It was during a summer job as a teenager in Hay River, N.W.T., that former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin noticed a big difference between his aboriginal co-workers and his non-aboriginal friends he had grown up with back home in Windsor, Ont.

His friends from Hay River were as smart and as fun as his buddies in Windsor, but his friends at home had a sense of hope for what life held for them.

While a few of his friends from Hay River would go on to live very successful lives, most did not – and there were a few who committed suicide.

“I had never heard about residential schools at the time,” Martin told hundreds of Yukon educators this morning in a keynote address at Porter Creek Secondary School for the Yukon Teachers’ Association’s two-day conference.

When Martin eventually learned about the residential school system, he began to understand why it seemed his co-workers on that summer job didn’t have that same hope for the future.

As he moved through a career in business and politics, after his start as a lawyer, Martin decided he wanted to help improve education for aboriginal students.

After shortly reflecting on some of the projects he did in his earlier years aimed at aboriginal opportunities, he highlighted the projects that have started over the last five years under his Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative.

The initiative has piloted a number of projects.

They range from a high school business course to a mentoring program for aboriginal accountants to providing teachers with support to turn-around initiatives aimed at improving literacy rates at on-reserve schools, along with some projects that will be rolled out over the next year.

As Martin recalled, one of the first projects was the business course which came out of a presentation he had made to students in an Ontario high school.

He was approached by a young aboriginal man who asked him how he gone into the shipping business not knowing anything about shipping.

Martin explained he had been mentored.

When the student replied that there was probably no chance he’d ever be mentored, Martin realized there was a need for a business course to be developed for aboriginal students who, perhaps, have no knowledge of business nor how to get into business.

The course has proved a success, expanding to a number of high schools across the country.

It has since been adapted with workbooks that focus on aboriginal business leaders after comments made by a student who had a hard time relating to the examples of business stories in Toronto and other urban areas.

As Martin noted, after the course was delivered to the first school, graduation rates went up as students wanted to take the course and saw opportunities open up for their future.

“The business course is working,” he said.

Similarly, a program underway that sees mentoring at the largest six accounting firms in the country has proven successful for both those being mentored and the firms involved.

A website developed for teachers to seek advice has also been developed, providing an avenue for those in small schools who may not be able to seek the advice of numerous co-workers due to the school’s smaller size.

The turn-around program came from an Ontario program in the Peel (Toronto) area that was adapted for small on-reserve schools. In the schools where it’s been, literacy has risen substantially higher than the provincial average, Martin said.

He then went on to note that often schools that are on-reserve have principals who don’t have the same level of training other school principals might have.

Work is underway to develop a course for principals focusing on some of the specific issues they deal with in administration and dealing with various bodies involved such as school councils and the like.

It’s expected the course will be up and running in about a year.

Martin acknowledged that the program for principals may not apply to the Yukon needs.

He then went on to point to the broader issue that “we still live in two worlds” – non-aboriginal and aboriginal.

Though he’s not familiar with the Yukon’s system, he noted in the South, the history of Canada’s indigenous population is not often taught in the classroom.

Under his education initiative, a program was developed to ensure students at participating schools receive a half-hour of indigenous history each day for a two-week period as part of the effort to bring a more complete history of the country.

Martin highlighted statistics showing spending on education for aboriginal children who live on reserves is 30 to 50 per cent less than for those attending public schools and questioned how that spending on the country’s fastest-growing population can be justified.

He also highlighted work he is involved with along with former prime minister Joe Clark and former N.W.T. premier Stephen Kakfwi, though not part of his education initiative, to help bring all Canadians together to better understand the issues.

Martin received a standing ovation for his presentation, with teachers then seeking more detail on the programs and Martin’s views in the question and answer period that followed.

Martin again voiced the need for programs that address aboriginal needs throughout the country.

After his formal presentation wrapped up, a long line of educators waited to speak and take photos with the former prime minister.

The Quebec-based Martin, who became a long-serving finance minister with Jean Chretien’s first election victory in 1993, graduated to the prime ministership a decade later.

He won the 2004 federal election, but lost power to Conservative incumbent Stephen Harper in 2006.