THUNDER BAY – Punishments that would be levied on students who broke rules while attending Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School were vastly ineffective, says a former student support worker.
That was part of the testimony provided by former Northern Nishnawbe Education Council student support worker Donna Fraser, who took the stand Thursday morning at the coroner’s inquest probing the deaths of seven students from remote First Nations communities from 2000 to 2011 while attending high school in Thunder Bay.
Fraser was the support worker for Curran Strang, the 18-year-old from Pikangikum First Nation whose body was pulled from the McIntyre River in September 2005.
Fraser said grounding as well as having the students sign behaviour contracts and write essays were the primary forms of discipline for rules violations such as drinking or breaching curfew.
“Discipline was the biggest thing. The students didn’t really take to the understanding we were trying to do what was best for them. They didn’t listen to us,” Fraser said.
On Wednesday the inquest heard Strang had numerous curfew violations and at least two significant alcohol-related incidents between September 2004 and his death.
He was subjected to grounding and being subjected to written contracts, which Fraser said did not have an impact. Strang was grounded two days prior to the night he went missing.
“They didn’t seem to be afraid of any contract,” Fraser said.
She first started working with Strang when he arrived in Thunder Bay in the fall of 2003, but he only stayed for two months before returning home due to a family illness. Strang returned for the next school year.
Fraser described Strang as a nice, outgoing “social butterfly” who enjoyed being with his friends but also as a teenager who was frequently absent from class and at times appeared to be more interested in socializing than learning.
But, like most students, Strang was reserved and not forthcoming when discussing personal issues with the school staff members. Fraser told the inquest most students revealed personal information and shared details of their troubled pasts only when they were intoxicated.
Strang was still coping with the suicides of friends back home in Pikangikum, having recently attended their funerals.
The inquest also heard from longtime boarding home parents, also currently an NNEC on-call staff member, Clarissa Fox, who housed one of Strang’s closest friends in the fall of 2005.
Fox said the friend, Adam Peters, was among the group out with Strang and he returned home very drunk and dirty. She said she instantly knew something was wrong.
She added boarding home parents weren’t provided with information about the history of the students living with them and at the time the NNEC wouldn’t keep them updated on issues the students were dealing with.
Fox said she has dealt with many students who were drunk to the point they couldn’t take care of themselves and even though they understood drinking was dangerous, “they still do it though.”
She said in most cases the students’ addiction and self-harm issues stem from problems from their home communities.
