Canora celebrates new school cooking program

Canora, Sask. -

Students in Canora are getting a tasteful educational experience through their newly commercial cooking program.

"We have a facility now that allows us to be sustainable,” said Derek Serdachhny, principal of Canora Composite School.

“It provides us with a commercial dishwasher, four cooking stations where we can have more than four students work safely in here, and really just enrich the program for all students.”

The program allows students, staff, and parents to provide fresh meals to the community through their breakfast and hot lunch programs, in addition to snacks.

Serdachny said the project took roughly five years to complete and would not be possible without the community’s support.

“Luckily for us we were able to raise some money. We had some businesses, such as Grain Millers, that provided us with some funds to help make this dream into a reality,” he said.

On Friday, Grain Millers Canada donated $50,000 in support of the school’s nutrition program.

"One of the key elements of our community involvement is connecting people to food, connecting people to where their food comes from and agriculture,” Terry Tyson explained, Grain Millers Canda’s president.

“Given what we do, this was just a really good fit for us."

With renovations of the school’s new kitchen facility finishing back in the summer, Serdachny said the school is still paying for the costs and appreciates the community’s ongoing support.

“This is the first year we’ve offered commercial cooking in our school, it’s been exciting,” Serdachny voiced.

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“There’s some other items we would like to purchase for our nutrition program. We purchased everything (for the kitchen) so we have to pay some of it back, and we have a few things that we would like to purchase into the future because it’s going to make the program better and more sustainable.”

Chloe Pshyk, one of the students currently part of the program, said it has been a great learning experience.

“I love contributing to the school, being able to make hot lunches for the students,” she shared. “We’ve never been able to do it before prior we got the kitchen renovated.”

Pshyk added that the hands-on learning environment carries several benefits.

"I think that it will help students who are interested in cooking, who don't know how to cook and will find it useful once they graduate, once they're living on their own. I know I find it pretty useful,” she said.

Grade 12 student Delilah Wilson believes the program will be beneficial for years to come.

"It's a different way of learning versus just sitting in a classroom all day,” she expressed.

“We actually get to do more hands-on learning. We've had shop classes in the past, but it's more fun because we can use this stuff in our everyday lives as well."