Frontier College will celebrate its centenary in 1999. Founded by Alfred Fitzpatrick and a group of university students in 1899, Frontier College's original aim was to make education accessible to the labourers in the work camps of Canada. More recently, Frontier College rocognized that the literacy needs in urban "frontiers" were equally pressing. As a result, the College developed a series of programs that address the needs of people living in urban and rural communities throughout Canada. We work with a diverse group of individuals ranging from children to prisoners to migrant farm workers. Frontier College has a provincial coordinator working part-time in every province. We are training university student volunteers to set up literacy programs in their own communities.

In September, staff and campus volunteers from all across Canada gathered in Toronto for our National Conference and Annual General Meeting and came away with renewed enthusiasm after discussing our plans for the next year. For example, in Newfoundland, Caroline Vaughan is training volunteers to run " Homework Havens". These sessions are held after school in community centres throughout the province to help primary and secondary students with their studies. In St. John's they are run by student volunteers from Memorial University, outside the city they are run by parent volunteers. On Prince Edward Island, Mary Burke is seeking a student organizer to get a campus program started at U.P.E.I. In New Brunswick, the University of New Brunswick/Saint Thomas University campus group is doing family literacy work in several projects in the Fredericton area. In addition, another campus program at UNB-SJ is being formed and is looking for volunteers to help organize its work in Saint John. In Quebec, provincial co-ordinator Marie-Marthe Hébert works full-time co-ordinating the efforts of six University campuses at McGill; Concordia; L'Université du Québec à Montréal; Bishop's; l'Université Laval; and l'Université de Sherbrooke.

During the months of September and October the team of trainers from Toronto held tutor training sessions at several Ontario universities including: Wilfrid Laurier University; McMaster University; Ryerson Polytechnic University; Guelph University; Huron College (UWO); Lakehead University ; University of Toronto; and Trent University. In Kingston, the new regional co-ordinator, Carol Blake, had 120 student volunteers from Queen's University apply for the thirty tutoring positions in the prisons. In Ottawa, a former Labourer-Teacher, Keith Shackleton, is the new regional co-ordinator and is working with the program at Carleton University and developing a program at the University of Ottawa.

Susanne Magyar-Chapiel's student volunteers from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba have begun three Reading Circles in the core area of Winnipeg, working mainly with aboriginal children. Lisa-Marie Bossert, the new provincial co-ordinator for Alberta, is proud of the efforts of the Frontier College Students for Literacy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton where her group has formed a partnership with the Alberta Association for Community Living to tutor adults with developmental disabilities. Lisa Marie has also been involved with the program at the University of Calgary and a new program at the University of Lethbridge. In British Columbia, Erin Soros founded a First Nations Reading Circle with the help of a First Nations Youth Worker at the Britannia Community Centre in Vancouver. She is delighted that this circle combines reading with the First Nations' tradition of story telling, by having Elders from the various First Nations share their oral history.

These are just a few of the activities being conducted by Frontier College. For nearly 100 years we have been helping people achive their personal goals through literacy and learning.

If you would like further information about what is happening in your province, please contact your nearest provincial co-ordinator, they are: