New driving school aims to help improve job opportunities, boost safety in rural First Nations

Residents of remote Indigenous communities on northern Vancouver Island will soon have the opportunity to learn to drive at a new driving school in Namgis First Nation, which aims to help open up more opportunities and improve safety for people in the area.

The Namgis First Nation Driving School is licensed by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) under the Motor Vehicle Act and its instructors are allowed to teach in the classroom and in the car, said Lucy Sager, who helped the First Nation set up the school and find the funding to start it.

After the training, the students will go to a larger center to take their exam, she said.

“This will actually be the only ICBC accredited driving school north of Campbell River… and it’s great to have more capacity to support people who may not be able to come to Campbell River for driving lessons” , said Sager, owner of the All Nations Driving Academy.

The project began when Sager was introduced to the First Nation’s business development group and learned of their need for driver training services to help people get to doctor’s appointments and to improve employment opportunities and safety.

Sager originally founded her Terrace, BC-based academy to help communities like Namgi’s First Nation achieve these goals by providing driving lessons and helping establish driving schools.

She said the lack of transportation in BC’s rural and remote communities has had a tragic impact.

“I grew up in Terrace on the Highway of Tears and for many years I noticed tribal women hitchhiking and disappearing,” Sager said on CBC All points west last Thursday.

Possible trauma when entering a car

Sager said when she first began offering driving lessons in remote communities, many of her students were Indigenous elders in their 60s or 70s who had never gotten behind the wheel.

For many, getting into a car is an added trauma, she said.

“For a lot of people … their first memory of being placed in boarding school was essentially being kidnapped in a car,” she said.

“…People didn’t have parents teaching them to drive, and there might be some apprehensions about putting your child in a vehicle with a stranger.”

Namgis Economic Development Corporation Chief Executive Officer Kevin Ainsworth said the driving school instructors will be drawn from people from the local community or nearby to help students feel more comfortable learning to drive.

“It’s really empowering”

It is hoped that the driving school will give First Nations in the area access to new job opportunities that are expected to open up over the next decade.

Earlier this year, the province said it forecast significant demographic shifts in the skilled trades, for example, as about 70 percent of workers are expected to retire and about 80,000 jobs will be created.

Ainsworth said many of the new craft jobs expected to open in the area will require a driver’s license.

“It’s really a cascading effect. We’ve seen cases of people getting a vehicle and finding employment. It’s really empowering and that has a really positive impact,” Ainsworth told CBC News.

He said the school has already hired one instructor who will take his ICBC Instructor Certification Test next month and is looking for two more to take students in the new year.