She’s a student who spent nearly her entire childhood in the youth-in-care system and made it to McGill Law on merit and grit, determined to attend university.
Ever mindful of her budget, she had been juggling full-time Law studies with 25 hours a week of part-time work.
Then, to her astonishment, she learned McGill was awarding her the Martine Turcotte Bursary for students brought up in Quebec’s youth-in-care system. The full-ticket bursary covers tuition, fees and books for her McGill degree, along with a laptop. It also provides a monthly living allowance and other supports, such as mentorship and paid experiential learning opportunities during the summer.
“It’s like we’re in this ocean and we have a tank of oxygen on our back, which is our bank account,” says the student, who wishes to remain anonymous, about youth from care. “We don’t have anyone to fill up our tank once it’s empty or repair it if it breaks. I was asking myself my whole life, ‘am I going to run out of air? Should I go for the big swim and for university, or am I going to run out of air at some point?’
“Receiving this bursary is like you’re giving me an unlimited tank of oxygen. I can swim the whole way.”
McGill Law graduate Martine Turcotte, BCL’82, LLB’83, who enjoyed a highly successful career at Bell and served for 10 years on McGill’s Board of Governors, established the bursary program through a generous gift to McGill in 2021 and expressed hope that other donors would also support it.
Youth from care enrol in post-secondary education at roughly half the rate of their peers, according to the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada. The biggest obstacle they grapple with is often financial.
“I just feel so thankful for Martine Turcotte,” says the recipient. “How did she think about giving this amount of money towards foster children? It’s amazing.”
The barriers facing students who have had to rely on child protective services but then age out of care as they transition to post-secondary education can be overwhelming, says Cara Piperni, Interim Senior Director of Student Services (formerly Director of Scholarships and Student Aid) at McGill. “Youth from care often experience shelter concerns, periods of homelessness and we take all of that off the table because it’s an upfront commitment for the three or four years of study where you can focus on being a student. It’s transformational,” Piperni says.
“I have to say how utterly impressive these young people are simply to meet McGill’s high standards of admission, given everything that they’ve faced in their young lives already,” Piperni adds. “It’s quite something to see that level of persistence, that level of self-advocacy.”
Using his voice to advocate for other youth
First-year Bachelor of Social Work student Elijah Olise grew up in care and advocates for the need to better support teenagers as they age out of youth protective services.
“Being able to take care of yourself is tremendously harder than it is for your peers,” Olise says. Moreover, trauma is the major – and often overlooked – issue, he adds.
Far fewer youth who age out of care have obtained their high school diploma, notes Olise, who says much still needs to be done to support them in their academic journey. A study commissioned by the Quebec government and released in 2024, found that at age 21, only 37 per cent of youth from care had graduated high school compared to 86 per cent of youth their age.
Olise wrote in The McGill Tribune student newspaper last fall about the need for more wrap-around support at McGill for youth who age out of care. At the time, he was unaware of the Martine Turcotte Bursary, which he subsequently received. “It was such a good full-circle moment because it shows that people behind the scenes are actually trying to do something. And I really hope that more donors continue to do this.”
Olise founded the non-profit Holistic Afro Youth Center and is a member of the Canadian Consortium on Child & Youth Trauma. He hopes to eventually work in policy to effect change at the institutional level for youth who age out of care.
From survival mode to enjoying her education
The inaugural Martine Turcotte Bursary recipient is an honours Physiology student at McGill, who aspires to become a pathologist or a pathologists’ assistant.
She was placed in foster care when she was 11. “I have been working since I was 13 years old, sacrificing a lot of freedom in order to provide for myself,” says the student, who also wants to remain anonymous. That included working a full-time job at night while going to CEGEP during the day.
“Although I am very proud of my achievements, getting this ‘break’ really changed everything for me; after having to work so hard for everything that I have, I can now yield the results and enjoy getting an education without all of the financial pressure,” she says.
A bursary program with wrap-around supports
In addition to the bursary, Turcotte’s gift provided funding for recruitment and outreach, a support program to connect current students to campus resources and address any barriers, as well as experiential learning opportunities.
The Centre for Research on Children and Families at McGill’s School of Social Work will oversee the mentoring of students identifying from care and help organize paid summer research assistantship positions. They hope to get both initiatives off the ground this summer, says Professor Delphine Collin-Vézina, who leads the Centre.
Collin-Vézina and PhD candidate Amanda Keller have also developed training sessions for McGill staff to sensitize them to the youth protection experience, how to reach out to these students during recruitment efforts and support them once they’re at McGill.
McGill’s Student Accessibility and Achievement office also has a dedicated advisor to help connect students from care with on-campus resources in areas such as housing, mental and physical health, and job opportunities.
Moreover, Branches, McGill’s Community Outreach Program at Enrolment Services, works to demystify higher education for students from different walks of life, including youth in, and from, care.
As Piperni notes, “they can’t be here, if they don’t know how to get here.”
Collin-Vézina says the bursary sends the affirming message that youth from care have a unique contribution to make to society and McGill is behind them.
“Many other McGill students have never had to go through this kind of ordeal – not even close. They are very resourceful people who have had to work very hard to take charge of their lives,” she says. “It’s incredible how courageous they are.”
For her part, the McGill Law student hopes that youth in care see that the faculty isn’t out of reach if they want to pursue that academic path. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever walked this path before me that was a foster kid,” she says. “I’m hoping that it’s going to inspire others, just so they know that it’s possible.”