Standing Into Danger

I remember when my father's Lansdowne Letter written on January 17, 1961 arrived.
It contained two of my father's Indian stories that had such a powerful impact on me.

His Indian stories had already propelled
idealistic me to act,
and I was well into a project
as a surprise for my father,
one that would powerfully impact
him in return.

Ten-Year Old Me
School Photo
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Dad's letter described two incidents that I have never forgotten,
although I find that my perspective has changed from that of my ten-year old self.

On Tuesday, January 17, 1961
My father wrote to his extended family:

Hi There Again:
Today was just trouble from the word go.
As you can see, I can’t even type right,
why, it got so bad after a while,
that I figured what else can happen?

This question was answered for me before the end of the day,
when an old Indian woman put a curse on me.

I had cuffed her grandson on the ear in school,
so she came down with someone who could speak
both Indian and English and proceeded to put this curse on me.

Oh, it wasn’t one of their more serious curses,
just one that was calculated to cause me considerable inconvenience.

I am supposed
to get quite sick
for a couple of days
and not be able to eat,
or get out of bed,
or anything like this.

Dad's Bed in His One-Room Shack
Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

The amazing part of the whole thing is that
they put a lot of faith in curses and all such jazz.
Apparently anyone can put a curse on anyone else.
But the older you are,
the more potent your curses are supposed to be.
This old gal was no spring chicken, I can assure you.

It will be interesting to see just how powerful her cursing powers are.
If she really has the touch, I should learn it from her, and go visit S/L Lewis, shouldn’t I?

My Father's Classroom

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960

Photo by Donald MacBeath

This reminds me of something I was reading
in the medical records over at the nursing station the other day.

I was helping Mike type up some of his records,
and I came across the case history of a woman who was mentally deranged,
or as the Indians put it, possessed of a Wintigo.

This is how they proceeded to treat the poor woman.
They cut a hole three feet square in the floor of the shack where they lived,
and then they dug a hole of the same dimensions under the shack
to a depth sufficient just to bring her head just above the floor of the shack,
and they put the poor creature in the hole
and there she stayed for over three years
coming up only to answer the call of nature.

Apparently the calls of nature that she answered
when she was out of the hole were many and varied,
for the record states that during the period
that she spent in the hole, she bore two children.
She finally died of T.B.

This sounds like something that you would hear about during the Middle Ages,
but it happened in Canada, in the early forties or late thirties,
just about the beginning of the war.

A Mother and Child Under Happier Circumstances

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960

Photo by Donald MacBeath

As I started to say, this has been one hell of a day.
I came to school this morning to find both stoves out.
It was 33 below when I went to school this morning.

After I got the stoves lit, I went down to the water hole;
and, in the process, I managed to drive my ice pick
right through the ice and straight down to the bottom of the lake.
I had to buy a new one with my own money,
and they cost $7.50 each.

After I got the hole opened, I managed to spill
half a bucket of real cold lake water down inside my right overshoe.
After this, one of the kids spilled ink down my shirtfront,
and I ripped my pants on a packing case.
And all this before dinner yet!!!

I can’t remember just what happened to me after dinner,
other than the curse being put upon me,
but I had my moments in the afternoon also.

Well, I must sign off now and get to bed.
Bye now,
Love, Don.

Lansdowne House

Members of the Fort Hope Band watching a floatplane arrive

at the dock at Lansdowne house at Treaty Time, June 1956.

John Macfie Transparency Reference Code: C 330-14-0-0-95 Archives of Ontario, I0012712 archives.gov.ca/on © Queen's Printer for Ontario

The materials on this website are protected by Crown copyright (unless otherwise indicated), which is held by the Queen's Printer for Ontario.

If credit is given and Crown copyright is acknowledged,the materials may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes.

When I was ten, the things that struck me about the cursing incident
were how funny it was that my father had been cursed
and wondering if the curse would work on him.

Now what impacts me is my father writing,
"I had cuffed her grandson on the ear in school."

If I had ever physically hit a child in my twenty-five years
of teaching in an elementary school, I'd probably have lost my job.
But at the time my father wrote this letter,
corporal punishment was practiced, not only in the North,
but throughout all of Canada.

I have a vivid memory of eight-year old me
standing at the front of my one-room school
in Margaretsville, Nova Scotia.

I see the white faces of my kindergarten through grade six classmates
as my teacher strapped me with a leather strap:
three forceful smacks on each of my outstretched palms.
For passing a note.

My Siblings and I in Margaretsville, 1959

Donnie, Barbie, Me with Bertie, Gretchen (Our Dachshund), and Roy

Photo Likely by Donald MacBeath

I remember the pain, the humiliation, and my fervent wish
that my parents wouldn't find out.
I had always been told that if I got in trouble at school,
I'd be in far worse trouble when I got home.
I also remember clenching my jaws and refusing to cry,
even though my eyes filled with tears.

Of course, my getting strapped in school was all over that tiny fishing village in no time.
Odd thing was, I didn't get into worse trouble at home.
My parents told me never to get caught passing another note,
or I would be in worse trouble at home.

Now I read my father's sentence with the knowledge of the horrific treatment
of Indigenous children throughout the Canadian North.
My strapping doesn't begin to compare
to what generations of them endured over many years.

I, in no way, condone my father's cuffing any child in any school;
but I will say, that as a teacher, my father usually managed
his students with rapport, humor and fairness.
It was rare for him to physically discipline students
whether as a teacher or as a principal.

The Anglican Church Mission School at Fort Hope, 1910

Ojibway children are still taught their own language by the English missionaries.

Note: By using this photo, I am not implying that abuse was occurring in this instance.

Wikimedia

As for the second incident, I have never been able to erase
the image of that poor woman stuck in a hole for the last three years of her life.
I was shocked as a ten-year old, but I am less shocked now.

I have come to realize that people everywhere in place and time
have grossly misunderstood and mistreated the mentally ill.

I will end with a question my father asked over fifty years ago
regarding the incident described in his January 17th letter:

"The whole event, including the birth of the two children
is recorded in detail at the nursing station at Lansdowne House,
and was confirmed to me by the resident priest.
What has never been explained to my satisfaction though is this:
If there was a nurse and if there was a priest at Lansdowne House,
why was this situation allowed to persist?"

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Bay of Fundy out of Westport, Brier Island
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

Notes:

1. Mike Flaherty:

Mike was the nurse at the nursing station in Lansdowne House,
and he provided basic medical services for the White and Ojibway people

who lived in the community.

2. Wintigo:
I am using my father's spelling, which is one of the many variations of this word.
Wintigos occur throughout Anishinabe legends and mythology. They are depicted in different
ways: as man-eating giants or as people possessed by a Wintigo for committing sins such as
selfishness, gluttony, or cannibalism. A wintigo's appearance is that of a huge ice-coated monster.
Typically, the only escape for a person possessed by a wintigo was death.
nativelanguages.org

Ojibway Cosmos

wikimedia

3. 33 Below: -33º F. = -36.1º C.

4. My Father's Question:
Source: The Northern School Teacher (an unpublished handbook written by my father)

5. Resident Priest:
It was Father Ouimet who confirmed for my father that this incident had occurred as described
in the nursing station records. What is not clear is whether or not Father Ouimet was the
resident priest at the Roman Catholic Mission when the woman was confined to the hole.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Neskantaga (Lansdowne House)

Human Rights Watch Report on the Safe Water Crisis

in First Nations Communities in Ontario

Make It Safe

I've spent a lot of time since I retired from elementary teaching
thinking about my father as a teacher and a principal.
In Lansdowne House over fifty years ago,
he was intuitively doing many of the things
ELA teachers do today, but with no training or direction.
He was a gifted and a forward thinking teacher.

I say this, not because I'm his daughter,
but because I've worked with hundreds of students
over my teaching career who were ELA
or English language Acquisition students.

I've been trained in strategies and techniques
that I experienced him using as his student
in Lansdowne House so many years ago.

He did everything he could to help his Indian students learn,
even going so far as to put my four-year-old sister Barbie
in kindergarten with his youngest Indian children,
so that she could model and explain in her way what to do.

Donnie, Bertie, and Barbie (right)

A Few Months Before Going North

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1960

Not that that always worked the way he had hoped,
because Barbie was strong-willed and a scamp.
My most vivid memory of her in Dad's classroom
(aside from the fact that the Indian girls adored her)
was her stuffing an eraser up her nose
and having to be rushed across the field to the nursing station
so Mike could extract the eraser.

On Wednesday, January 18, 1961
My father wrote to his extended family:

Hi There:
I hope you are ready for the daily blurb, because here it comes.
It will be a short one though, for Uno wants to use his machine,
and I don’t feel too well.
Hope the old girl’s curse isn’t starting to work.

I will be so glad when my typewriter gets up here,
so I don’t have to use Uno’s any more. I
feel guilty, and besides, there are often times
when I feel like typing and Uno is using the machine.

My One Photo of Dad and Uno together

with Baby Duncan

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960

It is awfully hard to teach children when they only understand
about a third of what you are saying to them.
I nearly drove myself up the wall today trying to teach one
of my beginners to recognize the largest of a series of numbers and to mark it.

I just couldn’t get it across to her what I meant by big and small.
I finally got it across by using about three sheets of foolscap
and putting down about twenty-five series of numbers.

Alongside each number, I would put a group of dots corresponding to the number.
After I finished each series, I would count the dots after each number
and cross out the number having the largest group of dots.

After each series, I’d draw another series and see if she could do it;
and if she couldn’t do it, I’d repeat the whole process.
She finally caught on to it at the twenty-third series of numbers.
By this time I was really seeing dots before my eyes.

I wonder how many series I’ll have to draw next week when I
attempt to teach her to recognize and mark the smallest number.

Some of My Father's Younger Girls

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960

The weather is quite cold today.
It was about 34 below
when I was passing the nursing station.

When I went down to the water hole,
there was about two or three inches of ice.
This formed in only about 18 hours.

Oh yes, as I was drawing the water out of the hole,
I spilled another half bucket down my right overshoe again.
I’ll have to figure some way to stop that,
because it is down right uncomfortable.

I weighed myself today, and while I’m not making any
spectacular progress, I am holding my own. I
haven’t reached my goal of 190 pounds yet,
but I have only two pounds to go. That’s not too bad –
239 to 192 in about three and a half months.

I have been up here longer than that,
but I have only been working on losing weight
for about the time mentioned.
Nothing I own fits me now.
Maureen will have a large job taking in my pants.
I have lost about five inches or more in the waist.

Well, I must sign off now,
as Uno is getting impatient
to use the machine.
Bye now,
Love, Don.

Dad Typing His Lansdowne Letters
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Lansdowne House was not the only place
I was fortunate to have my father as my teacher and principal.
He was my principal throughout high school,
and my home-room teacher my senior year
when he taught me history, economics, and current affairs.

He was also the Supervising Principal of Indian Schools
when I lived in Sioux Lookout.
It was so odd to stand with my classmates
and say, "Good morning, Mr. MacBeath,"
when he came to observe my teacher Mr. Keast
working with my Indian classmates.

