Driving school in Burns Lake opening up service to all residents

The Six Nations Driving School in Burns Lake will be opening up their services for purchase to all residents starting on July 1. The school was previously run exclusively on grant funding to provide subsidized training for Indigenous residents.

“We’ve seen a really high demand for driving school services in the area. We get frequent inquires about if our service is available for non-indigenous people, so we decided to expand to begin selling the course to anyone starting in the summer,” Six Nations Driving School Instructor Amber Poffenroth told Lakes District News.

Poffenroth will be one of two instructors in the school along with Jessi Jack, who recently completed her driving instruction certification. The Six Nations Driving School was established back in 2019, and plans for the expansion would have come much sooner according to Poffenroth, but COVID-19 complications pushed back the plans.

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The driving school provides a combination of in-class training and driving lessons. The L training two day in-class course for a Class 7 license will be available for purchase, as well as the graduating licensing program for a Class 5 license, which consists of 32 hours of in-class training as well as driving lessons.

Regular road test prep driving lessons without an in-class component will be available as well.

With the expansion, the Six Nations Driving School will become the only ICBC licensed driving school available to all residents in Burns Lake.

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“I think it’s going to provide a great service for the community. As I said, we’ve noticed a real demand and I feel like we provide access to driving school to a lot of people in the area that might not otherwise have it,” said Poffenroth.

“I also think it’s really hard to function in a town like Burns Lake without access to a vehicle. The reality is, we don’t have the transit system of a big city, so I’m hoping that being able to have easy access to driving school will be a benefit to a lot of people who need to get a license for work, or things like that.”