Although the conditions which led to our return to school were less than ideal, it brought all of us great joy to welcome the Bison herd back to Louis Riel. Our top priorities for the day were to welcome our Bisons back, reconnect as a community of learners, and do our best to resume teaching and learning.

It is important to acknowledge that the labour action impacted everyone in our community this month and that it will also continue to influence how the school year will play out. While we look forward to a return to more typical operations, we need to ask for your patience as we await details about how we will get there. After any interruption to the business of learning, we need to find approaches to recovery or acceptable compromises. Activities and events that were being planned or taking place prior to this job action such as athletics, performances, field trips, extracurriculars, school council meetings and other school events may be delayed, rescheduled or cancelled. With this in mind, we can share the following details about some current and scheduled events:

School Athletics

To ensure a safe and well-prepared return to athletic competition, a paced re-entry plan for middle and junior high school athletics is being contemplated across divisions. Not all divisions share identical schedules and the athletic association is assessing the feasibility of either an extended or abbreviated season.

Fall Break Nov. 10 - 12

Fall break will proceed as scheduled. After careful consideration, it was decided that changing the school calendar at this time would impact staffing, transportation, as well as family plans already in place. If other adjustments to the school calendar are necessary, staff and families will be notified as early as possible.

Halloween is NOT cancelled – October 31

With very little notice we'd like to offer our students a chance to enjoy the spirit of "dress up in order to be showered with candy after knocking on doors" season this Friday as it is Halloween. Although many in our school enjoy allowing students the opportunity to dress in costume for the day, we still need to be mindful of time, place, and audience at school. Students are invited to wear their costumes for some or all of the day if they choose. We would like to offer the following supportive questions to ensure all our Bisons can have fun, learn, and not be traumatized by anyone's costume choices on Friday:

  • Is your child's costume consistent with school norms around reasonable attire (i.e.: is there a risk of over-sharing/catastrophic costume failure?)
  • Will your child be able to safely participate in all their learning while in costume? (giant and/or inflatable costumes make this difficult) 
  • Does your child's costume involve a weapon? 
  • Does your child's costume represent a negative stereotype? 
  • Does your child’s costume involve a mask that hides their identity entirely? (although we have become more accustomed to wearing masks, we do need to be able to recognize if the student in costume is a Louis Riel student.) 
  • Does your child’s costume allude to committing acts of violence against others? (this is subjective but please remember we are a k-9 school)
  • Does your child’s costume involve excessively gory elements? (see above re: little Bisons)
  • Does it involve changing the colour of their skin? (Shrek green is ok, however emulating another nationality/race is not) 
  • Does it allude to or reinforce a negative stereotype of a culture that is not the child's own, such as a kimono, a turban, a hijab, or a feather headdress, etc.? 
  • Does it mock religious beliefs (nun or priest or cleric or imam or rabbi, etc.)? 
  • Does it mock the LGBTQ+ community? 
  • Is it based on tragic or violent historical moments, such as slavery, the Holocaust, residential schools or cultural role play? 

If the response to any of these questions is yes, we would ask you and your child to reconsider the costume that they will be wearing to Louis Riel and perhaps leave those more challenging elements of their costume for another time outside of the school day. If they choose to disregard the above guidelines, we may need to ask them to change into attire that meets a K-9 school-friendly standard of dress. 

It is our hope that with the above in mind, the whole Louis Riel community will be able to safely enjoy any and all Halloween activities without feeling insulted or otherwise upset or uncomfortable. 


Thanks for supporting a spooky day of learning on Friday, Oct 31st