I've had a lot of teachers and professors over the years.
To me, my father was always the best of the bunch.

My Favorite Teacher and I

at My Graduation

Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, 1971

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Bay of Fundy out of Westport, Brier Island
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

Notes:

1. Mike Flaherty:

Mike was the nurse at the nursing station in Lansdowne House,
and he provided basic medical services for the White and Ojibway people

who lived in the community.

2. Uno Manilla:
Uno was the teacher at the Roman Catholic Day School at the mission.
He shared a two-room shack with my father.

3. 34 Below: -33º F. = -36.6º C.

4. Weight Conversions:
190 pounds = 86.1 kilograms
2 pounds = 0.9 kilograms
239 pounds = 108.4 kilograms
192 pounds = 87.0 kilograms

5. Inches to Centimeters:
2-3 inches = 5-7.6 centimeters
5 inches = 12.7 centimeters

6. Maureen McRae:
Maureen was the wife of my father's best friend Duncan who worked for the Department
of Transport in Lansdowne House. She sometimes helped out Uno and my father who rented a
small cabin at the Roman Catholic mission in Lansdowne House by sewing for them.
Maureen and Duncan were the parents of Baby Duncan.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Neskantaga (Lansdowne House)

Human Rights Watch Report on the Safe Water Crisis

in First Nations Communities in Ontario

Make It Safe

It's the first Wednesday
of the month ~
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.

To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh are:
C. Lee McKenzie , Rachel Pattison, Elizabeth Seckman, Stephanie Faris, Lori L. MacLaughlin, and Elsie Amata.

I hope you have a chance to visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Happy IWSG Day to everyone making the rounds!
I'm home now ~ for another week.
I'm planning to accomplish more writing
this fall in Victoria than I managed last year.

Next Stop: Beautiful Victoria

British Columbia, Canada

Do you like the new feature for IWSG Day?

I certainly do!

It's fun to respond to questions about writing;
but what I truly enjoy is reading
the inspiring answers of other IWSG members.

I'm hoping to get some galvanizing ideas,
because I struggle with the topic of September's question:

How do you find the time to write in your busy day?

I work in spurts fueled by pressure.

I've never been able to settle into a schedule.

I've been writing a memoir, and it's proven

to be much more difficult than I'd imagined.

What keeps me moving forward with my memoir

is my Friday Northern blog post.

Were it not for my blog, I'd have given up long ago.

Lots of Hot Coffee Helps Too!

Aurora, Colorado, USA

When I started writing several years ago,

I had no idea how to proceed.

I had piles of letters, photographs, and maps

and a morass of memories that I had skirted for decades.

Things that happened during my time in the North

changed how I felt and behaved in the years that came after.

Some things affected me profoundly,

and some things I did as a result haunted me.

The only way I could wade into the emotional muskeg

confronting me was with tiny steps, a blog post here, a blog post there.

Sometimes I'd attempt a series,

like my inner gingerbread man posts,

thinking I could handle it, but I couldn't.

I'd drop it abruptly with no explanation.

I was clueless about blogging,

and the most unexpected thing happened.

Bloggers reached out and supported me.

I was shocked.

I had no idea such a thing could happen.

So slowly I began writing what I could look at,

following my father's letters chronologically,

and floundering through the cold, wet muskeg.

Northern Muskeg

Flickr: Rover-Thor License

I'm not all the way there yet.

I may be the slowest memoir writer ever,

but I'm making progress,

I may actually get it done!

If it weren't for the amazing people I've met through

blogging and the Insecure Writer's Support Group,

I wouldn't be writing at all.

I would have given up in despair.

The pressure of getting that next Northern post out

locks me into a weekly writing schedule

that keeps me moving forward almost every day.

I'm more binger than scheduled, but I am writing.

It's not finding time, more squeezed by a deadline.

Through this process,

I can't believe how much I've learned about writing,

and how much better I understand my life.

I've become kinder to that younger me.

I can look at her and perhaps understand her.

Not all of this is connected with the North, of course,

but it's my experiences in the North that sent me spiraling.

Gotta go! Gotta binge on Friday's post! LOL

Happy writing, Everyone!

My Family and I Exploring This Summer

Cape Split, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada

Photo by Barbara MacBeath

That northern time, when my father wrote his Lansdowne Letters,
can feel as close as a breath I took a moment ago;
and then, suddenly, an ordinary sentence or two of my father's
can slam me with the weight of a half century of change.

Winter Night, Northwestern Ontario

Flickr: Jeremiah John McBride License

On Thursday, January 19, 1961
My father wrote to his extended family:

Hi There:
I can never seem to get a good edition off on Thursday,
because I usually have so much official correspondence
to do that night. This Thursday is no exception.

However, I think that this week’s output is quite respectable
considering the curse and everything.
It's not every editor that works with such a handicap, is it?

I’ll have to beg off tonight though,
because I am swamped with correspondence.
If I had my own typewriter,
I might be able to write more, because I could
bang out my correspondence on the typewriter.
I can really rattle along on one now.

However Uno wants to write one short letter on the machine,
so that means that it will be occupied for the rest of the evening.

I don’t see why he doesn’t write his official correspondence by hand.
It wouldn’t take him nearly so long, and they would look a whole lot neater,
considering the amount of mistakes he makes.
Either this, or allow me to type his official correspondence for him.

I type a lot for Mike and even compose his letters for him.
He just gives me a general idea of what he wants to say and sets me loose.

Well Uno is beginning to pace the floor, so I better sign off.
Bye now, till next week.

Love, Don.

Winter Night, Hudson Bay Lowlands

Flickr: Emmanuel Milou License

I type a lot for Mike ...
Mike was the only nurse in remote Lansdowne House,
and he provided basic medical services for people in the community.
Today it's hard for me to imagine that my father often went
to the nursing station and typed medical letters and records for Mike.

Just this morning I went to my doctor's office for an appointment.
I had to sign in on a sticker on a clipboard when I arrived.
That sticker was removed before another arriving patient could see it.
I usually take my medical privacy for granted
and forget how different things were even a few years ago.

Here was my father typing medical information
about people he knew in that tiny place.
That's how my father discovered the medical record
of the Indian woman possessed of a Wintigo,
whose tragic story I shared in a recent post.

Those remote nursing stations scattered across the North
may have operated with a rough-and-tumble casualness,
but they were no laughing matter.

Life was precarious in the far-flung First Nations villages,
and the presence of a nurse could mean life rather than death.

My Father Collecting Water Samples in the Bush

as He Works with Lansdowne House's Nurse

Photo by Mike O'Flaherty

Just two days ago,
I found a sadly prescient letter of Father Ouimet's,
as I browsed through piles and piles of old papers.
He wrote to my parents in his terse English
of the nursing station and community
on December 18, 1982:

"We lost our Nursing Station -
Government cutting on expenses.
The nurses moved to Fort Hope -
but they keep a clinic over here -
coming every 2 weeks for 3 days.

"School still going - lots of kids in town.
A few accidents -
a girl 21 years old committed suicide
(Tim W.'s daughter called Lynn).

"Another young fellow was drunk.
Made too much fire -
Burnt his home and himself on September 21/82.
He was 29 - Joe S. Married with a wife and two young kids..."

The Best of Friends: Father Ouimet with My Father

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Fall 1960

Now Lansdowne House has the Rachael Bessie Sakanee Memorial Health Center.
It coordinates health care services through the community's newest nursing station,
and it provides a variety of physical and mental health services,
including access to specialized medical care via videoconferencing.

From a single nurse with a shortwave radio
to a nursing station and modern health center with videoconferencing,
health care has dramatically changed in fifty years.

But all that change doesn't much matter
when someone commits suicide
or has a senseless, alcohol-fueled accident.

There is still a long way to go to resolve
the complex health issues in the Canadian North.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1. "Considering the curse and everything"
My father was cursed by the grandmother of one of his Indian students: TLL: Cursed.

2. "possessed of a wintigo"
My father wrote of a mentally-deranged woman who lived and died tragically: TLL: Cursed.

3. Rachael Bessie Sakanee Memorial Health Center:
Services

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Wikipedia

Well, here I am, temporarily writing from a new place,
smaller than my father's shack in Lansdowne House,
but with many more amenities than his fifty plus years ago:
Starting with awesome communication and hot running water!

Home-Away-From-Home

Helm's Inn,

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

September 15, 2016

In addition to the usual edition of his Lansdowne Letters,

my father sometimes wrote additional letters beyond his regular circle,

like to his cousins in Prince Edward Island.

This is one such letter ~

Forgive me if it includes some things written about in previous letters ~

But I've been traveling, plus celebrating our arrival in Victoria

with pizza and drinks at the Sticky Wicket ~

so this is the best I can do tonight!

Our Substitute for Parkway Bar and Grill

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

September 15, 2016

And it revealed something about Father Ouimet that I had long forgotten.

Father Ouimet was an iconic figure in my life,

and I will love and admire him always.

Saturday, January 21, 1961
My father wrote a group letter to several of his cousins:

Hi There:
It has been quite some time some time since I have been doing any writing to you.
The typewriter went on the fritz just as freeze-up started,
and I just received the necessary replacement parts about two weeks ago.
I have spent the ensuing two weeks catching up some
very pressing official correspondence that I had to attend to.

During the time I was without a typewriter,
I confined my letter writing to Sara, Mother, Sara’s mother, and Aunt Maude.

The reason for writing to the first on the list should be obvious
and to the second should be understandable.
As for the third, I am one of those lucky and unusual characters
that is on good relations with my mother-in-law.
Besides, I enjoy writing to and receiving letters from Mrs. MacDonald.

I see that I am still suffering from hoof and mouth disease
(every time I open my mouth, I put my foot in it),
for I have inferred that I don’t like writing to
and receiving letters from you, which is not the truth.
The thing I am trying to say is that Mrs. MacDonald is really
a member of my immediate family, like my mother.

Oh hell, let’s drop this subject -
I really shouldn’t have started it in the first place.
I think you all know what I am trying to say anyway.

As for writing to Aunt Maude, she has been very sick,
and letters are as beneficial to her as medicine.

I think that the big news in the MacBeath family
is that we are going to be reunited in the near future.
Sara and the children are coming up to Lansdowne House
to join me on 18 Feb 61.

I have managed to secure permission to occupy a house at Lansdowne House
which belongs to the Department of Lands and Forests. It is small, but adequate.
It has two bedrooms, a nice kitchen and living room, and a bathroom.
It is completely furnished, including a propane range,
a kerosene fridge, and a gasoline washing machine in the kitchen.

The Forestry Shack

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Sketch by Maureen McRae

I don’t have to pay any rent for it,
and the Department of Indian Affairs will supply the oil for the furnace.
The only thing I will have to pay for is the cost of the propane gas,
which should come to about $15.00 a month.

