Some messages don’t need words to be understood. They’re felt.

That’s exactly what students at St. Dominic Catholic Secondary School have captured with Portage of Hope, their entry in the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association (OCSTA) short video contest. Catholic school students across Ontario were invited to create a two-minute video demonstrating how they are “Pilgrims of Hope: On the Path to Holiness” in their school communities. 

For the team at St. Dominic, the story behind the video is as meaningful as the video itself.

Earlier this school year, students and staff took part in a birch bark canoe build at the school under the direction of Master Canoe Builder, Chuck Commanda. The experience left a deep impression on the school community. When an invitation to create a video for the provincial contest arrived, the timing felt right.

Principal Joe Conway shared his pride in the students’ vision and leadership.

“Our students took a transformational experience and turned it into a powerful message of hope — we are incredibly proud of them.”

“My goal for them was to create something impactful and lasting,” said educator Lisa Theriault, “and within just one hour of brainstorming, they had a plan in place for what they wanted to say about their school and their experience.”

The result is a visual story rooted in faith, healing, and community.

The film shows students carrying the birch bark canoe they built across a dark, snowy field, weighted down by orbs marked with words like fear, conflict, despair, and hate. When the students enter the school, each dark orb is cut away by a staff member and replaced with orbs labeled “hope”, “kindness”, “unity”, and “faith”. With every exchange, the video grows brighter until the light bursts from the orbs, surges through the halls and out to the school’s exterior, making even the building’s bricks shine. The students continue on their journey carrying only the light.

“...and by happy ‘God-incidence', the imagery also aligns with our school year theme, ‘Be The Light,’” said Lisa Thierault, reflecting how the students and staff carry that light through their school community.

The students reflected on their film: “We wanted to show that many of us carry a lot of negative weight, but even when things don’t seem to be going well, there is still hope. The video reflects how we see our school and our teachers. St. Dominic is a place where we are seen.”

They continued, “We recognize our teachers as wisdom keepers who help guide us, cutting away the things that hold us back and offering us light to carry. While each of us is on our own personal pilgrimage, we portage together as a community, gaining the wisdom here that we can carry back to the communities we belong to now and to those we will one day be part of.”

Whether or not the film places in the provincial contest, it has already done something lasting: it has captured the faith, resilience, creativity, and community that make St. Dominic a place where students feel valued and seen.

And just as in the film’s final scene, the message carries forward — when we each carry light, the world around us becomes brighter.