'Feels like real life': Trappers teach N.W.T. inmates land-based skills in pilot program
CBC
At the Yellowknife jail, inmates gather around to watch trapper Donovan Boucher expertly prepare a lynx, pushing his skinning knife away from the pelt.
The inmates are in a new program being piloted by the North Slave Correctional Centre and the Northwest Territories' Department of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) to teach participants about trapping, trip planning, survival and machine repair.
Most of all, it's a change of pace for men at the jail.
"To see something like this happening is good for your mind. You're not thinking of other stuff," said one inmate.
Once he's released, he can't wait to go help his uncle on the land, he said.
The room is filled with laughter and people are telling stories — one of the inmates remarks that it "feels like real life."
In order to visit the program, the CBC agreed to not name inmates to comply with the Department of Justice's privacy concerns.
Some participants told the CBC about their lives before incarceration, like one experienced hunter from Nunavut's Kitikmeot region who woke up excited to see what animals they would be skinning.
He's thinking about the time he got a 700-pound polar bear.
"We go travelling by snowmobile and tow a sled. The whole town writes down their name to get a draft for a polar bear tag and I was one of them."
He can skin a polar bear in three and a half hours, he told the CBC.
"They should have more programs like this even during the summer, spring … winter is the best," he said.
Everett McQueen, a traditional counsellor and liaison officer at North Slave Correctional Centre, says the program creates a "good atmosphere."
"We joke around, we laugh, and it gets [out] the day-to-day stress. They come in here and seem to have a different attitude."
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