The house has no electricity or running water,
but I have arranged to get a line run over from the nursing station.
This will give me 110-volt power in the living room.
I should be able to use an electric kettle, iron, and a tri-light.

I’m wrong about the running water.
It does have running water – whenever I run to the lake after some.
However, everybody in Lansdowne House is in the same boat.
When they build my new teacherage next summer,
there will be running water and electricity.
There will also be three bedrooms in the house.

Incidentally, I like this place so much that
I’m going to stay up here for several winters.
I had a visit from the school inspector,
and he was most pleased with my work.
He said that I was a very successful Indian teacher,
and he would be delighted to have me stay
at Lansdowne House for as long as I wish to stay.

He told me that he has visited all the schools in his district
and that my pupils have made a showing equal to all of them,
and better than most. He also told me that my pupils were speaking
more and better English than most of the schools in his district.

Freeze-up was quite an experience for me.
It was the first time that I had ever been cut off from civilization,
and cut off we were.
The only way I could have gotten out during freeze-up
would have been by dog team.
It would have meant a trip of over 150 miles
and would have taken over a week.

I never saw water freeze over so quickly in my life as it did up here.
On a Saturday afternoon or late evening around the first of November,
I went across from the island to the mainland and back in a canoe,
and on the following Monday morning, I walked across the same stretch of water.
And I didn’t venture across till I saw a rather heavy Indian
cross it with a four-dog team and a heavily laden sleigh.
Most of the Indians were walking across on Sunday night.

I suppose that with a rapid freeze like this, you are wondering
why the freeze-up last for four or five weeks.
It is all on account of the airplanes.
They have to have either open water or nine inches of ice to land on.

It only requires two inches to support a man walking.
The first two or three inches form very rapidly,
but as the ice gets thicker, new ice forms more slowly.
Snow, of which we had several heavy falls,
also hinders the formation of ice.

We had a week of just perfect skating up here before the snow came.
All the whites, except Bill Mitchell who is an old country Scot
who never learned to skate, were out trying out their skills.

These skating skills ranged
all the way from mine,
which is almost non-existing
to the Father’s.

The Father had a chance,
before he became a priest,
to become a professional hockey player
with an N.H.L. team.

Father Maurice Ouimet
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

However in spite of my limited ability, I enjoyed myself a whole lot.
One afternoon, after school, I skated about five miles
down the lake and back. It was wonderful.
There was no wind and the temperature was about five below.
It was just a perfect day to be alive.

A couple of paragraphs back I mentioned a dog team;
and now, I would like to relate to you something very funny
that I saw involving one poor Indian and his dog team.

This dog team was evidently just newly broken to the sleigh,
or the Indian was inexperienced at handling a team.
For sure, as you will shortly see, there was something amiss.

I watched the Indian load his team at the co-op store
on the island and head his team toward the lake.
Between the store and the lake there are twelve trees,
and each dog investigated each tree.
This made for 48 stops before they hit the ice.

After they got out on the ice, each dog decided to defecate,
and each one did it at a different time. This meant four more stops.
After this, there were a couple of more stops,
caused I think, by fights among the dogs.

The Indian must have been pretty exasperated by this time,
but when the team got up by my school, real disaster struck,
in the form of a female dog in heat
who happened to cross the path of the team.
The team must have been composed of young healthy males,
for the whole shebang took off hell-a-whooping after this poor little female.

The Indian couldn’t hold them back at all,
and the last I saw of the outfit, it had left the ice
and was heading into the deepest part of the bush -
dogs, sleigh, Indian, and everything.

I heard later that it was several days before that poor Indian
finally got his team rounded up, his sleigh repaired,
and was able to resume his trip to the traplines.

Dog Team Running on the Ice

Pixabay

I was quite amused watching an Indian training a young dog to the sleigh the other day.
The pup didn’t take too kindly to the whole thing,
and the Indian had one hell of a time getting him hitched in the team.
The Indian hitched him in the middle of an experienced team.
The pup was quite stubborn though and lay on his back
and stuck all four paws straight up in the air.
This didn’t hold up the team though, and they started off
at a real fast clip and dragged the pup about a half a mile on his back
before he managed to get his feet under him.

That cured him of that habit right quick.
For although he still runs away if he sees the Indian coming with the harness,
once he is in the team he behaves himself and pulls his share of the load.

I have not managed as yet, to drive a dog team,
but I have hopes of accomplishing this feat before too long.
When I do, I’ll let you all know about it.

I have, however, had my initiation on snowshoes,
and find that they are a novel means of locomotion to say the least.

Novel Locomotion

Dad on Snowshoes

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1961

I went out one Sunday with the nurse (male)
and one of the DOT boys taking water samples.
We only walked about five miles on snowshoes,
and although the temperature was 25 below,
I was soaked with perspiration by the time the afternoon was over.
I happened to weight myself before the trip started and after it was over.
I lost three pounds through perspiring.

Talking about weight, I have lost over forty pounds since I came to Lansdowne House.
I weighed 239 pounds when I arrived here, and I only weigh 192 pounds now.
Not bad, eh? I feel an awful lot better for it.

Well, I guess I have to sign off now and write a letter to Sara.
This has been one of my multiple letters (three copies),
and I hope the people who get the carbon copies can make them out.
I am including a map of Lansdowne House with this letter.
It is only a rough map, but the proportions are fairly good.
It should give you some idea of our fair community.

Bye now,
Love, Don.

Hi Don and Anna:
Hope you can make out this carbon copy.
I do believe that my typing is improving, eh what?
Don

Winter Night, Hudson Bay Lowlands

Flickr: J.H. License

I think the main reason I used this "summary-of-past-events" letter

my father wrote to his cousins is because of his mention

of Father Ouimet's skating abilities and his path not taken

to a career as a professional hockey player.

This was a new piece to the "mystery" of Father Ouimet,

for I had not read this letter before.

I've never understood the concept of being called to serve God,

not having experienced that pull myself.

I simply accept that some people have this powerful feeling

that overrides so many things most of us can't imagine living without.

The more I learn about Father Ouimet, the more I am intrigued by him.

I wish I could talk to him and ask him about what compelled him

to devote his life to a small Indian community in a very remote place,

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Not on the Bay of Fundy!
Victoria, Brisitsh Columbia Canada
September 15, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Wikipedia

One of My Father's Sketched Maps of Lansdowne House

#15 is the location of our future home in the forestry shack.

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1961

Readers of my northern posts sometimes remark on
how many letters I have from my past;
but I often think about how many are lost.

My "Nana" Myrtle Pratt MacBeath
was an inveterate letter saver, as am I.
It's because of her that I have so many letters preserved.

The New Mrs. Myrtle MacBeath

Royal Stewart and Myrtle Jane Pratt MacBeath

My "Grammie" Ella Cossaboom MacDonald
burned just about every piece of paper that came to her.
I can see her still, standing by an old oil drum
at the edge of her field in Smith's Cove,
feeding letters, newspapers, and receipts to the hungry flames.
I'm sure that she used that quiet time to mull over
her day and the lives of her children and grandchildren.

Grammie with My Brother and Me

In Her Backyard

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Circa1952

Dad, too, had the burning habit,
and I know that many letters from Mom, Roy, me, and others
started wood fires in Dad and Uno's cantankerous stove.
In a few letters I have, both Dad and Nana exhort each other
to burn certain private letters.
Boy, I'd like to get my hands on some of those!

Flickr: Sarah Wynne License

My mother wrote letters constantly,
but many of hers vanished into flames.
Thank goodness for Nana,
or I would have hardly any of Mom's from this time.

Thursday, January 26, 1961
My mother wrote to her mother-in-law, Myrtle MacBeath:

Dear Mother:
Another week has gone, and I must get a line off to you.
I went to the hospital Tuesday for the B.M.R.
(basal metabolic rate) and arrived home Wednesday.
I won’t know for a while what the result of the B.M.R. is,
but I imagine it is all right.

The children have had colds this week; the weather changed so quickly.
I am not sending them to school until Monday.
It has been so cold outside, the worst we’ve had this winter.
The children are fine now. Their colds weren’t much.

Don has been writing. He seems to be very contented with his work.
I have been packing dishes and summer clothes in case we leave.
Mostly though, I have been washing.
It’s a big problem without the dryer.

Uncle Cecil drops in to see how we are.
Grammy and Aunt Nan have both had colds.
Also Mary Lou and David. I guess it's on the go.

Louise is already talking about her birthday, and of course, Valentine’s Day.
She talked the school Red Cross into collecting clothes
for the Indians and sending them to the Red Cross.
The Red Cross evidently will send them wherever they request.

I must close now and write to Don.
With Love,
Sara

A Rare Photo of My Mother

on Lake Attawapiskat

Near Lansdowne House, 1961

Photo by Donald MacBeath

I don't know how my mother did it:
five kids, ten and under, down with colds,
drying clothes outside in the winter air
on a clothesline that ran to an old apple tree,
packing for a move she wasn't sure we'd make,
squeezing in an overnight hospital stay for a test,
no car, and a daughter crazy for parties and Valentines.

Thank goodness for my Great Uncle Cecil,
who was hoofing it up and down the road checking on
his mother-in-law, Sara Cossaboom,
and his niece, Sara MacBeath,
not to mention caring for his own wife, Nan,
and looking in on his daughter-in-law
Mary Lou and his nephew David.

Meanwhile Kelsey, Mary Lou's husband,
the one person in the bunch with a car,
was keeping four households going
with grocery and medicine runs
and taking my mother to and from the hospital.
I miss those times of multiple generations
close by and helping each other out.

As for my Red Cross project ~
Never under estimate the power of a ten-year-old idealist!!!

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Kelsey and I
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia
on the Annapolis Basin
off the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Photo Copy by Roy MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1. Basal Metabolic Rate:
The B.M.R. is the amount of energy needed to support the body’s most basic functions to stay
alive. The test is meant to be performed when a person is at rest in a neutral, or non-stressful,
environment. That likely explains why Mom spent the night in the hospital. One thing the test
measures is the status of the thyroid, always a concern for my mother who had Graves Disease.

1. Smith's Cove People:
Grammy: My great grandmother, Sara Cossaboom
Aunt Nan: My grandmother Ella's sister (both were daughters of Sara Cossaboom)
Uncle Cecil: My Great Aunt Nan's husband; my substitute grandfather, since mine had died.
Mary Lou: My "aunt" who was married to Nan and Cecil's only surviving child, Kelsey.
David: My cousin, son of Mary Lou and Kelsey. I adored my "Uncle" Kelsey.

My Great Grandmother, Sara Cossaboom

In Her Backyard with Sweet Peas Running Amok

Smith's Cove, NovaScotia, Canada

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Canada Wikimedia

Location of Smith's Cove

Harbourview Inn

Smith's Cove on the Annapolis Basin

Birch Villa Cottages

Lansdowne House, Now Neskantaga

Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

The Times Colonist in Victoria, British Columbia is full
of news and photos about the Royal visit,
and one of yesterday's articles reminded me of how much time
has passed since our family moved North in February, 1961.

