Klaus came in with an armload of wood. "The school bus will be dropping the kids off pretty soon," Susan said, glancing at her watch. "They leave here at 7:00 am each morning and don't get home until about 5:00. They spend over 3 hours on the bus everyday. I figured out that in June, when my daughter graduates from Grade 12, she will in 4 years have spent the equivalent of 75 twenty-four hour days on the bus, just to get her education! You don't get any marks for that but it's still quite an accomplishment."

Klaus had told me earlier in the day that he used to be a policeman. I asked him more about that as he stoked the wood stove. "During my sixteen years in law enforcement and administration I saw many of the problems in the world first-hand. It was frustrating because there was so little I could do. Then when I began tutoring I found that instead of dragging people down, I was giving them skills they needed to build themselves up. And best of all I was learning as much as I was teaching."

Susan described some of her own frustrations. "When I was working in social work I was working everyday with people who's problems were basically caused by illiteracy. There were piles of government brochures on parenting information but if the people couldn't read them, what good were they? Instead of producing fancy brochures I wish the government would stick more money into literacy and teaching people to read and write."

Klaus added, "One fellow I know, actually quite a prominent businessman, was using 2-4-D, a very potent herbicide, around his dug-out to keep the weeds down. The same dug-out is used for his family's water supply."

"A lot of the farmers here are very traditional farmers," Klaus continued. "They farm the way their daddies farmed and the way their daddies farmed before them. It's very hard for people to change; it's all they know. Alberta Agriculture puts out beautiful publications. I have piles of them but I know how to access them. No one else knows (or cares) that they exist. People in the North don't need more pamphlets. "

Susan talked about the local women and her own place in the community. "I had a hard time when I first came here," she said, "because I was in social development and had been educated to believe that women are nor just supposed to be in the kitchen and raising children. We're not supposed to be happy if we're doing that; we're supposed to be out working, developing our minds, finding ourselves. When I got to this community I found that some of the women here were truly happy living like that. And then I found myself being pulled at both ends. I started to feel like a lousy mother because I was putting too much into my work."

"Sometimes I find it frustrating to be part of the community of women here. I watch some of the women get some education then see that they don't really have choices. They learn about different ways of life but they are stuck here, unable to make changes. Their learning has to stop at some point or they become unhappy. History tells us that cultures can die with change. I don't want the women to be unhappy and I don't want them to lose their culture but if they want to learn, for whatever reasons, I want to be able to teach them what I can."