Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Good morning, Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned into the Mac city morning show. I am your host Elliot Pierre, and we're going to start the show off the same way we start every episode off with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you're spending with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tanner hidden with the intro.
Speaker 0 00:00:28 All right. And we are back. Okay. As you can tell, I'm not on the set of the Mac city morning show. I am at holy Trinity high school and junior high. I've been informed today. So, uh, thank you for, or thank you to holy Trinity for inviting us and having us here. Do appreciate it. The one thing that hasn't changed on the show is how I introduce my guests. I don't, I let them do that themselves because they can do a better job than I. So on that note, can you please tell everybody at home who you are and what you're about?
Speaker 2 00:00:54 Uh, thanks for having us here today. Uh, Elliot, my name is Lisa Hillson taker and I am principal here at holy Trinity high school. And I hope people know that we are filming on Halloween day. So
Speaker 0 00:01:08 This is not how you dress everyday.
Speaker 2 00:01:10 Although the kids might want to call me Cruella Deville most days. Yeah. I've dressed the part today. So let's talk
Speaker 0 00:01:17 About the costume because it's the elephant in the room. I like to hear how people come up with their costume ideas. So how did you come up with this?
Speaker 2 00:01:26 Actually, it wasn't my idea, but we usually try to do some kind of a theme between myself and, and the vice-principals and the ladies in the office. And so we kind of thought that we being Cruella, Deville, and they're all the domination puppies. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 00:01:41 I have to admit, I did not see that theme when I checked in today. So I'm going to have to double back and talk to your administrators, check out their costumes, check them out. Yeah. So we're here at, uh, your school today. So thank you for inviting us. Really do appreciate it. Um, it's been amazing talking to some of your students and some of your, uh, teachers here. Like it's a pretty diverse school that you've put together.
Speaker 2 00:02:04 It's a very diverse school. We have a little bit of something for everybody, and it's so wonderful to see the students be able to come on here and talk about their experiences and you know, the things that they're doing with their life. And some of them we've had here since grade seven. So to see them grow and be able to be so articulate.
Speaker 0 00:02:23 Yeah. It's amazing. I, with the young adults that have come on the show, I'm telling you, there is no way at that age. I would have been that composed. I can talk, but I wouldn't have been able to like carry on a conversation like they did. So
Speaker 2 00:02:36 No. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's a part of education, right. And it's a part of, of, uh, what we try to, uh, get them to do through school, through whether it's their language arts and their presentations and get them to be comfortable because it's a very difficult, um, thing to be able to do to stand up in front of a group of people or know that they're in front of a large group. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:57 Yeah. So now a little bit about yourself. Wow.
Speaker 2 00:03:01 The hard part. Why does anybody want to know about me? Uh, so you
Speaker 0 00:03:05 Have been informed already for quite some time. Now,
Speaker 2 00:03:07 When did you, since 1978. So almost 44 years came here as a kid, myself grade seven. My, uh, family, uh, moved us here from, uh, we were living in Northern Quebec at the time. And dad came out here for work, brought six kids across the country in a car. And, uh, I've never looked back. Fort McMurray is home. Um, we've made a very wonderful life here, raised two kids. One of them is back here now working. And, uh, yeah, it's been, it's been a great community for our,
Speaker 0 00:03:41 Yeah. So you've seen tremendous change over the years and you've, and you've made the decision to stay. So what is it about this community that you've definitely bought into and decided like, Hey, this is, this is where I'm going to stay. This is home to me.
Speaker 2 00:03:55 Do you know when I first came here? Of course there were very few people that you meet that were born here. Right? So, uh, everybody was always from somewhere else. And so it was very important to reach out to others, uh, for friendships, for activities, for, to make, you know, them family because nobody had family here. So I think that's how we became a really close knit community because that just continued to evolve from year after year. And still some of the friends that I've graduated with are still here and you do continue to consider them family and my husband and I always joke that we always had our winter family and our summer family through the kids' sports. So right. And there was always the summer family that you saw all the time at those sports and traveled with out of town games. And then we had our winter family with hockey and ringette and traveled with them. And so we always looked forward to those seasonal changes. And that's hilarious.
Speaker 0 00:04:51 Yes. I've never heard it articulated like that, but it's so true. Right. That's funny. So you grew up in Fort McMurray, you decided to go away to school to obviously educator. Where did you go to?
Speaker 2 00:05:05 Uh, I started my, uh, first two years actually at Kiana was the first year of their university transfer program. Education was offered. So it did the first two years here, lived at home and then transferred to the U of a finished out there and came back. And actually I did, uh, my student teaching here in Fort McMurray as well. Yeah. So came back to St. Gabriel school was there for 20 years. Okay. And, uh, went into administration and have been at a couple of schools, went to good shepherd first as a vice-principal then to father mercury. And then I was here the first year that it opened. So here's a vice-principal then became a principal down to father Turcotte for four years. And now starting my sixth year here. That's all.