Canada's Governor General David Johnston,

Prince William, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

September 24, 2016

(Yes, I took this photo!)

On Wednesday Prince William and Kate visited MacBride Museum

in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory.

While there, they sent a royal welcome on Twitter via a telegraph

that is part of a communications exhibit at the museum.

The exhibit shows how Whitehorse contacted the outside world

from the remote North more than a half century ago.

The royal couple were also the first to sign the museum's digital guest book

using telegraph-to-tweet technology developed by Make IT Solutions.

On hand to assist them was ninety-year-old wireless telegraph operator

Doug Bell, a legendary Yukon operator from that time.

Long before Twitter and the internet, Canadians all across Canada

used wireless telegraph technology to communicate important messages quickly,

like when my father telegraphed his wife and mother
to inform them that freeze-up had started.

The Telegraph Office

Nakina, Ontario, September 1960

Photo by Don MacBeath

Telegrams were flying back and forth between my parents

as they made arrangements to move our family north.

My mother was under a great deal stress over the move and its cost,

and my "Nana" MacBeath was worrying about us living

in such a remote place as Lansdowne House.

On Wednesday, February1, 1961
My mother wrote to her
mother-in-law, Myrtle:

Myrtle MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Dear Mother,

I am afraid I worried you by telling you I had lost a lot of weight.
I didn’t mean to. It slipped out.

I was in to see the doctor today,
and actually he was pleased with my tests.
My blood and B.M.R. were normal.
Not only that, but my B.M.R. was 415,
and in Halifax last summer,
it was 414 which shows it is constant.

It’s the nervious strain I’ve been living under that has caused the loss of weight.
I have been worrying, so I haven’t been sleeping or eating properly.

He gave me a prescription for tranquilizers.
He says the Maritime Medical is the best.
It didn’t cost me a cent for the tests or doctor.

My Father Traveling in Snowshoes

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Winter, 1961

Don likes it up North,
and I’m sure that he wouldn’t ask us to come if it wasn’t all right.
It will give us a chance to live as a family instead of
everyone rushing their separate ways as they do so often nowadays.

Don is a far better teacher in my opinion than the children have had for a long, long time.
Extra curricular activities can become too much,
and I am sure the children would learn a lot up North.

Don sent me a picture of himself, and I haven’t seen him look
so rested in years, and he has lost a lot of weight.

So far as doctors go, the nurse can do as much as a doctor,
except for operations, and they have a flying doctor,
and in an emergency we would more likely get to the hospital faster.
Certainly it isn’t any more risky than
living near a street in most places or driving in a car.

Flying doctors reached remote places by bush plane.

Wikimedia

As far as Don’s pay goes, we would be doing fine
if we didn’t have to pay back old bills incurred last winter and summer.
Even though they haven’t paid him his full pay,
we have been able to pay back a lot of those bills.
Don just wasn’t able to manage things last winter.

It is certainly wonderful to know that we have more than enough
to live on which is a situation we haven’t known.
If Don’s pay had been through, we more likely would have spent
more at Christmas, and it has forced us to save.

However it has worried me, especially when I had expected it
to be through in time for us to leave.
I sent Don a letter today to see if he can prod them.
The government is just plain slow at paying.

The man in the telegraph office was saying
there just isn’t any way to speed them up.
They are that way with all their employees.

One consolation is you know you will get it eventually,
and most people realize this, especially up North
where most of the people are government employees.

I must get to bed.
With love, Sara.

Sara MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

An Old-Time Telegraph Office

Restored CN Telegraph counter on display at the Saskatchewan Railway Museum

Wikimedia

People can still send telegrams today,
and they are an effective communication method,
especially where there is no electricity or internet access.

Having a telegram delivered to your door was an exciting event;
but always an anxiety-inducing one until you knew what it said.
Too often a telegram carried news of illness or death.

My mother experienced a great deal of stress during her life,
and she constantly struggled to keep weight on.
My father likewise experienced great stress,
but he constantly struggled to keep weight off.

Money and financial stability were always issues,
but somehow my parents realized their dream
of all five of their children graduating from university.

I wish they were alive today to see how well each of us has done.
They would know their sacrifices and difficulties were worth it.
I am forever grateful for their love and support.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Crossing Petite Passage
Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Photo Copy by Roy MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1. Victoria's Times Colonist newspaper:
Thursday, September 29, 2016, p. D1
(For press photos click here and here)

2. Basal Metabolic Rate:
The B.M.R. is the amount of energy needed to support the body’s most basic functions to stay
alive. The test is meant to be performed when a person is at rest in a neutral, or non-stressful,
environment. That likely explains why Mom spent the night in the hospital. One thing the test
measures is the status of the thyroid, always a concern for my mother who had Graves Disease.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Canada's Yukon, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island
Wikimedia

Location of Smith's Cove

where Mom and We Five Were Living

Harbourview Inn

Location of Lansdowne House

Where My Father Was Living

Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

It's the first Wednesday
of the month ~
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.

To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh are:
Beverly Stowe McClure , Megan Morgan, Viola Fury, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Angela Wooldridge, and Susan Gourley.

I hope you have a chance to visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wow, this IWSG Day arrived quickly!
It finds me happily writing in Victoria.

Certainly Victoria has been the perfect place to draft
a fantasy story for the 2016 IWSG Anthology Contest,
and now I'm working to bring that draft to its final ready state.

The Premier's Rose Garden

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Victoria often feels otherworldly to me.
The ubiquitous presence of
water and sky, flowers and art,
and culture and history enchants me.
It's easier to slip into the fantastic here.

Wawadiťła, The Mungo Martin House

Thunderbird Park

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

So, I took the plunge,
and I'm writing fantasy for the first time in my life.
My tiny suite in Helm's Inn is a perfect place to work.

My Writing Space

Helm's Inn

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

And October's question for IWSG members is certainly timely:

When do you know your story is ready?

I'm sure I'm not the only IWSG member

working on an entry for the IWSG anthology contest!

And I'm sure I'm not the only member

whose story is definitely NOT ready!

After writing the first draft,

I found myself in a position

I've never experienced before.

Instead of having thousands of words over the total allowed,

I was hundreds of words short of the minimum.

I think that's the result of striving to write succinct blog posts.

Good thing too, because my plot still needs serious work!

Otherworldly Bridge

Johnson Street Bridge

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

It's strange to be immersed in a dreamlike city

plotting fantasy and trying to make the fantastic seem real.

Surreal Water

with Seagull and Kelp

Ogden Point Breakwater

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

So how do I know when my story is ready?

It's a simple question, but a difficult one to answer.

There are certain writing elements that guide me when I write fiction.

First, as a writer, I am inspired by setting,

and most stories begin for me with a concrete place.

I think who you are is absolutely a result of where you are.

I think place shapes you and the path you take in life,

so my characters must be grounded in place.

For me, the setting must ring true.

Don't ask me to define that!

It's a feeling of authenticity that my heart hears.

Setting, an Inspiration for Story

Straight of Juan de Fuca

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Second, as a writer, I strive to create well-developed characters.

Major or minor, a character has to be rounded,

not flat or stereotypical.

Again, my story is ready when I sense that the characters ring true.

There can't be any discordant vibrations.

Character, Defined by Place and Well-Developed

The Legislative Building

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Third, the plot has to be strong and plausible.

Now this is a challenge for me,

because I can get tangled in setting and character.

Relief was my first reaction when learning

I had more words to work with in the anthology contest.

On rereading my first draft,

I realized that fantasy plot of mine needed more conflict ~

Not to mention more clearly-defined motivation

to drive that conflict and improve its plausibility.

So that's where I'm putting those extra words to work.

Plot: Men in suits with wires in their ears

always up the tension and potential for conflict.

The Official Start to the Royal Tour

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

If I can nail place, character, and plot to my satisfaction,

then I'm into the fun part of getting my story ready:

playing with language!

I'm on a hunt for precise nouns and strong verbs.

I'm rooting out cliches and extra adjectives.

I'm trying to limit alliteration.

I'm slaying the passive voice wherever possible.

I'm building variety with sentence structure.

I'm racking my brain for fresh and original,

even when I despair of finding anything new.

I'm ruthlessly slashing unnecessary words.

I'm listening for dialogue that sounds authentic.

And always I'm hearing the words in my mind,

checking for rhythm and flow.

Language: Reaching for Perfection and Flow

“Red Dragon” by Ping Tsing at the corner of Pandora and Government streets.

Chinatown

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Next I check for conventions:

spelling, punctuation, grammar, and useage.

I may not catch everything,

and I'll deliberately break the rules if it suits my purpose;

but generally I am perfection-driven.

If I've done the best I can do with setting, character,

plot, language, and conventions, then I'll sketch an outline

to make sure my piece is organized and connected with transitions.

Then finally I ask myself,

"Does this sound like me? Is this my unique voice?"

If this rings true, then my story is ready!

Voice: Unique and Authentic

This could only be Victoria

with its inner harbour, dancing water taxis, and imposing Coho.

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

No wonder it takes me a long time to write! ~ LOL

How do I know my story is really ready?

When the deadline is about to cut my feet out from under me!

It's hell being a perfectionist!

Are you entering the 2016 IWSG Anthology Contest?

Is your story ready?

I can't wait to learn how you know a story is done!

Happy writing in October!

Lovely, Dreamlike Victoria

Fisherman's Wharf

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Things were moving quickly as my family prepared
to travel North to Lansdowne House in February, 1961.

I don't remember all that my mother was doing
as she packed for our unknown adventure.
Nor do I remember her worrying about the trip
and Dad's delayed government paychecks.

Our Last Family Photo
Before Going North
Louise (with Bertie), Barbie,
Roy (with bean plant), and Donnie (with Gretchen)
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I was ten years old and my imagination was on fire.
I was immersed in thoughts of living in the wilderness,
of Indians and snowshoes and wolves,
a priest and a brother (Just like in my history book!),
northern lights and bitter cold, ice holes and bush planes.
I was beside myself with anticipation.

The Wild North

Northern Ontario, 1923

Wikipedia

But I was still a fifth grader in Smith's Cove,
immersed in performing in a play,
writing my first lengthy story,
wrapping up my Red Cross project,
and memorizing Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus.

I was thrilled that we weren't leaving before Valentine's Day!
I had recently discovered boys,
and the romantic mystery of the legendary North
was not my only romantic interest.

I was excited about whose valentines would land
in the valentine boxes we were crafting at school.
My poor mother, on top of everything else,
had to hunt down shoe boxes for the three of us in school ~
not to mention, help us make valentines.
Valentine's Day was not so commercial then.

Pixabay

Meanwhile, Dad's mother,
my Nana MacBeath in Charlottetown, P.E.I.,
was worrying about real and imaginary dangers
which Lansdowne House posed for her grandchildren.

I'm sure my Grammie MacDonald, in New York City, was equally worried;
but her letters surely fed the fire in the battered oil drum
at the edge of her field in Smith's Cove.

