Writers' Retreat at Eagles Landing

The primary literature about community-based research (CBR) is extremely lacking in contributions from practitioners’ perspectives as members of research teams. Accordingly, in May 2008, AHRN-YT initiated a pilot Writers Retreat to explore how we can contribute to ‘giving voice’ to this important perspective of CBR.

At this stage, three graduate students have piloted the retreat separately and evaluated it. All have said it provided a unique and very valuable opportunity to focus on writing, and highly recommended that we continue it, both for graduate students and others. To date, each writer has stayed for 2-3 weeks in a cabin at Eagle Landing Bed and Breakfast in Carcross, Yukon. Each one was responsible for their travel costs to Whitehorse/Carcross, and AHRN-YT covered their costs for accommodation (which included wood and water) and food. The cabin is also equipped with high speed Internet, for the best of both worlds!

We will continue to seek ways to develop this opportunity as part of our contribution to improving the understanding of the roles that health practitioners play in the development and implementation of CBR in the North.