School beats bar stool

Page 13

Duane Janvier has accomplished more in three short years than a lot of people do in a lifetime.

In October, the 21-year-old successfully completed the cooking program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, the final step in a dream Janvier barely began to envision in 1990.

Today, Janvier is a young man with a bright and promising future.

But it wasn't always so.

Janvier left school in the middle of Grade 11, disenchanted with the whole learning process.

"It got in the way of my party time," he laughs. At 16, he had no direction in his life other than having a good time.

"I'd work at any job, just long enough to get some money, and then I'd quit and live it up till the money was gone," he says. He and his friends hung around the pool halls and cafeterias of small towns in northeastern Alberta near his home on the Cold Lake First Nations Reserve.

But slowly he began to consider his life.

"There was only unemployment at home on the reserve, especially for someone like myself, someone with no skills, so there was no future for me there."

But cooking professionally appealed to him. The creativity the young Chipewyan man later exhibited in the classroom is an ability he comes by naturally - his father is Alex Janvier, the renowned artist.

Alberta Vocational College in Lac La Biche, only 80 kilometres away, offered a Pre-employment Cooking Course, Janvier enrolled and was happy to find many other Native students there.

Being back at school was a "little scary at first," but after the first few weeks, Janvier settled into a regular schedule and began to enjoy his studies.

The next year, he headed to Edmonton to attend the NAIT cooking and baking course.

"I was pretty apprehensive about living in the city, but I knew I was getting close to my goals and wouldn't let anything stop me." He found he liked city life.

"The year was very demanding though. We started classes at 7 a.m. and went steady until 1 or 2 p.m." The students in the cooking classes produce the noon meal for a large portion of the 1,500 staff at NAIT.

Janvier is looking forward to contributing to the assembly of a cookbook of traditional North American Aboriginal foods.

"With a little modern innovation, many traditional dishes can be modified to be made in today's kitchens, and it would be fun to research and refine the original cuisine," he says.

He is looking forward to one day owning his own restaurant, although he wants to work for many different employees first.

"Hopefully, the business could be located back home, to be a part of economic development on the reserve and to create some jobs," he says.