On Friday, February 3, 1961
My father wrote to his mother, Myrtle:

Dear Mother,
I can’t understand what may be happening to the letters I send to you.
I guess perhaps I had better just stick to the regular mail (after this letter),
for otherwise, I can just rely on the memory of the pilots
to mail the letters I send out with them.
I am inclined to suspect that a few have gotten lost,
or someone has mislaid them.

For instance, I thanked you for the snap you sent to me
in at least one, and I think two, different letters.
It was lovely, and I was glad to get it.
I have onely one criticism. It’s too posed.
I like them better when they are candid snaps.

I am sending you the negatives of the two island snaps
that you liked so much. In fact, I’ll send you all the negatives.
You can develop what you want and return the negatives to me.
I wouldn’t mind you keeping the snaps,
if it wasn’t so hard to get copies of them up here.

I am sending two photos in this letter,
one of Uno and Brian Booth playing cribbage,
and one of Brian and me.
Both snaps are posed actually.
Brian is the clerk at the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Uno Manilla and Brian Booth

in the front room of the two-room shack Dad and Uno shared

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Photo by Don MacBeath, Winter 1961

The letter of Sunday, January 19th,
which just arrived today
is full of a lot of worries about the children,
so I’ll proceed to try to set your mind at ease.

First, regarding fires, there is no more danger from fire
in the forestry shack than in your apartment building.

Less in fact, because the shack is equipped with a “Selkirk Chimney,"
which is a special type of insulated metal chimney designed especially
for use in wooden buildings in northern climates.

Also, there is a new oil burner and a new propane range.
Besides, if a fire ever did break out,
all the windows and doors are easy to get out of,
and all within three feet of the ground.
However, we won’t leave them alone in the shack.

My Father and Brian Booth

in the front room of the two-room shack Dad and Uno shared

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Photo by Uno Manilla, Winter 1961

About their education.
Naturally I don’t intend to keep them at the level of the Indians.
I intend to let them progress as rapidly as they are capable of doing,
with proper testing to see that they are learning everything.
And I won’t roar at them.

I also plan to be a better father and give them more of my leisure time.
Togetherness is going to be the mantra of the MacBeath family.

Don’t worry about the water holes.
They are all covered by heavy covers.
Besides only the DOT water hole is large enough to fall into,
and it is protected by a shack with a locked door.

As for bad ice in the spring,
I promise to lay down very strict rules
regarding the ice at breakup and the lake in the summer,
if we are here.

Sara has instructions as to what to bring in the line of clothing.
Actually the real severe cold weather will be over
or just about over by the time they arrive.
The winter is pretty well shot by the time March rolls around,
even if the ice hangs on in the lake till June,
and they won’t be arriving till 20 Feb.

I don’t see why the possibiity of visiting Lansdowne is too remote.
Aside from the flight in, which only takes 1¼ hours,
it would be no worse than coming to Alymer.
Besides, I thought you were adventuresome
and didn’t mind air plane trips.

Northern Bush Plane on Skis

Flickr: James Tworow License (Photo Edited)

I will write a letter to Mr. Mitton inquiring about
regular quarterly Sunday School papers and lessons,
and I plan to have family worship every Sunday.
The McRaes and the McMahons all do.
It should be a very rewarding experience for us.

I think that by and large,
the children should benefit from their northern experience.

Well, this is about all I have to say right now.
I am very busy at school and preparing for Sara’s arrival.
Both projects are progressing favorably.

My weight has been stationary for several weeks at 192,
but this week, darned if it hasn’t shot up to 195.
I am going to have to really struggle to keep it below 190 ~
in fact, to even get it down to that level.

I am afraid Dr. Leigh was correct when he told me
that I was a heifer, and there was really nothing I could do about it.

However, I am getting rid of the paunch pretty well,
and I won’t let that come back.
If I do get big again, at least I’ll be in good shape,
and I’ll be big like Grandpa Pratt or Uncle Alex, stout, but not fat.
However I am going to make a real effort to keep the weight down.

I have had to discontinue the Lansdowne Letter again,
as Uno’s typewriter is not working too well,
and I don’t like using it too much.

Besides, he has started using it more,
and I find it hard to get a chance to use it.
I am still waiting for mine.
Sara sent it to Yarmouth for an overhaul,
but it hasn’t come back from there yet.

Well, I must sign off now and get to bed. It is quite late,
and I have to get up early and pump oil into the school tanks.
I have 450 gallons to pump.

I have to have all the oil drums empty
in time to send them back on the next tractor train.
Pumping oil is a pain in the tail end.

It takes about 10 minutes to pump a drum, and I have ten drums.
However it is quite cold standing still just pumping,
and I have to go inside and get warm
(especially my feet) after every drum or two.
However it shouldn’t take me more than three hours
or 3½ hours to finish it.

Bye now,
Love, Don

An Early Tractor Train

Date and Location Unknown

Nor Can I Determine Copyright

Google Source???

I realized as I wrote my introduction to this post,
that I had reached a major turning point in our northern story.
My voice and memories are starting to overtake my dad's.

I smiled as I typed my father's words
because I know how things turned out
and how well his plans were realized.
He tried to predict what would happen,
but he was wrong on many points.
One shocking and unimaginable event for my parents
was already gathering momentum and beyond their control.

Ten-Year Old, Grade Five Me

Meanwhile I remember that valentine box
covered with white construction paper,
loaded with red valentines,
and sporting a pink cupid with a heart and arrow
and that all important slot into which valentines would fall.

I remember standing in front of my schoolmates
and wearing grownup clothes to perform in the play,
but nothing of what the play was about.

Most of all, I remember standing in my classroom
and dramatically reciting The Wreck of the Hesperus.
I was that frozen maiden lashed to a drifting mast
with my hair floating about me like seaweed on the waves.

At the height of my young infatuation
with daredevil Richard Halliburton and passionate Lord Byron,
I was ready for my first real adventure in the wild.

He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast.

The Wreck of the Hesperus

Project Gutenberg License

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:

1. Recitations:
I went to school in a place and time when poetry recitation was still in vogue.
In addition to reciting Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus to my class (poem),
I had previously recited Noyes'The Highwayman to them (poem).
During my elementary teaching career, I occasionally assigned short poems to memorize
as homework, something neither my students or parents embraced with enthusiasm.

2. Adventuresome:
Dad's mother had traveled to Europe and Morocco as a young, single woman.

3. Mr. Mitton:
In 1954 Rev. Harold Mitton became the pastor of Charlottetown Baptist Church which my family
attended when we lived in Charlottetown from 1952 to 1956.

4. Weight Conversions:
190 pounds = 86.1 kilograms
192 pounds = 87.0 kilograms
195 pounds = 88.4 kilograms

5. Liquid Capacity Conversion:
450 Imperial (Canadian) gallons pounds = 2045 liters

6. Tractor Trains:
Drums of oil, heavy equipment, and large orders of food and other supplies were transported to
remote places in Northern Ontario by tractor trains. Bulldozers or "cats" hauled sleighs loaded
with supplies across the frozen muskeg and lakes during the winter to reach these communities.
I'm guessing that my father saw some of the last tractor trains, because they were already
disappearing in the Canadian north, replaced by trucks traveling on winter ice roads.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Smith's Cove

Harbourview Inn

Smith's Cove on the Annapolis Basin

Birch Villa Cottages

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Wikipedia

Neither my father or mother had much time for writing letters

as our departure for Lansdowne House approached in February, 1961.

My Parents at Acadia University

Pre-Five Children

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, Circa 1948

Dad was busy teaching and preparing for our move

into the forestry department shack on the mainland,

and he had discontinued The Lansdowne Letter again

because Uno’s typewriter was not working well,

and he disliked using it too much.

He dashed off a long, hastilly-written letter to his mother

a little over a week before we were due to arrive up North.

Another Thursday, Another Deadline

Letters, Calendars, Tools of the Blogger's Trade

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Nana had decided to sell her apartment building

at the corner of Fitzroy and Edward streets

where she had lived for many years

in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Her plan was to move to southern Ontario and rent a place

in senior housing while my family lived in the remote North.

I'm not including the first part of the letter

which addresses my grandmother selling her house,

but I am sharing the latter part about our family.

My Grandmother MacBeath's Apartment Building

(We lived in the two-story apartment with the red and white door in the mid-1950s.)

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Map Data: Google

On Saturday, February 11, 1961

My Father wrote to his mother, Myrtle:

Dear Mother:

Well, the trip up here is all settled.

Sara is leaving Tuesday or Wednesday

and is arriving in Nakina on Monday, February 20,

and will be flown directly in by Austin Airways.

She is laying over in Montreal for several days with her brother John.

I am quite excited and happy about being reunited once again with my family.

I am winning my battle of the bulge.

I am now down to 187 pounds, and my waist is 37 inches.

Some difference from 239 pounds and 41 inches, eh?

My problem now is that nothing fits me, except my shoes and hat.

Everything else just hangs on me.

Oh well, at least when Sara comes up,

she will be able to take in my pants for me.

Clothes Falling Off

My Father Standing Outside His Two-Room Shack

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

I don't know what I will be able to do about my coats.

Guess I'll just have to wear them big till I get outside

to a tailor and have them altered.

Perhaps it is just as well if I don't rush into altering all my clothes,

because this loss in weight may be temporary.

However, I am going to make a real effort to never let

my weight go above 190 pounds again.

I have revised my goal downwards.

At first I was going to be satisfied if I could get down to 200 pounds.

Then I thought 190 pounds would be good.

Then I set my goal for 185.

My ultimate goal is going to be 180 pounds.

At this weight I will actually be underweight,

but it would be nice to have a 10 pound margin to come and go on.

It is really amazing, Mother ~

even my shirt collars are too large for me now.

I could wear a size 14 1/2 shirt, certainly a 15,

instead of the 16 that I have been wearing for so long.

I am enclosing some pictures of myself,

and of Maureen, Duncan, and Duncan Junior.

The pictures of me on snowshoes were taken the day

I went with Duncan and Mike to take water samples around the peninsula.

I believe I wrote you about this adventure.

We walked between 4 and 6 miles ~

one mile through heavy bush when we crossed the peninsula.

Collecting Water Samples

Around the Peninsula

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

That picture of me coming out of the woods is very good.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the camera was unable to record the language

which just about then was eloquent to say the least.

Though you can't see it, I am towing a sleigh and am on snowshoes.

That cotton pickin' sleigh seemed to get stuck or hung up on every bush I passed.

Also, I lost my snowshoes once or twice.

You are really helpless without them,

because the snow in the woods is just about waist deep.

Maureen McRae Hauling Groceries

Roman Catholic Church and Dad and Uno's Shack

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

The temperature that day was just about 20-25 below, but I sweated gallons.

I happened to weigh myself before starting out,

and, out of curiosity, I decided to weigh myself when I got back.

I was three pounds lighter.

However, this weight loss was temporary,

and I gained back two pounds as soon as

I satisfied my thirst which was monumental.

