They come from as far away as Australia and New Zealand, and they only stay for a few months, but there’s something about Rainy River District that keeps them coming back.
No, these aren’t tourists. They’re exchange students and whatever is causing so many young people to leave the area after high school seems to be lost on them.
Thomas van de Riet, a 16-year-old from Tilburg, Holland, is attending Grade 11 at Fort Frances High School. He arrived in late August and immediately was struck by the differences from his homeland.
“The space. There’s so much of it here,” van de Riet said. “At home, villages are quite close together, but here everything is so spread out.”
He also is looking forward to getting a taste of winter before he goes home in January. “At home it gets down to minus-10 C sometimes. I heard it gets much colder here.”
He heard right.
Van de Riet said he had a number of choices of countries in which to locate, but Canada was first on his list.
“I wanted to go to an English-speaking country, but I didn’t want to go the United States,” he noted. “Also, it was easy to get in here.”
Van de Riet added he’s gaining considerable life experience here, which he hopes will stand him in good stead when he returns home. He also has made friends here, particularly with his host family—Stewart and Debra Firth of Emo.
The Firths are old hands at the student exchange game. She is the area rep for the Canadian Cultural Exchange Foundation—the organization which arranged the exchange—and van de Riet is the ninth student they’ve hosted over the years.
She said she does a lot of research into prospective students and always comes up with winners.
When she saw van de Riet’s profile, she knew he would fit in well with her family. She currently has two of her own children at Fort High—Kaleb, 18 and Hannah, 16.
“We saw he was small and didn’t like to be bullied, so we knew he’d fit right in,” she recalled, adding her entire family is somewhat vertically-challenged.
“He belongs here; he has fit in really fast and there was no language barrier,” she added.
Firth said although van de Riet is scheduled to go home at the end of January, he is welcome to remain with them for the rest of the school year if he wishes.
Another European student who arrived via the Canadian Cultural Exchange Foundation is Rene Steinrucken from Winterberg, Germany. Steinrucken, 16, also is in Grade 11 at Fort High and, like van de Riet, he had Canada at the top of his list, too.
“Canada is not as extreme as the United States—not so intense,” he observed.
And again like van de Riet, he immediately was struck by the vast distances and wide-open spaces of Rainy River District. But it is the general attitude of the people who live here that has made the most profound impression on him.
“What I like is everyone is not in such a hurry here,” he noted. “People are open and friendly.”
Another factor was his desire to experience a real northern winter. In his homeland, winter temperatures generally hover in the minus-5 to minus-10 C range. He said he’s looking forward to seeing what it’s like at minus-30 C and lower.
He also noticed some significant differences in school. In Germany, there are fewer resources available to students, such as lockers and computers. Also, sports are not part of the curriculum, so it was a bit of a cultural shock to be immersed in the “Muskie Madness” of Fort High.
Steinrucken’s own interests run more to the artistic and cultural. He plays the trumpet in the school band at Fort High and has an interest in computers, which he said he intends to pursue at the post-secondary level.
Like van de Riet, he is somewhat shy but already has made friends with whom he intends to maintain contact after he returns to Germany.
Steinrucken’s host family is John and Marina Gerber of Emo. The couple’s children all have left home and Marina said she enjoys the idea of having a young person around to help cope with the “empty-nest syndrome” she’s experienced since her youngest left earlier this year and all her grandchildren are currently out of province.
“He’s a bright boy,” she said of Steinrucken. “They usually send good students so they don’t fall behind when they get back home.
“We enjoy having him around the house because he’s musical,” she added. “He plays a mean trumpet and we’re a musical family.”
This is the second student the Gerbers have taken in, though the first with the Canadian Cultural Exchange Foundation. The other was through the American Scandinavian Student Exchange (ASSE) program.
That was how Sarah Dhillon of Adelaide, Australia got here.
Through an affiliate organization of ASSE (the Southern Cross Cultural Exchange), Dhillon, 15, is attending Grade 10 at Fort High. Unlike van de Riet and Steinrucken, though, this outgoing Aussie is anything but shy—and is making the most of her time here to make as many friends as possible.
“There are already two girls I’ll be in touch with when I go home,” she remarked.
Dhillon said she’s active in sports back home, but the two in which she is most involved are not available here. Her favourites are water polo and something called net ball—which appears to be a cross between basketball and British Bulldog.
In any case, she was extremely keen to come to Canada for a number of reasons.
“I wanted to come here because of all the good things I’ve heard [about Canada],” she said. “I have family members who have been here. In fact, my best friend’s sister lives out west.”
Dhillon said another reason she wanted to come here was to experience winter for the first time in her life.
“The coldest it gets back home is 10 C [50 F],” she noted. “I want to see what winter is all about.”
Since she’s staying until January, she’ll undoubtedly have that opportunity.
Dhillon said things are somewhat different here from the way things are back home. The biggest difference she noted was the level of security at the school—and the idea of riding to school on a bus is a bit of a novelty to her.
“Back home, I live in a city and people walk to school in a few minutes. Here, the distances are much greater,” she remarked.
Dhillon is staying in Devlin with Robin McCormick and her children, Adam, 20, and Carley, 17. McCormick is a first-time host but she’s already found the experience to be most rewarding in a number of ways.
“We do more things as a family now,” McCormick observed. “Having Sarah here has helped us see our own community through new eyes.”
McCormick said she plans to indulge Dhillon in her wish to experience a real northern winter by arranging a sleigh ride in December for all the exchange students before they return home.
All three noted during their searches for host families that there always was a strong interest from the Fort Frances area in hosting foreign students.
And that, according to the Ontario co-ordinator for ASSE, is the primary quality the organization looks for in potential host families because ASSE does not pay hosts to accept foreign students.
“We look for families who want to open their homes to students and schools that provide tuition-free placement,” explained Lola McEvoy. “We’re looking for families that want a kid to be part of their family.”
For their part, the exchange students must be interested in coming here for the cultural experience as opposed to specialized training. That places less of a burden on the host school.
“They’re not here for the credits, they’re here for the experience,” stressed McEvoy.
The students or their families do pay a program fee to register with ASSE, who then takes care of administration and support fees, airfare, and health insurance.
ASSE is a two-way street. It also runs an outbound program for Canadian students wishing to live with a family overseas.
If you have room for a foreign student in your home for either a semester or a year, or if you are student looking to connect with a family overseas, go to www.asse.com for more information.
The chances are good you’ll find a spot in the country of your choice.
“Placement in the country of preference is about 98 percent,” McEvoy said.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
