Renewal and reconciliation are possible.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: President's Note

In the fall of 1972 I arrived in Little Current, Manitoulin Island with an old Volkswagen van (pop-up roof), a motorcycle, a beard, a change of clothes, and a C chord harmonica. I was the new editor of the Manitoulin Expositor. As a refugee from Don Mills in Toronto, by way of Thunder Bay, I was ready to open chapter two in my Northern Ontario odyssey, which was to keep me connected to the North for the rest of my life.

I soon experienced the best and the worst of the relationship between First Nations peoples and the hardy souls from around the world who came to inhabit this extraordinary Northern land. I knew nothing about how small towns work or Aboriginal communities function.

Soon enough, I was writing a story about racism at the newly built high school in West Bay (now M'Chigeeng).

The question was the deliberate streaming of Aboriginal students away from higher education opportunities.

The landlord of the building occupied by the newspaper suggested the rent would go up by four if we continued to write about such intemperate themes. I took a small inheritance and bought a building up the road and moved the Expositor the following month. It wasn't my best investment, but it opened my heart and my eyes to the realities of the day. Ironically, if I hadn't bought the building I would never have moved to Sudbury to start my newspaper company, which changed my life.

Last week, Justin Ferbey came to Sudbury to speak at the Goring Family Lecture Series at Laurentian University in Sudbury. He is an extraordinary First Nations leader from Carcross, Yukon, about 40 miles south of Whitehorse. He has been at the centre of revolutionizing the First Nations economy of Carcross. In 10 short years they carved out of their land a mecca for mountain biking. Carcross has some of the best trails in the world. They started by sending their children up into the mountains to build trails, followed by retraining their parents to build a commercial village to serve the growing tourist trade, and leveraged those skills to build housing for the community and for people looking to spend more time in their neck of the woods. It is an inspiring story of self-help, determination, sophistication, and success. The theme was "We'll do whatever it takes"--and they did. The...