The other pictures of me are taken at the door of the shack where I am,

(or by the time you receive this, was) living with Uno

and on the steps of the church.

Dad and Duncan McRae

Outside the Roman Catholic Church

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

I still can't see why you can't come up and visit us at Lansdowne,

especially if we helped out with the costs.

I really think you would enjoy the place,

and the flight in would be an interesting adventure.

However, we won't settle this point now.

I wish though, that you didn't sound so discouraged or down in the lip

over the prospect of the children coming up here.

After all, it is not going to be forever, and, if it is at all possible,

I'll try to at least get Louise, and possibly Roy,

down to the Island for a while this summer;

and, I am almost certain that I will be down myself for a while,

unless my plans misfire dreadfully.

Well, I must sign off now.

I have a lot of work to do today.

It is wash day again

I want to have as few of my clothes as possible dirty when Sara arrives.

Beside it is at least three weeks since I have washed.

Bye now,

Love, Don

Duncan McRae on the Ice

Between the Father's Island and the Mainland (Peninsula)

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

P.S. The Lansdowne Letter is again out of print due to typewriter difficulties.

Uno's machine is on the fritz again, and mine hasn't arrived yet.

Also, when Louise, Roy, and Donnie are with me,

I will initiate them into the good Lansdowne House custom

of Thursday night letter writing.

I'll make sure that they all write a letter to Nana on Thursday nights.

This has been quite a year for Charlottetown, hasn't it?

What with Prowse Brothers going out of business, S.A. also,

Henderson and Cudmore's expansion, and the Kennedy Affair.

I wouldn't be too surprised if I read the Bishop of Charlottetown turned Protestant.

I surely appreciate The Guardian.

It is the only newspaper I get,

and I read it from front to back ~ even the Classified ads.

Prowse Brothers

(Between Electrical Poles, Center)

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Source: City of Charlottetown

Well, bye now,

Love, Don.

My Father Traveling in Snowshoes

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Winter, 1961

Monday, February 20, 1961,
a lot of people were waiting on that date!

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Crossing Petite Passage
Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Photo Copy by Roy MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1. Charlottetown's The Guardian newspaper

2. Duncan and Maureen McRae:
Duncan, married to Maureen, worked for the Department of Transport,
and his duties included running the DOT Weather Station.
They were the parents of young Duncan.

3. Weight Conversions:
1 pounds = 4.5 kilograms
187 pounds = 84.8 kilograms
239 pounds = 108.4 kilograms

4. Temperature Conversion:
-20º F = -28.8º C
-25º F = -31.6º C

5. Distance Conversions:
37 inches = 93.9 centimeters
41 inches = 104.1 centimeters

4 miles = 6.4 kilometers
6 miles = 9.6 kilometers

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Canada's Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island
Wikimedia

Location of Smith's Cove

where Mom and We Five Were Living

Harbourview Inn

Location of Lansdowne House

Where My Father Was Living

Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

Where would we be without our families?
I can't imagine not having my mine.
For generations we've always been there for each other.
It's true now, and it was true in February, 1961
when we moved to Lansdowne House in Northern Ontario.

The Latest "We Five" Photo

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada 8/7/16

Back: Barb and Roy

Front: Bertie, Me (Louise), and Donnie

Photo by Our Cousin Pat Ryan (left) or Our Brother-in-Law Martin (right)

on God Knows Whose Phone!

My mother faced the daunting prospect

of traveling halfway across Canada

with five children aged ten, eight, five, four, and one

via car, boat, train, and bush plane.

And let's not forget Gretchen, our little dachshund.

But thanks to our extended family,

in Nova Scotia and Quebec

she didn't face the trip alone.

On Friday, February 24, 1960 my mother,

Sara MacBeath, wrote from Lansdowne House:

Hi Everyone:-

We had quite a trip down.

It was made easy because everyone helped me so much.

Aunt Nan spent a couple of days helping me pack.

Mary Lou made our dinner for us and sent it down on the day we left.

Muriel did the housework, and we all went together to the boat.

The boat trip was fine most of the time,

the baby loved to run up and down the corridors.

However just before we docked in St. John, she became very tired.

We got on the train without any trouble,

a Red Cap looked after our baggage,

and we flopped into bed and went off to sleep.

John and Arthur, Dawn's husband, met us at the station,

and John took us shopping for a birthday gift for Donnie.

We had a grand time at John's and Esther's.

They have a lovely new home.

Esther made a birthday cake for Donnie,

and they had all kinds of gifts for her.

The next day we had a lovely turkey before Arthur

took us to the station to see us off, along with the whole family.

Joanie, Faye, and Sandy are such lovely children.

Auntie Esther and Uncle John (Mom's Brother)

Dawn, Baby Joanie, Sandy and Faye, 1958

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Thanks to My Cousin Dawn MacDonald White for This Photo

The night before we left I phoned Barbara, and she met us at the station.

We had only a few minutes, but it was nice to see her.

The trip on the train was nice,

the baby became accustomed to the motion,

and soon I had to keep her from trying to leave the bedroom.

She went to sleep before we reached Nakina.

At Nakina, Austin Airways took over.

They carried the baby for me,

got our baggage and loaded us

plus poor Gretchen on the plane.

Was Gretchen happy to see us!

I guess she had given up hope of ever seeing us again.

I put the coat I made for her on her,

and Louise held her on the plane... (to be continued)

Austin Airways Office

Nakina, Ontario, Canada, 1960

Reading my mother's letter reminds me of

that amazing time when my sister Bertie was "the baby."

I remember Donnie and Barbie as babies,

but Bertie was my living baby doll.

From the time she was born, I held her,

fed her, changed her, bathed her, dressed her,

and carried her with me many places I went.

Our First "We Five" Photo

Donnie, Barbie, Bertie with Me, Roy with Gretchen

Margaretsville, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1959

Some of my strongest memories of the trip north are of Bertie.

She was twenty-three months old and a relatively new walker

(probably because I was always carrying her around,

and if not me, then guaranteed someone else).

Bertie was very sweet and loved to be held,

but once she discovered her feet, she never stopped moving.

When we crossed the Bay of Fundy on the SS Princess Helene,

from Digby, Nova Scotia to St. John, New Brunswick

Bertie was in her glory,

all decked out in a red velvet dress and a red barrette,

and tetter-tottering around in her little white shoes and socks.

On the ferry Bertie would not stop,

and Roy, Donnie, and I chased her all over the place.

I remember Donnie and I on our knees, arms wide open,

in the passenger lounge, maybe fifteen feet apart,

and Bertie staggering back and forth between us

shrieking with laughter, as the ship rolled on the waves.

SS Princess Helene

Ferry Passing through Digby Gut, Nova Scotia, Canada

Wikipedia

What stands out for me on this journey north

was the love of our extended family

and the friendly help we received from neighbors

like Muriel who helped Mom with the housekeeping

and from strangers like the man at Austin Airways

who took Bertie from my very tired mother

and carried her to the bush plane for our flight to Lansdowne House.

I can still see my Great Aunt Nan and Great Uncle Cecil

together with their son Kelsey and his wife Mary Lou

waving good-bye to us as the ferry pulled away from the dock in Digby ...

And Uncle John, Auntie Esther, and their family

waving good-bye to us at the train station in Montreal ...

And "Aunt" Barbara, Dad's first cousin, living in Peterborough, Ontario

and meeting us on a station platform somewhere along the way.

Baby Bertie at My Cousins Dawn and Art's Home

Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1961

Thanks to My Cousin Dawn MacDonald White for This Photo

Many of my relatives who helped us in February 1961

are long gone, but the love they gave us will never fade.

Family really is the best!

Notes:
1. Dawn and Arthur (Art):
Dawn was Uncle John and Auntie Esther's oldest child, and she and Art were relative newlyweds.
I had the best fun staying with them, but that's for next week's post!

2. My access to computers will be limited during the next week.
Thanks for your understanding!

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Digby Gut Through Which the SS Princess Helene Sailed

Map Data: Google

Imagery: TerraMetrics

Location of Canada's Yukon, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island
Wikimedia

I am without internet access for the next few days,
maybe even the next week.

I'll be back to visiting my blogging friends
and publishing my next northern post
as soon as I can get back on-line.

Heading Through Ancient Sand Dunes

Somewhere Along I-70 in Utah, USA

It's the first Wednesday
of the month ~
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.

To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh are:
Joylene Novell Butler, Jen Chandler, Mary Aalgaard, Lisa Buie Collard, Tamara Narayan, Tyrean Martinson, and Christine Rains.

I hope you have a chance to visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Happy IWSG Day to everyone making the rounds!
I'm on the move again!
We drove from Las Vegas to Laughlin this morning,
and I have internet access for the next few hours
(for the first time in almost a week).
So I'm cobbling together a quick post
and planning to visit as many IWSG members as I can.

Photographing at 75 mph

Laughlin Highway, Nevada

November 2, 2016

Writing went well for me in Victoria, British Columbia
and for the eight or night days I was home,
before we hit the road again.

I worked on my memoir and wrote a short story for the IWSG contest,
so I felt the best I have about my writing in a long time.

Entering the IWSG anthology contest made me feel like a realwriter.
I hadn't written a short story in way too long,
and it was a project I could complete in two or three weeks,
unlike my memoir which is a metastasizing monster!

Of course, I'd love to earn a spot in the IWSG fantasy anthology,
but if I don't, I'm still a winner because of the creative boost the process gave me.

Beautiful Dreamy Victoria

British Columbia, Canada

The Perfect Place to Write a Fantasy!

October 5, 2016

Along the Edge of Beacon Hill Park

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

October 7, 2016

November's IWSG question for members is one

that should provide some interesting reading:
What is your favorite aspect of being a writer?

Absolutely my favorite aspect of being a writer

is the rush I get, when whatever I'm writing takes over,

and I become nothing more than a recorder,

with words flying from my fingers to my keyboard.

I can be flailing around,

trying to pull together a non-fiction piece, on say,

explaining tax policy for a newspaper article,

and suddenly things gel,

and out flows the article in ways I didn't imagine.

Or, I can be writing fiction,

and suddenly the characters take over,

and out flow their words and actions

taking me in unexpected directions.

The process is a mystery to me,

and it must be something at work in my subconscious,

but the exhilaration I experience at such times is unlike nothing else!

Thunderbird Park

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

October 7, 2016

I have no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing in the next few weeks.

We're trying to decide if we want to move, and if so, where.

Meanwhile, I'll keep writing as I have a chance

and hopping on the internet whenever I have an onramp.

I'm trying to let go and let things work out,

but it's so hard for someone who likes to be in control.

If I could only do in my life like I do in my writing!

Meanwhile, for the next few days at least,

I'm going to continue enjoying the Las Vegas madness!

Happy writing in November!

Halloween Parade on Fremont Street

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

October 29, 2016

Can anything be more thrilling as a child than to go
on a long trip to an unimaginable place?

