Shaash

Shaash means “finished” in Cree. Although we have one week of our internship left, we will be doing the wrap-up in Montreal. This is the end of our time in Chisasibi and we had to say goodbye to everybody and finish as much work as we could while we were still in the community.

During our last week of work in Chisasibi, we had meetings with the special needs educator at the daycare in Whapmagoostui through videoconference. We used these meetings to discuss the assessment results and intervention goals, and to explain and demonstrate the activities we will be sending to the daycare. Next week in Montreal, we will be calling the families of the children we assessed to follow-up.

Leah had a videoconference with one of her clients and his family to explain the result of his assessment and to discuss goals for the upcoming school year.

Alexandra had her last session with one of her clients to start practicing the use of her communication device prototype. She also led a team meeting to update the team on the work she has done with the client and to discuss how to proceed for the steps ahead.

We invited our friends over for a pot-luck to say goodbye to everyone. They surprised us with a cake and gifts. We were happy to have one last evening to celebrate the good times we had in Chisasibi with all the wonderful friends we met.

Later that night, Chisasibi’s night sky gave us another gift! The shooting stars of the Perseids meteor shower were passing through the pink and green Northern Lights that stretched over the entire sky. It was almost as if Chisasibi was trying to get us to stay.

Once again, the pictures can’t compare to the real thing!

We are really going to miss the community feeling of Chisasibi. On our last morning, we were sad not to have had the opportunity to say goodbye to our friends James and Clayton. Luckily, on our way to the MSDC, we came across James on his four-wheeler, and while we stopped to talk to him, Clayton drove by in his pick-up and we had a final family reunion on Chisasibi Road.

At the MSDC, we said one last goodbye to the wonderful staff who we got to know over the summer. It was hard to leave for the airport.

It was even harder to say goodbye to our supervisor Anny. We will miss working with her and spending time with her lovely family. Now that we are soon to be colleagues, we promised to keep in touch about our speech-language pathology careers. Even more exciting, she promised to send us pictures of her children growing up (since we are now unofficial aunties).

When we arrived in Montreal, we were shocked to see so many people in one place! Montreal was a big change of pace from Chisasibi. We are already missing the people, the beautiful skies, the mitchuaps, and the laid-back pace of Chisasibi.

Thanks to everyone for reading this summer. We had an amazing time in Chisasibi and we were glad to share our internship experience. We had our final evaluations and we are happy to announce that we passed! We will officially be S-LPs in one week.

We learned a lot from our time in Chisasibi, especially about how to adapt our practice to include considerations of cultural and linguistic background of the clients. We learned a great deal about the beautiful Cree culture and language, which we felt lucky to discover through all the wonderful people we met. We will always have Chisasibi in our hearts.