Changes are afoot in the Northlands Parkway Collegiate culinary arts program as it bids farewell to its longtime instructor and welcomes back a former student in his place.
Paul Henderson hangs up his chef’s hat at NPC this week after nine years of leading the RRTVA program.
“It’s been a fantastic run,” he says, reflecting on the changes the course has seen over the past decade.
Under Henderson’s leadership, the program added a herb garden so students could work with the freshest materials possible, put a hog roaster built by welding students to good use for countless events, and added molecular gastronomy to the coursework, helping students explore food science to create new sensory treats.
The stars this year aligned in just the right way for Henderson to decide it was time to move on to something new, leaving teaching behind in favour of pursuing his interests in music and furniture building.
A major part of that decision, he shares, was the return of NPC and culinary arts program alumni Chelsea Delorme.
“Chelsea came back as our production chef, and she’s a natural,” Henderson says. The production chef is responsible for cooking the school’s lunchtime offerings so the culinary arts program chef can focus on teaching. Still, the two sides of the kitchen work closely together.
“After a few weeks I was like, ‘You know, I’m not going to be here forever,’” Henderson recalls. He urged Delorme to consider getting her vocational education certification and the rest, as they say, is history.
After graduating from NPC, Delorme went on to study at The Culinary Institute of Canada in P.E.I., earned her Red Sea accreditation, and then managed a few different restaurants before finding her way back to Winkler.
After a few years as NPC’s production chef, she stepped into a term position as the baking and pastry program instructor earlier this year, good preparation for moving into Henderson’s role this fall.
“That was always my goal was to be the culinary arts teacher,” Delorme shares. “But I feel like it came a lot sooner than I expected it.
“I’ve always loved working with students, and sharing my passion with students,” she says, noting one of her goals as a teacher is to build relationships with the kids. “I want to be someone that they can trust and build a connection with.”
Her time working with students in the baking section quickly demonstrated that Delorme is a perfect fit for teaching, Henderson says, and so he knows he’s leaving the program in good hands.
“We’ve been working together and she’s got all my material going into it, but then it’s her program.”
Delorme has no plans to make any big changes.
“The first year will be just understanding, finding everything, organizing everything, and then going from there,” she says, noting the program is already seeing a major shift as the pastry arts courses as of this September will no longer be offered as a separate program but rather as part of culinary arts’ third level studies.
“We’re also hiring an EA support permanent in culinary,” Delorme adds, noting that person, also a fellow program alumni, will be a huge help in the operation of the busy teaching kitchen. “As long as everything aligns, everything looks really good for the fall.”
Henderson is looking forward to his next chapter, but there are certainly things he will miss when he leaves NPC behind.
“I’m going to miss the students, for sure,” he says. “I was an industry chef and a baker for many years, decades, and then I came to teaching. If I had known that this was the gig, I would have gone into teaching right away. There’s been so many good students … and there’s always a community, that seems to be the common thing in these programs.
“From my point of view, to be able to hand it off to the future students with such a great team, it really feels good.”