Looking back after a lifetime spent exploring the world,
my brother Roy wrote:
"Imagine what I felt when my mother told me
that we were leaving our cloistered existence in rural Nova Scotia
to go to northern Ontario and live with our father
in the great northern wilderness with the Indians.
There was even a name for it: we were going to live in the "bush",
hundreds of miles from any town of any size - in Indian Country.
I knew all about Indian Country from watching Rin Tin Tin and Fort Apache.
My scalp tingled. I instinctively moved a bit closer to my mother.
The enormity of the change that I was to experience,
as that cloistered nine year old, is almost impossible, even for me, to fathom."

I, myself, was almost sick with excitement as we drove
to the ferry terminal at the wharf in Digby.
The familiar, comfortable places in Smith’s Cove passed by in a blur
from Kinsman’s Store to Great Grammie’s
to the Hedley House and Mountain Gap Inn.
Digby, with its basin-side buildings raised on piles over the shore, soon followed.

Then suddenly there she was: S.S. The Princess Helene,
the ferry that would carry us through Digby Gut out of the Annapolis Basin
and onto the treacherous Bay of Fundy waters.

Pre-1963 Postcard of The Digby Scallop Fleet

with the S.S. Princess Helene Docked at the Wharf

(gold and black smokestack)

Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada

maritime-waters-trivia ~ permission

Roy and I were veterans at crossing between Maritime provinces by ferry
and came prepared for the voyage with “lucky pebbles” stuffed in our pockets
to drop to the bottom of the bay halfway between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Mom shepherded my three younger sisters, Donnie, and Barbie, and Bertie
to the railing on deck where they could wave good-bye to our uncles and aunts.

Roy and I hung over the railing above the opening to the cargo bay.
We couldn’t believe our luck when we saw Gretchen being loaded on the ferry.
Our poor dachshund traveled all the way to Nakina, Ontario
by boat and train in a large, dark-green toy box.
“Gretchen, Gretchen,” we shrieked as we watched her travel
up the gangway and disappear into the hold.
We wouldn’t see her again until we caught our flight north five days later.

Roy and I were supposed to watch our younger sisters,
but we escaped to run around the decks
and up and down every set of stairs we could find.
It was a thrill to pass through the Gut, a gap Roy and I were convinced
had been blown open by an exploding volcano.
The familiar Victoria Beach and Point Prim on opposite shores of the Gut raced by.

Out on the water we searched for returning fishing boats
with their streamers of screaming seagulls
and spotted porpoises and dolphins following our boat.
It was windy, cold, and grey, but we didn’t care.
Let Mom and our three sisters stay inside,
we had a vessel and an ocean to explore.

A Fishing Boat Heads for the Gut and Home

Bay of Fundy near Point Prim, Nova Scotia

About an hour out on the Bay of Fundy,
we dropped our pebbles overboard
and argued over whose would reach the ocean floor first.
I have no idea how we came up with the idea
that this was a “lucky” thing to do,
but it was our “secret” ferry tradition.
To this day, I drop a pebble overboard on a ferry crossing
honoring the memory of the adventure-loving boy and girl Roy and I were.

Then with our faces and hands burning from the cold,
we dashed inside to warm up, have something to eat,
and give our mother a break by watching our younger sisters.
I’m sure my mother was relieved to have a quiet cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Our baby sister Bertie loved the ferry rocking on the swells,
and she raced up and down the passenger lounge on her unsteady feet.
I’m also sure my mother was delighted with that,
because she wanted Bertie to sleep on the train overnight.

In St. John we boarded a Canadian Pacific Railway train bound for Montreal.
A Red Cap carried our luggage to our compartment,
and a gregarious black porter made up our beds
while we had dinner in the train’s dining car.

Over and over Roy and I raced from car to car,
stopping to rock in the jerky connections between cars,
our laughter as loud as the roaring wind and the clacking wheels on the track.

Donnie and I slept up top in one overhead bunk,
Roy and Barbie shared a second,
while Mom and Bertie slept below.
Roy and I hung over the edges of our bunks watching the night country fly by
until the rhythmic clickety-clack of the train lulled Roy to sleep.
But I lay awake for long hours,
afraid that the bunk would snap shut,
quick as a clam in the mud.

A Train Porter

Flickr ~ antefixus21 License

Uncle John and his new son-in-law Art met us
in a cloud of steam at the frigid Montreal station.
Uncle John took everyone to his home to see Auntie Esther, our married cousin Dawn,
and our three younger cousins, Faye, Sandy, and Baby Joanie.

Our three-night stay in Montreal flew by in a whirlwind
of shopping, sight-seeing, and a birthday party for Donnie.
I alone got to spend the nights at Dawn and Art’s.
Dawn and baby Randy went to bed early,
but Art and I stayed up late watching scary movies like the “Invisible Man.”
Art was the coolest of cool, pre-dating The Fonz by a decade or more.
We left after feasting on Auntie Esther's turkey dinner
with the whole family seeing us off at the station.

Baby Randy and Baby Bertie

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Thanks to My Cousin Dawn MacDonald White for This Photo

We met Dad’s cousin Barbara on a platform along the way
and spent a second night sleeping on a train.
Bertie found her train legs and kept trying to escape from our compartment,
while Roy and I followed a new and friendly porter around,
badgering him with questions about how everything worked.
Again Roy and I sat up late watching the moon-lit,
snow-covered country pass by like a dream.
We had told anyone who would listen that we were going so far north
that when we got to Nakina the train had to turn around
because it couldn’t go north anymore.

Nakina Train Station

Photo by Donald MacBeath

In Nakina three Austin Airways employees met us
and herded us onto a Norseman for the final leg of our journey.
Gretchen practically wiggled herself inside out when she reunited with us.

We had never seen a plane on skis,
let alone taxied in one to take off on ice.
Racing down the ice with roosters of snow flying off the skis
was exhilarating and the lift-off stomach-flipping
as we rose steeply into the air and banked for the wilderness.

A Norseman on Skis

Flickr ~ NOAA: Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren License

Those were the days of unheated cabins and bone-rattling engines
that made conversation impossible.
We huddled in the sub-zero temperatures,
our breath hanging in the air like fog on a still day.

My fingers and toes tingled in spite of my thermal underwear,
woolen socks and mittens, warm clothes and parka.
Gretchen sat on my lap throughout our flight, shivering with anxiety and cold,
her little black forehead wrinkling as she yawned in the thinner air.
Her tiny boots and coat, sewn out of a cast-off jacket,
were useless against the bitter cold.
I sat by a window and watched the alien landscape slide away,
the shadow of our tiny bush plane skimming over the ground far below.

Mom wrote of the experience,
“I never saw so many spruce trees in my life.
They are so close together that their branches go
straight up in the air instead of spreading out.
We flew over miles and miles of desolate country,
lakes and trees. It is very beautiful.”

And beautiful it was:
The trees and lakes locked in ice, with no sign of life
in the frozen wilderness which stretched to every horizon.
The winter had drained all color from the land
leaving only the stark black brittle trees and the dazzling white of the deep snow.
The sky glowed an electric blue, assaulting my eyes with its clear brilliance.

And then out of nowhere a wide stretch of ice,
a long peninsula, a small island, a scattering of tiny buildings,
and ant-like people scurrying for the dock,
shadows long and blue-black in the late, late afternoon.

The Northern Bush Near Lansdowne House

Google Net News Ledger

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Digby Gut Through Which the S.S. Princess Helene Sailed

Map Data: Google

Imagery: TerraMetrics

Lansdowne House

Map Data: Google

When Lansdowne House appeared on the northern horizon, late in the afternoon
of Monday, February 20, 1961, my family and I were flooded with emotions:
joy, relief, curiosity, and excitement.

Peninsula and Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

Library and Archives Canada: PA-094992

But I was also shocked by the immensity of the wilderness
surrounding the frozen village. We had been flying
from the small northern town of Nakina for well over an hour,
and we had seen no trace of people.
The Father’s Island and the tip of the long peninsula
reaching out into ice-bound Lake Attawapiskat were stunningly remote.

Remote is how Lansdowne House is described in almost every reference
I have found. But remote doesn’t begin to convey how isolated the tiny village is.

It exists in a vast tract of Canadian wilderness,
stretching over 3,100 miles (almost 5,000 kilometers)
from the wild coasts of Labrador to the border of Alaska.
It spills outside the confines of Canada, east to Greenland,
north to the pole, and west to the Bering Sea:
a desolate expanse of tundra, forest, muskeg, and water.

Landsdowne House is located where the subarctic boreal forest
straggles into the empty wastes of the Hudson Bay Lowlands.
Even today, this land of stunted spruce and tamarack, bogs, rivers, and lakes
is one of the least-populated and least-explored areas in the world.
Even before fur traders and missionaries pushed into the area,
the land was largely uninhabited by Aboriginals
because of the harsh environment and the scarcity of food.

As the tiny plane banked and came in for a landing,
we were relived that the cold, noisy flight was over
and overjoyed at being reunited with our father after six long months.
We were curious about our new home and community,
and we were excited about meeting the mysterious Ojibway people.
Roy and I were thrilled about landing in a Norseman on skis.

I clutched Gretchen with one hand and braced with the other,
as the plane slowed and glided, the ice rushing toward us.
The landing gear, consisting of two main skis and a taildragger third,
felt small and fragile, collapsible, unequal to the task.
With a sudden bump, bump, bump,
we bounced along the ice and coasted to a stop near the DOT dock.

Lansdowne House

The Department of Transport dock was just beyond the middle left of the photograph.

Photo by Donald MacBeath

My father wrote of our arrival on Friday, February 24, 1961:
“Sara and the family, including Gretchen, came winging over the southern horizon
about 4:45 Monday afternoon, just as I had given them up for the day.
The train was over two hours late at Nakina.
It was good that they got in Monday,
because the weather deteriorated right after they got in,
and there hasn’t been a plane in since. ...

The children and Sara survived the trip
without too many ill effects.
Actually the only casualty was Donnie.
She threw up, just as they touched down
on the ice at Lansdowne House.
I think that it was excitement
more than anything else."

Donalda MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I climbed stiffly out of the Norseman unto the ice and into my father's bearhug.
Then I walked into a parting wall of black eyes staring out of fur-lined parkas.
Contrary to what we expected, the Indians were curious and happy to see us,
the first white children many of them had ever seen.
They crowded around us smiling shyly as we trudged across the ice to the dock.

The men stepped forward, some in olive green Hudson Bay parkas,
others in black leather jackets, all in blue jeans and boots,
while the women stood quietly in the background, children by their sides,
babies laced in tikanogans on their backs.
The women looked very strange in their long colorful skirts, parkas, and mukluks,
knee-high moccasins made of moosehide and decorated with bright felt and tiny beads.

Meeting a Summer Plane at the Hudson's Bay Dock

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo (Transparency) by John Macfie

Reference Code: C 330-14-0-0-95

Archives of Ontario, I0012712

www.archives.gov.on.ca

They were as taken with us as we were with them.
Certainly Barbie's blonde hair, Donnie's long curls,
and Gretchen bounding beside me on stubby legs were novel sights.

