‘Everyone wants to bring their best’: How music is rebuilding community at NBCHS

At lunchtime, the band room at North Battleford Comprehensive High School (NBCHS) is anything but quiet.

Students drift in with instrument cases slung over their shoulders. Some rehearse passages. Others linger, talking, laughing, waiting their turn. The door rarely stays closed for long.

“It’s busy down there,” said Marlouie Saique, the school’s music and band director.

“To the point where beside our band room is the daycare, and plenty of times, because they’re just having so much fun, the daycare would open their door and say, ‘Shh, relax — there’s little people here sleeping.’”

For Saique, now in his second year at the school, that constant hum is more than background noise. It’s a sign of a program rebuilding itself and of students finding a place where they belong.

The music program at NBCHS has existed for decades, but like many performing arts programs, it was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wind instruments, he explained, are “very physical,” and participation dropped sharply during that period.

“And we’re now in the rebuilding phase, and the future is bright for our program here.”

That rebuilding is visible in the numbers. Enrollment has grown from just over 50 students last year to nearly 90 students this year, spanning Grades 7 through 12.

The program now includes multiple ensembles: beginner and experienced bands in Grades 7 and 8, a Grade 9 band, and a senior concert band for students in Grades 9 to 12. This year, the school also restarted a drum line, using equipment transferred from Battleford Central School.

Students perform during North Battleford Comprehensive High School’s 2025 winter band concert. (submitted/Marlouie Saique)

Saique is also working to revive a jazz band – a program the school once had but lost over time.

“Our students don’t know what a jazz band is,” he said. “And in a city that we are in, there is not a lot of jazz representation.”

Facilities have played a key role in the program’s growth. The school maintains a large inventory of instruments – roughly 30 guitars, between 140 and 160 wind instruments, and a full range of percussion – all available for students to use without needing to travel to larger centres.

But for Saique, the real impact of the program isn’t measured in instruments or enrollment figures.

“A lot of our students who take band are, for the most part, shy people,” he said. “They want to use their instruments to be able to speak to other people.”

Over time, he’s watched those students change.

“Throughout the year, like last year and this year as well, you could see that they made improvements,” he said. “They made a lot of friends in the band.”

This year, the program held its first-ever band camp – an overnight retreat at Red Berry Bible Camp where students worked with professional musicians and built relationships across grade levels.

“There’s also that peer mentorship happening in the program,” Saique said. “Which I’m really, really lucky to see.”

Students from North Battleford Comprehensive High School take part in the school’s first-ever band camp at Red Berry Bible Camp in 2025. The overnight retreat focused on music instruction and peer connection. (submitted/Marlouie Saique)

That sense of community is what Saique values most, especially at a time when he believes in-person connection is becoming harder to find.

“I believe in community, something that is now getting taken away by social media and cell phones,” he said. “What I find in a music program, in a band program, is that everyone wants to bring their best … without the cell phone, without the online community.”

Members of North Battleford Comprehensive High School’s Grade 7 to 9 band perform during a December 2025 tour of local elementary schools, sharing holiday music with younger students in the Living Sky School Division.(submitted/Marlouie Saique)

Recently, students in the Grades 7 to 9 bands toured local elementary schools, performing Christmas carols and introducing younger students to the program.

“We shared our music community here,” he said, hoping to “entice them to join what a wonderful community we have here.”

As the program prepares for upcoming festivals in Regina, the Battlefords, Alberta and beyond, Saique said he’s less focused on competition than growth.

“For the most part, when we are attending these festivals, we are against ourselves,” he said.

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Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com

by Kenneth Cheung

‘Everyone wants to bring their best’: How music is rebuilding community at NBCHS

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