Sask. Grade 5 student excels at international braille competition [Video]

Despite Saskatchewan falling behind other provinces in reading, math and science scores, one Martensville student is bucking the trend.

Since the moment school finished last June, Isaiah Gauthier has been busy playing sports, going to hockey camps, fishing, camping and all the other things kids do in the summer.

“I went on a fishing trip and I caught four fish,” said 11-year-old Gauthier. “But we only got to keep one of them because the other ones were tiny.”

But between all the activities, he was also named a finalist in the 2024 Braille Challenge. It’s an international braille reading, spelling, proofreading and graphs competition held by the Braille Institute, hosted on the University of Southern California campus.

Being named one of the top 50 competitors out of more than a thousand entries, Gauthier was going up against the best braille readers and writers from the United States, Canada, the United …