Fond du Lac, Saskatchewan, Canada (2004-2005)

If you are a teacher with a desire to impress upon children the importance of learning to spell then Fond du Lac may not be the ideal place for you. On the other hand, if you are a rebel who would like to burn the dictionaries and express your freedom through creative spellings then Fond du Lac may be a place that you would like to visit. I make these statements because there appears to be some confusion over how the community should spell its name. Or to be more precise, how the community should capitalize and possibly hyphenate its name.

While living in Fond Du Lac, or maybe it was Fond-du-Lac, it could have been Fond du Lac, or possibly FOND DU LAC, I saw all of these spellings. A quick search of government websites on the internet can result in an equally varied list of spellings. For this website I have therefore decided to try to be consistent and use the spelling Fond du Lac. I do so not because I believe it is necessarily correct, but simply because the professionally printed school letterhead that I occasionally used during my employment at the school spelt the community's name as Fond Du Lac. Knowing how many words got misspelt in that school every day I am therefore gambling that the official school letterhead was wrong and I should try one of the other creative spellings.

Fond du Lac is a First Nations community in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Most of the population are members of the Fond du Lac Denesuline First Nations Band. This Dene community is very near the boundary between Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. The community is located on the north shore of Lake Athabasca where the lake narrows into a thin finger at the eastern end.

Fond du Lac is a fly-in community. The airport has a gravel runway that allows small airplanes to provide year round access to the community.

At the time that I was teaching in Fond du Lac construction work was underway on a multi year project to build a road from southern Saskatchewan to Stony Rapids. In late February and early March some transport trucks were able to drive up the road from the south to Stony Rapids and then across frozen Lake Athabasca to deliver food and supplies to Fond du Lac. During the summer months there was a barge that transported items such as lumber across the lake from Stony Rapids to Fond du Lac. The barge was similar in design and size to the M.V. Joe Keeper ferry boat I photographed in Split Lake, Manitoba.

The community of Fond du Lac is built along the main road from the Lake Athabasca shoreline to the airport. There are a number of side streets. About half way between the Lake Athabasca shoreline and the Fond du Lac airport is an escarpment. The escarpment runs parallel with the current Lake Athabasca shoreline and was probably a former shoreline of the lake. The escarpment splits Fond du Lac into an older downtown area near Lake Athabasca and a newer residential suburb at the top of the escarpment near the airport. Father Gamache Memorial School is located in the centre of the community at the base of the escarpment.

The following pages display some of the photos I took while living and teaching in Fond du Lac. Included in the collection are some photographs that were taken by my students and school staff.