Peggy Revell
It’s a long trek from South Vienna to Northwestern Ontario, but it’s one Henrik Mader has made so he can spend the next six months as an exchange student living in Fort Frances.
“It’s nice here,” said Mader, 15, who arrived here on Jan. 22 from Austria.
“It’s not too much different,”
“We enjoy having him,” noted Erma Armit, whose has opened her home to Mader as his host family.
“And he’s learning the fine art of cribbage,” echoed her husband, Bob.
The visit isn’t a complete unknown for the youth as he is following in the footsteps of his older brother, Philip, who was an exchange student with the Armits three years ago through the “Education First” program (of which Erma Armit is the international exchange co-ordinator).
“[Philip] told [me] about Erma, and how everything is nice here and [everyone is] friendly, and it’s only a little bit cold, but it’s fine,” Mader remarked.
After Philip returned home, the Armits went overseas to visit his family, noted Erma Armit.
“So I think that made it a little bit easier, too,” she said, noting Mader’s visit here is a private arrangement between the families.
“[Philip] became a real avid curler so I think that Henrik is looking forward to becoming an avid curler also,” Armit added.
“He has to get through some of the basics first.”
“Skiing and snowboarding are really big in Austria, but there’s no hockey, really, or curling. It’s only small groups you find in some big cities,” explained Mader, who has an interest in sports.
In his two weeks here, he already has started curling, playing squash, and taking karate.
The colder weather has prevented him from some activities, he said, but is looking forward to snowmobiling and ice-fishing.
“It’s colder, that’s the big change,” he said about Northwestern Ontario’s climate.
“Usually it’s like the same—only, normally, our highest is minus-five C degrees or in the mountains it’s minus-17,” Mader noted, adding this weather means being able to go outside and ski.
“It’s not like every day is minus-20, minus-30 [like it has been in Canada].
“Now it’s getting better.”
Mader hasn’t been able to see a local hockey game yet because they fall on the nights he already is busy with the other activities, noted Armit, but they will be trying to catch one soon.
“It’s always good to expose kids to the things we take for granted,” she said. “He’s looking forward to a lot of different things.”
For instance, Mader wants to be introduced to cross-country skiing—different from the downhill skiing he is used to in Austria.
“One of the things is I want to try to make arrangements for him to go for a ride in a bush plane because he has some small-plane flying [experience] in Austria,” Armit said.
And in the summer, he will be golfing, fishing, and boating.
Mader has been attending Fort Frances High School since the beginning of the new semester Feb. 1.
“School is fun, I like school,” he said about his experience so far, although he noted the school system is different between the two countries.
“In Austria, I have six, seven hours a day of school,” he explained. “And you have 13 subjects—like seven subjects a day but over the week you have 13 subjects.
“And you can’t choose them, you have to take them,” he noted. “So it’s not like you can take music or gym or anything else.
“You have to choose maths, and German and English, music, biology, and physics.”
And while he’s made the trek all the way to Canada, Mader doesn’t expect to be travelling far while he’s here.
“It’s so far away, everything is like three hours there, three hours there, fives hours there, 20 hours there,” he noted, though adding he probably will go to Thunder Bay for one trip.
“In Austria, you take seven hours and you’re completely through Austria—and here it’s like seven hours to the next city,” he remarked.
“I’ve offered to take him to different places, and he just thinks of how long it is,” said Armit.
“He’s happy to be staying here playing cards.
But Mader has made sure to pay a visit to one Canadian landmark of sorts—Tim Hortons.
“In Europe there’s no Tim Hortons so I had to go there,” he laughed.
