30 years,” said Melody, who helped organize the event.

Pochat-Cotilloux died a year later in 2010 in Behchoko, N.W.T. where he served as a priest and was proud to call home. His funeral was a standing room only event in the local church and was broadcast to a nearby crowd that couldn't fit inside.

“We were so lucky to have him in our lives,” said Melody.