Not that he should care, but Paul Martin is quietly earning back my respect.

This short and uplifting Globe piece is worth a weekend read.

It is about native students from Cromarty High in Thunder Bay, gradating this week from a new pilot program that was started and is is being financed by Paul Martin, our former Prime Minister.

They chose Cromarty High because it was a rather rundown former public high school that is run by Indian Affairs. The school teaches native students who come mostly from isolated fly-in communities.

The pilot program, which was designed around a 20-year-old program that was developed to encourage tough inner-city kids in places such as New York and Dublin to think about business.

Encouraged with the results of this first pilot, the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative is now funding five more pilot projects in the four western provinces and in Nunavut.

“We must find out the defects by trying it out in different parts of the country,” Martin says. “We'll make mistakes, we know that. But once we get it done, we'll have the chance to turn it into a national program.”

The Globe article goes on, telling a brief, yet poignant story about former grand chief Charles Fox, who at age 9 was sent off to a residential school and did not return home until he was 20. That section alone is worth the read.

Check the article out here.