Musician Robb Nash and his fellow members of the band Live on Arrival don’t want the students they meet in their cross-country tour to go through life without realizing their purpose and destiny in life. That was their message to the kids at Frog Lake, whom they addressed in a concert and presentation on Oct. 21.
Nash, who hails from Manitoba, survived a straight-on hit from a semi truck while in an out-of-control car several years ago. The accident took out a large piece of Nash’s skull, and paramedics pronounced him dead when they arrived at the scene.
Miraculously, Nash’s vital signs returned on the way to the morgue, and the same paramedics pronounced him live on arrival – the term after which his band is named.
Since then, Nash and his band have travelled across the country, sharing with high school students the importance of living a purposeful and destiny-fulfilled life.
“It means so much to us to come to a community like this,” said Nash, after a short concert and presentation for the students and teachers at Frog Lake’s Chief Napeweaw Comprehensive School on Thursday morning. “Hopefully we’ll be able to inspire people to come together as a community, and really understand that everyone’s created with purpose and destiny, and need to work together to make a better province and country.”
The concert was held in conjunction with a presentation by Impact Society, a group started in 1994 in northeast Calgary by Jack Toth and his wife, Collette. The husband and wife team started the organization after seeing how much young people needed to discover their gifts, abilities and strengths, according to Toth.
Heroes, a program started by Toth and the Impact Society, aims to lead young people to discover their strengths, and then from those strengths, learn how to make good decisions and live with purpose and significance. “And ultimately we say that is what leads to success,” commented Toth, adding, ”Success isn’t having a lot of money or cars, but success is living with purpose.”
The group began working with the Tribal Chief Education Foundation (TCEF) in northeastern Alberta just over a year ago, explained Toth. “They heard about Heroes and how it enables students to discover their strengths, and we began to work together.”
Russell Hunter, project manager of the First Nation Student Success Program for TCEF, is excited about what the Impact Society hopes to achieve through the Heroes Program.
Hunter works with six aboriginal communities in northeastern Alberta, including Beaver Lake, Cold Lake, Frog Lake, Heart Lake, Kehewin, and Whitefish Lake. “As part of a three year program, we want to target literacy, numeracy, and student retention,” said Hunter. The student retention program includes partnering with the Impact Society to train teachers in delivering the Heroes program, he explained.
“We hope that the students will start believing in themselves, and to start realizing and believe that everyone has gifts and abilities,” said Hunter. “And that goes with our philosophy that all our students can succeed.”
When asked why the Impact Society’s Robb Nash/Heroes tour chose Frog Lake as one of its destinations in a cross-Canada stint, Toth answered, “We knew that they had the right heart, the right passion for kids, and it really aligned with us.”
For more information about the Heroes program and Impact Society, visit www.impactsociety.com.
