George Burton, the President of Canadore College, believes it won’t be long before other post-secondary schools call Canadore about The Village.
The facility had its official opening on Friday and it’s a building that integrates wellness practices from Indigenous, Eastern and Western cultures.
The facility is the first of its kind in all of Canada and Burton says other groups have taken notice.
“We’ve had lots of inquiries from the health and wellness field across the country and south of the border to see what we’re doing,” Burton said.
“It’s pretty exciting when people call you and they really want to come and see what you’re doing.”
Burton says The Village not only puts various health and wellness practices in one facility, it also creates the platform to bring different disciplines together in addition to paving the way for new program development and modify existing programs in order to meet changing needs.
Burton says The Village is accessible to the public so what the community at large sees is the traditional classroom laboratory coming out from behind closed doors and being made very public.
“So we have the interaction between the people we serve and the people we train in the health and wellness field,” Burton said.
Friday’s opening was Phase I of the massive project.
Burton hopes that ground on Phase II can be broken next spring.
This next segment involves a housing component with seniors’ housing and Burton says it will be a multi-generational setting.
The third phase is still off in the future and Burton says it involves research.