Truly a memorable moment, and one thing I haven’t mentioned at all, has been the work with Aboriginal nursing students.  So, you know, I always have these goals in my head as to what I want to get done in the next year or five years or something.  I had really been pushing the University that we really needed to attend to this whole thing about having Aboriginal students in our programs more and giving them support.  I arranged for ... so, I’ll back up a little bit.  Madeleine Dion Stout is a Cree woman who is a graduate of our post RN program and she’s a Distinguished Alumni from the University, and she and I have been friends for years.  And she went on to Carleton and had a good career there and everything.  And I said to Madeleine, ‘I’d really appreciate it if you would come out and you help me convince the University why we need to have an Aboriginal Nursing Program.’  So, no problem.  She came out and so we arranged for meetings with vice presidents, and there was different people down the hill, different president and everything at that time, and so she got them really interested and excited that we need to do something.  And then I arranged for a couple of different speakers to talk about their particular experiences with Aboriginal Nursing Programs in other parts of Canada.  There’s one in Newfoundland that was created with the Inuit and there’s one in Manitoba.  So, I did all of that.  And so, then ... then there was a funding opportunity for us to get funding for an Aboriginal Nursing Program and we got the funding.  I was involved in that groundwork. 

I mean I think that’s really neat that we were able to do and so we’ve become known as a place to come to.  We’d always had students come.  We had a Dene student come one year, this is again what you do for students, she had come from the Mackenzie Delta and in the winter, there’s an ice road and then it melts and then there isn’t one.  We actually had to arrange for her to finish her classes and her clinical before the ice road melted so she could drive home.  So, you know, that’s the kind of things you do, right?  And so, she was the first Dene nurse with a four-year degree in Nursing and she graduated from this University.  We worked with these students and developed all sorts of, you know, programs and support and everything and it’s been very successful. 

(Interviewed by Johanna DeVisser)