Lugaganowals · Wolf Clan · House of Gwininitxw · Gitxsan Nation
Incumbent Trustee, Sooke School District (SD62)
When you put your name forward for something and the people elect you — be accountable to them. I am here to represent all children.
I have served the families of SD62 as your school trustee since 2022, and I am asking for your support to continue that work.
I came to the board table the way I have come to everything: as a mother, a nurse, a foster parent, and someone who has spent a lifetime speaking up for people who need a voice in the room. I have raised two sets of children through SD62 schools. I spent thirty-five years in health care and four decades in the labour movement. For the past four years I have brought all of it to the work of governing this district.
See my full record and experience on the board →
Why I am running again
Our district is growing faster than the province is funding it. SD62 serves 13,654 students. We are managing enrolment pressure, overcrowded schools, and provincial funding that has not kept pace with how quickly the West Shore is growing. We need more schools, and we need them sooner.
North Langford Secondary has to get built. It is in early development now. Seeing it open is the single clearest reason I am asking for another term.
The learning curve is behind me. I know the School Act. I know the budget cycle, the committee structure, and the partner groups. A district moving this fast cannot afford a board that is starting over.
What I will keep working for
- Schools built ahead of the growth, not behind it — capital and financial planning that matches the pace this district is actually growing at.
- Class size and composition that let teachers teach, with real support for students who learn differently.
- Inclusive schools where every child is safe and seen. SD62 has been a provincial leader on equity and diversity. I will defend that record.
- Student mental health treated as core, not extra.
- Strong school libraries — protected annual funding for books, digital resources and technology, and teacher-librarians kept in the schools that have them.
- Public funding as the foundation of public education. Community generosity is welcome, but it can never become a substitute for the province properly funding our schools.
- Parents at the table. Come to board meetings. Write the province during budget season. Your voice carries further than mine does alone.
My story
I am from the Wolf Clan of the Gitxsan Nation in northern British Columbia. When I was seven my grandmother, SuuDee, gave me my name: Lugaganowals — a frog that is always leaning, or giving. My mother, Hereditary Chief Gwininitxw, taught her children to respect earth, wind, fire and water, and brought us into the feast hall to learn as soon as we could sit and listen. My eldest sister carries the name Gwininitxw today.
I am the third youngest of eight children. My parents raised 47 foster children alongside us. We learned early that if you have family you have everything — and many of my siblings are foster parents themselves today.
In 1982, when I was 25 and studying nursing, my husband Terry Erickson was killed in a workplace accident. Our sons were five and seven. I raised Jeramie and Vincent on my own for the next sixteen years while completing my Licensed Practical Nurse training at Malaspina College in Nanaimo. My nursing career began in 1985 at Wrinch Memorial Hospital in Hazelton — the hospital where I and all of my siblings were born.
Five years later I brought my family back to Vancouver Island, and I have been privileged to live on Coast Salish Territory since 1990. I nursed at Royal Jubilee Hospital, worked in surgery, and became the first female orderly in Victoria. In 2000 a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis moved me onto long-term disability, so I put my time into committee work instead — fighting for workers and giving back to the community. I retired from Island Health in 2022 after thirty-five years in health care.
I married Bill Spiller in 1998. In December 2005 we welcomed our great-niece Tanisha into our home at five and a half months old, and ten months later our grandson Terrance. We raised them as our own children, and both came up through SD62 schools. Every year Bill and I bring the children north to attend feasts, fish, pick berries and preserve, so that they understand their role as Gitxsan.
I lost my youngest son, Vince, in 2016.
Author and role model
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- My great-nieces with the book I sent them — the big sister reading to her little sister.
In 2012 I began sitting in on Tanisha and Terrance’s show-and-tell classes, and that grew into serving as a First Nations Role Model for SD62 from 2011 to 2022. I teach children about First Nations medicine, food and dress, because every child has the right to learn about our traditional ways.
Enough teachers encouraged me to write that eventually I did. Trudy’s Rock Story (2016) is a story my grandmother told my siblings and me while she whipped soapberries under a coal-oil lantern. Trudy’s Healing Stone followed in 2017. Both are in bookstores across Canada, and Trudy’s Rock Story is published in English, French, and my mother tongue, Gitsenimx̱.
I dedicated Trudy’s Rock Story to Vince.
I still bring my books into SD62 classrooms and read to students. I bring real furs and stuffed animals with me that children can touch and feel and smell, because those furs are part of my food chain, and caring for Mother Earth is a responsibility we share.