Social Health... from the Heart #8: Building More Than a Canoe

By Barb Young

Recently, the Perth and District Community Foundation invited its 2026 grantees to participate in The Path: Your Journey Through Indigenous Canada, an online learning program developed by Jennifer David and NVision Insight Group. We later had the honour of meeting with Jennifer in person to share reflections on what we had learned. 

The experience was eye-opening, inspiring, and deeply motivational. It encouraged me to think more carefully about Indigenous history, culture, rights, reconciliation, and the importance of building genuine relationships. 

As I worked through the course, I found myself reflecting on something that has become central to my work with the Highlands North Network: lasting change often begins with what happens at the personal and community level. 

When Indigenous children were taken from their families, communities, cultures, and ways of life, the effects were devastating. The loss of connection, belonging, identity, language, and culture affected individuals, families, health, and future generations. 

While we cannot change what happened in the past, we can help create a better future by learning, listening, and seeking opportunities to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous people today. Through shared experiences, honest conversations, friendship, and a willingness to learn, we can deepen our understanding and appreciation of Indigenous cultures, traditions, knowledge, and perspectives. 

The Highlands North Network has applied for funding through the New Horizons for Seniors Program so that more seniors from across our service area could have an opportunity experience just how inspiring and motivational Jennifer David is. 

If our application is successful, we hope to bring a group of seniors together at one of our rural community halls to participate in The Path with Jennifer in person. 

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The learning would not end when the course is completed. Participants would then use what we have learned to help initiate two small Indigenous partnership projects or events within our communities. Our hope is that these first steps will lead to Indigenous learning and programming becoming an . 

ongoing part of what HNN does. We would like to create opportunities for seniors to continue learning, forming relationships, sharing experiences, and supporting Indigenous-led activities in respectful and meaningful ways.

Looking further into the future, I would love to see our communities build a birch bark canoe together under the guidance and leadership of Chuck Commanda, an Anishinaabe Traditional Knowledge Holder and master canoe builder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. 

Such a project would be about much more than producing a canoe. Participants would spend time together, work side by side, listen, ask questions, learn new skills, share stories, and gradually come to know one another as people and neighbours. This is where I see a powerful connection between social health and reconciliation. Both are strengthened through relationships, shared experiences, and opportunities to learn from one another. 

Not only will we continue our efforts to bring social health out of the shadows, but we will also create opportunities to use our social health platform to shed light on Indigenous history, rights, culture, and traditions. In doing so, we may discover perspectives, values, and ways of understanding community, relationships, and our connection to the land that can help guide us toward a more inclusive, respectful, and hopeful future. 

Perhaps one day, together, we will build that beautiful, birch bark canoe. 

And, when we do, we will let it carry us down a river of learning, understanding, respect, and appreciation. 

Who knows where that journey might lead?