École de la Rive

If you look at the recent achievements of Myriam Tousignant, a Secondary 5 student at De la Rive high school in Lavaltrie, you would be convinced that she is a popular and model student. And this in fact is true. Last year Myriam was on the student council and a member of the organizing committee for the gala of excellence, the school’s Walt Disney trip committee and even the Lavaltrie snow festival committee. She has contagious energy, is brimming with enthusiasm and her academic grades are impressive. The complete opposite of the Myriam of a few years ago for whom drug and alcohol abuse, friends with a negative influence and a total indifference to school were part of everyday life.

Today, it is with unflinching serenity and a perpetual smile that Myriam embraces her new lifestyle, a lifestyle full of projects and ambition. Proud to have regained control of her life, she never hesitates to look back at her past excesses in her early high school years and even admits to having already tried drugs before she even entered high school. “I have to admit that I was somewhat easily influenced and I didn’t want to switch friends. I used to skip classes, I’d go to the resource room or I’d arrive in class “stoned,” she recounts, admitting that because of her attitude and behaviour she had a lot of problems with the school principal, her parents and sometimes even the police.

During her second year of high school, when she had to retake Secondary 1, Myriam continued on the same course. But the school’s special education teacher decided to try and help her and invited her to meet a counsellor from the Tremplin youth drop-in centre. “I didn’t want to make the effort, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t have a problem, other people did,” she says, knowing perfectly well today that it was in fact she who had problems.

Then at the beginning of Secondary 3, Myriam hit a wall, and that wall was her father. “My dad was a trigger point. It’s not that my parents hadn’t already tried, it’s that I was better disposed. So I made the personal decision to meet a counsellor. After several meetings, she suggested I go and stay at the Faucon day centre. I went of my own free will, something rare for me, and they were the worst three weeks of my life,” the 17-year-old admits.

These three weeks proved to Myriam that she truly did have a drug problem. She therefore decided to quit completely and, by the same token, broke off all ties with her friends. “It was really hard at first. I’d see them every day and I’d end up all alone in my corner. I learned how to make new friends and started to get involved.”

Ever since, though she says she has always considered herself as school “dummy,” Myriam’s grades have improved dramatically, and where she was on the verge of failing several subjects, she started to obtain marks of sometimes more than 90%. And as for her relations with her teachers and fellow students, they could now be described as harmonious. “I had a steep hill to climb and a reputation to re-establish. One day, a girl I hardly knew came up to me and congratulated me for all the effort I had made. She even said that she used to be afraid of me. Can you imagine?” she says with surprise.

It has now been three years since Myriam has used drugs, three years that have enabled her to develop her self-esteem in a different way, regain confidence in herself, discover her true passions by getting involved and above all work hard to earn the respect of her friends and more importantly her parents. She now sees life with renewed hope and has even enrolled in respiratory therapy at college, a program she will begin this fall.

“I went through a rough period when I was negative, mean and a liar. Thanks to my efforts, I succeeded in changing and I gave myself every chance for success. When I see young people who are tempted to follow the same path as I did at the time, I feel like telling them not to do it and to believe in themselves instead. It’s a much better way to progress,” she says, as a means of sending a message to others.

École de la Rive