A member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation (MLCN), Dwight Ballantyne spent his first 21 years living in his home community.
Then he had the opportunity to travel to BC for a one-year schooling preparation program. The trip ended up changing his life.
“I came here (and), long story short, I was in a very fortunate spot to have a support system along the way, and my support system helped me establish myself,” Ballantyne said in an interview with the Northern Advocate.
“Fast forward to 2019, I had an opportunity to play a lot of hockey here in northern BC, Yukon … I never had the opportunity growing up on reserve.”
Ballantyne was “inspired by the opportunities” in B.C. that he never had growing up at Saskatchewan.
He was chosen to play hockey in Amsterdam and compete at international tournaments.
“That was probably the biggest thing that happened,” Ballantyne said, remembering that period. “That basically put a different thing in my life. It changed the trajectory of what my life would have been.”
Ballantyne was working at a mill before he decided to use his skills and experiences to start the Ballantyne Project.
At the time, Ballantyne remembers being frustrated about a lot of the “uneducated nonsense” he heard about Indigenous youth from people who had no idea about what life was like on a remote reserve. So, he decided to “put myself out there to educate non-Indigenous people about the realities of growing up on reserve and things they may not know.”
When he first arrived in BC, he met people who didn’t know about reserves, residential schools.
Ballantyne decided he wanted to educate non-Indigenous people, the history and experience of Indigenous people and Canada.
In 2019, he “put myself out there.”
“It’s been a beautiful journey o educating non-Indigenous folks about life on reserve,” he said.
With that he quit his job and teamed up with his BC mother, Denise Trottier, to start the Ballantyne Project.
“She helps me with stuff I don’t know how to do,” he said of Trottier, who is the executive assistant with the Ballantyne Project.
“She’s basically the backbone of helping me educate non-Indigenous folks … so, it’s five years, and here we are,” Ballantyne said.
“I do a lot of schools, businesses and organizations, mental health programs and speaking engagements. But, I do a lot of interviews, just like this one, for example.”
But the Ballantyne Project took another turn when a former participants reached out to him when he was interviewed for a BC radio station.
The last question – “What can do we to help? If there was something I could do, what would you do?”
And his response?
“I would like to bring (northern youth) out to experience different types of opportunities here in BC, like tours of a university or college, show them trades, pipefitting, welding. All these opportunities to peak their interest and show them at there’s stuff outside of their communities.”
He didn’t think it would materialize into something, but that’s what ended up happening.
It took care and caution in the beginning. But weeks after the interview, Ballantyne was at the Vancouver Airport, YBR. They had heard about his interview and wanted to have a conversation.
“They gave us $20,000 (saying) ‘we heard it, we loved the message, just make it happen,’” Ballantyne remembers.
Ballantyne kept doing speaking engagement promoting his plan. He didn’t really expect it to happen, but, he kept telling the story and another organization would add to the pot.
“All these little organizations began to also contribute saying, ‘we heard about the vision, just make it happen.’”
They’ve turned into trips that usually happen once a year, “which is going to be expanding” into what he calls, We see You trips.
The first trip, they brought students in from northern Alberta and had them tour universities, colleges and trade schools.
“You can do a lot of fun stuff in downtown Vancouver. We took them on a shuffle bus. We took them on transit busses, to give them a feel for it.” And they did that again.
But, 2024 “was the most interesting. This is where we have to evolve as the Ballantyne Project,” he said.
Now people across the country are getting to know about the trips and people want to send youth.
“But, this one was the coolest, and I guess, the most challenging yet,” Ballantyne said.
In April [2024] they brought youth from three communities into Vancouver,
“It was actually pretty cool. The whole cultural experience of being kids from different communities,” he said, when they brought kids from the three communities together to experience Vancouver.
Participants had the opportunity to share their culture and interact with each other.
Then, in the fall of 2024, they received money from an anonymous donor to run a culinary camp. The donor “believed in healthy eating and food for kids,” so they were obligated to incorporate food into a trip so they got the culinary trip.
“We had to pick one kid from seven communities across Canada and Kyle Olson (from La Ronge) happened to be one of them.”
”This trip was a culinary, so next year we want to do sort of a follow up … a culinary/learn how to run your business type,” Ballantyne said.
The Ballantyne Project just announced that they will do another trip in the Spring of 2025 and Kyle Olson will be part of it.