Speaker 0 00:05:53 Yeah. So when you went away to school, did you know you are going to, did he have a, uh, want to come back to Fort McMurray or did you decide when you were away? Like, oh, wow. I'm, there's something special there. I should go back
Speaker 2 00:06:10 Too. I think there was always, you know, a calling to come back home, right. That this was where I was comfortable. This was the school division that I knew this was the community that I was familiar with. So just made sense to, to come back to Fort McMurray and teaching jobs are everybody wants to be in the city. So those jobs aren't always easily available. So I knew that Fort McMurray, you know, it would be a great place to start. Didn't know that I would stay,
Speaker 0 00:06:38 But yeah. Did you meet your husband
Speaker 2 00:06:40 Up here? No, actually I met him through mutual friends while I was at school at the university. And, um, so he came here
Speaker 0 00:06:48 Just going to say, I obviously we've chatted before. Um, I was all, I was curious about that. So how did you convince him to come here and be with you?
Speaker 2 00:07:00 I don't know that I convinced. I think the joke is, is that he followed me here and
Speaker 0 00:07:08 Yeah. Cause I, I, I, it just dawned on me. I was like, wait a second, because that's normally not the traditional way that you hear of people coming to Fort McMurray. Usually it's like the husband has an oil sands job and then like their significant other comes with them. And then it goes from there. So, yeah. Did he come to visit while you guys started to date? Like in the university setting and get a taste of what Fort Macquarie was?
Speaker 2 00:07:30 I know, you know what? I don't think he had even been here prior to me coming back and, uh, I left school and said, I'm going home. And so he applied for some jobs. He's a, he's a pilot. So he's an aviation and port Macquarie and check it out.
Speaker 0 00:07:50 He followed for love.
Speaker 2 00:07:52 That's what I keep telling him.
Speaker 0 00:07:54 So your children, they're out of the system now, as far as when I say system.
Speaker 2 00:08:00 Yeah. They're out of the school system now. They're all grown and graduated. They both went to father mercury and yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:05 Woop, woop, and shout out to father Merck. And so one is backwards. The other one
Speaker 2 00:08:11 She's actually in Chicago. Yeah. She's a veterinarian and working as a vet down there and, uh, her boyfriend, which she met, uh, at the U of a he's from Edmonton and she, um, uh, he, he was working, uh, in the, um, uh, he's doing what his microbiology and his professor at the U of a, got a grant to go down to actually the university of Athens in Georgia. So she took, uh, Rob and, uh, another, uh, student. And so he went down there and finished out his degree in Georgia. So when Kendra was finished at the university of Saskatchewan there, the, um, vet college, yeah. She, uh, went to Georgia. Yeah. Till he finished that. And then he got his PhD and then a job at the university of Chicago to do his post-doctorate. So she moved to Chicago.
Speaker 0 00:09:04 Yeah. Have you had a chance to go visit?
Speaker 2 00:09:06 No, but I'm so looking forward to it, I hear it's an amazing city and so much to do.
Speaker 0 00:09:11 It's my favorite place to go in America, but I hear it's so nice. And I know like, some people will say like the crime rate in this end, the other end fair enough. That, that, that exists. Right. However, like you don't have to see it if you don't want to, like you stay where he's the savior, it's hands down. And I've been blessed to do a lot of traveling in America. My favorite place to visit, like when you said Chicago, they probably saw like my whole face, like
Speaker 2 00:09:36 Really? Yes. COVID hits. So I'm waiting for this to be over so I can go down. But yeah. And my boy is a mining engineer. Right. So he, uh, went to the U of a finished up that did the co-op program came back as working out at plants.
Speaker 0 00:09:50 And can't be it. If you're mining engineer, this is, this is
Speaker 2 00:09:53 Where to be.
Speaker 0 00:09:54 It's here, the dive ex mind or somewhere in Australia. Perth, I think. Yeah. It has like, those are to the best of my knowledge, obviously. There's way more minds than that globally, but yeah.
Speaker 2 00:10:05 Well up north and you right? The gold mines and diamond mines. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:10 Marie Fort
Speaker 2 00:10:11 McMurray. It's beautiful place. It is. Yeah. Love it.
Speaker 0 00:10:14 Well, listen, that's the end of our show. Easy breezy. You're never smelled nothing. No. So before I let you loose, though, uh, everybody gets a shameless shout out or plug. So the camera's on you, the lights on you.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 Well, you're here in the beautiful Suncor energy center for the performing arts. So I have to give a shout out on a plug to them because without them, we wouldn't even have this theater here at our school for us to use. And of course, if somebody hasn't been in here, there's always our, um, festival of the arts that is starting on December six, two 11th. So we're going to have all kinds of performances. They can come check out our school and the theater.
Speaker 0 00:10:48 Sweet. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for doing this. I know that you were kind of voluntold by our man Tanner, so appreciate it. But if now you see how easy it is, anytime you want to swing by the set, there's an open invitation. Oh, thanks so much
Speaker 2 00:11:00 Elliot. Great. No problem.
Speaker 0 00:11:01 Take care. All right. Well, for Macquarie, with Buffalo and the rest of the world, that's been another episode of the Mac city morning show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Really do appreciate it. Hopefully you're having a great day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace
Speaker 3 00:11:13 And Dalio Wade. And another morning show later by us.
Speaker 1 00:11:22 You talk about quenching your ugly thirsty.
