Unique lodge to provide a safe, comfortable home for Indigenous elders in Alberta

After years of readying and building, a new Indigenous elders lodge is astir to unfastened adjacent the Rocky Mountain assemblage of Grande Cache, Alta.

"It feels bully to beryllium here," said Winston Delorme, surveying progress connected the 17,200-square-foot Kikinow Elders Lodge.

"When we archetypal got present determination utilized to beryllium a roadworthy up present and it was conscionable bush," said Delorme. Now it's "almost a full, operating lodge present — for our people."

The thought for the lodge, located connected the Victor Lake Co-operative, an Indigenous land holding on the northbound bound of Grande Cache, 430 kilometres westbound of Edmonton, was first conceived successful 2018 and operation got underway in 2023.

Applications are being accepted this month from Indigenous radical successful the country who privation to unrecorded successful the 14-bed facility.

Victor Lake is 1 of the six Indigenous co-operatives and enterprises successful the Grande Cache area.

Delorme, a Victor Lake assemblage leader, points to the building's half-moon design — with its teepee and fireplace astatine the bosom of the lodge, smudge area, crafting room and assemblage room — arsenic examples of what makes the $15-million dollar task unique.

Kikinow means "our home" successful Cree and Delorme said the extremity is to make a non-institutional spot successful the assemblage where elders tin property comfortably and safely.

"They get to travel and spell arsenic they please. It's not a jailhouse for them," helium said.

"If they privation to spell to town, they spell to town, if they privation to spell location for the night — backmost to their aged home — that's up to them. That's the biggest happening is they're not kept." 

Hilda Hallock, a 57-year-old Victor Lake community member, said she tin spot herself yet surviving astatine the lodge.

Looking retired the balcony of the space, Hallock sees the aforesaid upland views that she's had all her life.

"I judge we are the onshore and the onshore is us," she said.

"This gathering volition let maine to proceed to unrecorded that beingness arsenic I age, to support that connection and not beryllium removed from it." 

Hallock described the lodge arsenic "warm and welcoming." Its windows and walls adjacent see etchings of her grandma's angiosperm beadwork pattern, she said. 

It's a spot that Hallock said volition escaped her of life's "everyday stresses," similar ensuring her pipes don't frost and she has capable wood chopped to past the winter.

Funding for the task is coming from the national and provincial governments, the Municipal District of Greenview and different municipal determination partners with assistance from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said Shyam Menon, manager of portfolio absorption with The Evergreens Foundation.

WATCH | Take a circuit of the Kikinow Elders Lodge:

The not-for-profit absorption institution volition tally the seniors surviving facility.

"This task is simply a unsocial concern betwixt a lodging absorption assemblage and an Indigenous organization," Menon said, "bringing overmuch needed culturally due lodging and attraction to the elders successful the region." 

Staff with Scott Builders Inc. are continuing enactment connected infrastructure, landscaping and the interior of Kikinow Elders Lodge with residents expected to determination successful aboriginal this summer. 

Shirley Delorme, president of the Victor Lake Co-operative, said opening up applications for residents makes it consciousness real. 

Delorme said she expects the lodge to beryllium a peculiar spot for the full community.

"I deliberation we're going to person a batch of engagement with the younger generation," she said. "This is going to beryllium a communal spot wherever they tin travel and larn from the elders."