The new-and-improved Wells Gray Research and Education Centre is hoping to be ready to use this fall.

Thompson Rivers University Dean of Science Tom Dickinson says the centre will have a classroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and sleeping space for 20 students.

“So we had the one room schoolhouse, but it was pretty uncomfortable when it was 30 below, I can guarantee you, in a building that was not built for that. So what this allows us to do is give four seasons worth of exposure to students. And we also are talking about working closely with the Simpcw First Nation as well, and getting their input into things that are needed to improve the kinds of knowledge about how the ecosystems up there work.”

Dickinson tells NL News the centre will be done next month, but because of COVID, it won’t be able to be used right away.

“We’re in a time that it’s hard to actually follow all the rules to bring people together, but we’re hoping that by the fall of this year there will be enough situations and conditions in place, and safety precautions in place, that we’ll be able to start using it for the first field trips that we have planned for our natural resource science program.”

He estimates it has cost about $1 million to build, and says the planning for it goes back to the 1990s.

He says a $150,000-dollar grant from the Wells Gray Community Forest Corporation “put us over the top” for being able to build the centre. That grant was given in June of 2019, and was re-announced earlier this month.