Dachshund in Snow

You tube ~ adventurejess

I was overcome with shyness at all the attention
as I floundered up the hill in the squeaky, sparkling snow,
and I escaped into the warm haven of the McRae home with gratitude.

Suddenly very tired, I was overwhelmed by the unbroken bush surrounding us
and by the alien sights of the tiny, ice-locked, Ojibway village in Lake Attawapiskat.

The evening passed in a warm blurr of McRae hospitality,
but the one thing I’ll never forget about our arrival in Lansdowne House
is the kind welcome of the Ojibway people when they met our plane.

A Norseman on Skis

"Taildragger" at the Back

Flickr ~ NOAA: Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren License

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Wikipedia

Location of Lansdowne House

Wikimedia edited

Lansdowne House

Sketch by M. Louise Barbour

On this Thanksgiving weekend I am thinking about all that we are blessed with,
about the peace, opportunity, and material wealth we have as Americans.
But I often wonder why are some so fortunate and why others have it so hard.

The First Thanksgiving ~ by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

circa 1912-1915

Wikipedia

Rich or poor, around the world,
there is one blessing that sustains most of us,
and that is family.

The most wonderful, powerful force in my life has been my family:
my parents, my siblings, and of course,
Terry who has made my life a joy and an adventure.

Terry and I waiting for the Prince Kūhiō Parade

Kalakaua Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii

March 13, 2016

Some of My Extended Family

Jake, Roberta (My sister), Natalie, Olivia, Heather

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada Summer 2016

iPhoto by (Maybe) Sara Heembrock

When we arrived in Lansdowne House, we were already a closely-knit family,
and our experiences in the North bound us more tightly together.
Even today, separated by long distances, we are unusually close.
We love nothing more than to get together,
and this closeness has continued into the next generation.

Some of the Next Generation

Sara, Jake, Heather, Natalie

Jeffrey, Andrew, and Gavin

My sister Donnie and Martin's House

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada Summer 2016

iPhoto by (Maybe) Donalda MacBeath

As for Terry,
I can’t imagine my life
without his calm, steady
support and love.

Binion's Photo

It was difficult for my father to be separated from my mother
and his children for almost six lonely months.
He wrote on February 24, 1961 to his extended family:

"It was sure great to see them!!!!
Everyone knew me except the baby.
She was quite strange with me
for a while, but she is over it now
and going around saying,
"Hi, Dad” just like a trooper.

She is the most adorable Baby,
but then maybe I am prejudiced.
Gretchen remembered me and just
about went foolish when she saw me.”

Baby Bertie, February 1961
Thanks to my cousin Dawn MacDonald White for this photo

I’ve been badgering my brother to share his memories
of Lansdowne House with me.
He and I are likely the only white people who lived there then
who are alive now and have detailed memories.
In spite of his challenging job at Kufpec in Kuwait City,
Roy is writing down a few thoughts about Lansdowne House
and sharing them with me. He prods my memory, and I prod his.

My Brother Roy and Me

Breckenridge, Colorado, USA, July 2016

Photo by Susan MacBeath

I am grateful every day
for the incredible parents
I was blessed with,
and this long process of working
with their letters and photos
has lessened the pain of their loss.

Sara and Don, First Christmas Together
With John and Esther (Mom's brother)
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, 1948
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I thought in honor of Thanksgiving and the blessing of my family,
I would share what Roy wrote for me about our parents
in November, this year:

“I was blessed with highly intelligent and loving parents
who cared for their children more than themselves,
and gave everything they had to us.

They were a hard working and passionate couple with rich personalities,
and with inquisitive and interrogative but also very different outlooks on life.
They were very lucky in that they were, as teachers,
able to share their professional lives with each other.

Life can be kind and it can be cruel.
They were not perfect and definitely had their ups and downs,
as does any couple with spirit and soul.
But regardless, they were the anchor of our lives,
and they passed their values and their attitudes on to their children.

The five of us siblings shared equally in both their love and their care,
and their constant encouragement to find and live our dreams.
As a nine year old, I idolized them both and felt boundless security in their presence.
As an adult, I look back and understand the blessings they gave us;
and that they are and were the finest people I have ever met in my lifetime.
I know exactly where the courage and confidence to chase my dreams came from.”

We Five: Barbie, Me, Bertie, Roy, and Donnie

Lac Seul, Northern Ontario, Canada Summer 1961

Photo likely by John Garrick

Roy and Susan with Their Daughter Heather

Beautiful Cove, Long Island Nova Scotia Summer 2016

Hold your loved ones in your heart every day.
Cherish them, because life is unpredictable,
and you never know when you may lose someone you love.

I wish my American family and friends joy in each other
this Thanksgiving weekend.
When everything is stripped down to the one essential in life,
we find unconditional love.

I was tired when we finally arrived in Lansdowne House,
but I can't imagine how worn out my mother must have been.
As a young girl, I took her energy and optimism for granted; and especially so,
because she sheltered my siblings and me from her challenges, big and small.

My mother had a core of steel and powered through life with an unbelievable will.
No matter how difficult it was, she faced life with a courageous optimism.

Some women might have looked around on arriving in such a remote place
and taken the return trip to Nakina with the pilot.
My mother looked around and embraced the positive.

My Mother, Sara (MacDonald) MacBeath

Studying at Acadia University

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1947

On Friday, February 24, 2016 she wrote
to our extended family in her unassuming way:

When we landed I expected the Indians would look at us blankly.
Instead they were all smiling and seemed to love watching the children.
We went to Maureen’s and Dunc’s and they gave us dinner.
Then Don and I came to visit our house.

Don said the house was small,
so I was quite amazed to find it spacious.
It has lovely cupboards and drawers in it,
seven drawers and four sets of cupboards.
There is a lovely dinette set in it.
Best of all, though, is the lovely gas range.

Love to you all,
Sara.

The Forestry Shack

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Sketch by Maureen McRae

My mother was not a Material Girl.
The only things she truly wanted in life during my childhood
were her husband and children close, healthy, and safe,
and if that came with a gas range thrown in she was delighted.

My father returned from the forestry shack and collected us from the McRae's,
leaving my mother behind in her new home for a few rare minutes alone.

By then it was dark, and brilliant stars filled the sky like I had never seen before.
The starlight cast spindly tree shadows on the deep snow,
as we trudged through the bush to our home on the other side of the peninsula.

It was the coldest cold I had ever experienced;
and when I breathed in, my lungs burned.
I remember wrapping a scarf around my face to cover my nose and mouth.
Within a minute or two the front of my scarf was a sodden mess,
the inside warm and wet, the outside already stiff and freezing.
My moist breath froze on my eyelashes,
and my eyes watered making it hard to to see in the dark.

Half blind, I stepped off the packed down snow.
There was a reason the narrow path through the bush was well-trodden.
The moment my foot veered off the path, my leg sank in the snow to my crotch,
and I was down on my left knee struggling to pull my right foot out.
It came, but with no boot.

"That will teach you," my father laughed,
as I retrieved my boot and banged the snow out.
He was a big believer in experiential learning.

I managed to haul my stiff boot on my icy foot and stumble along the path,
peering through upper and lower eyelashes now frozen together.

Later in the spring, as the snow melted away,
everyone tottered around on those frozen snow paths
that stood above the muck like slippery balance beams.

It was the strangest sight,
but so much fun for veteran rail-walkers like Roy and me.

But very soon, the well-trodden snow paths melted too,
and we were all slogging through the mud,
in a world alive with the sound of trickling, running water.

Winter Sky

usm.maine.edu

We came out of the bush and into the open.
On our right was a long, dark, log church; and on our left,
a cluster of log houses spilling dim light through the odd window onto the snow.
Directly ahead was our new home, and home looked really good!

Nothing stirred around us as we rushed for the door,
except for the Indian dogs bedded down in nearby snowbanks.
A few rose to their feet and stared at us with hungry eyes.
We didn't have to be warned to be wary around them.

Sled Dog

Wikimedia ~ edited

The kitchen was lit with two softly hissing kerosene lamps,
but the rest of the house lay in shadows.
Dad lifted one lamp off its hook in the kitchen ceiling,
the shadows swinging wildly as he carried the lamp to show us around:
from our water supply (a twenty-five gallon drum with a wooden cover)
to our bathroom with its chemical toilet (a low seat over a bucket in a tiny room),
to the bunk-crammed bedroom we five children would share.
Our parents had a second bedroom just big enough to squeeze in a double bed.

Last was the small living room with a big window that looked out into darkness
beyond the pool of light from the kerosene lamp.
I'm sure if you made a beeline from there to the North Pole and beyond,
you wouldn't have encountered a single light in the vast, empty bush.

Before I knew it, we had found our pyjamas, brushed our teeth,
tried out the chemical toilet, and claimed our bunks.
Roy and I were on the top, with Donnie below me
and Barbie and Bertie toe-to-toe under Roy.
Roy was close enough that I could lean across the space
between our bunks and poke him (and him me).

We lay on our stomachs in our top bunks and stared out the window,
me on the left and Roy on the right. It was a moonless night,
but the Indian homes stood out starkly against the starlit snow.

We whispered excitedly in the starlight gleaming on our pillows.
We couldn't believe it ~
We were finally here: in the mysterious North!

Notes:
1. Photo: For the view from our front window, click here. This is summer in 1956 before the forestry shack was built. The Indian tent is pitched just to the right of where I went down to our waterhole on the frozen lake. The tip of the Father's Island is in the middle right of the photo.

2. Rail-Walker:

Walking the Rails

Flickr ~ Rafael Clemente License

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Map of Canada

Highlighting Ontario

Wikimedia

Location of Lansdowne House

Wikimedia edited

Lansdowne House

Sketch by M. Louise Barbour

Peninsula and Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

Library and Archives Canada: PA-094992

Rough Sketch of Lansdowne House

by Donald MacBeath, Fall 1960

This sketch shows the Father's Island and the tip of the "Mainland" peninsula

that contained the community of Lansdowne House.

#18 McRae's

#16 Anglican Log Church

#15 Forestry Shack (Our Home)

Black Dots ~ Indian Homes

I am experiencing technical issues:
Still limited internet access, until Suddenlink sorts it out.
Photos crashing ~ too many and out of memory.
Can't back up ~ no room on external drives.
No new four terabyte external drive,
because Amazon screwed up guaranteed delivery while I was in Colorado,
and I'm still waiting on late delivery here in Arizona.
Been traveling, so little access to my library internet onramp.
Hopefully things will work themselves out in the next few days.
See you next week (or maybe sooner)!

Meanwhile I'm still on the hunt for wild burros ...

Wild Burros

flickr: James Marvin Phelps License

When my mother and we five children joined my father in Lansdowne House,
in February, 1961, the white population swelled from sixteen to twenty-two.

Thirteen adults and three babies climbed
to fourteen adults, four babies, and four children.

The lack of older white children in the remote Ojibway village
was a concern for my parents.
Baby Bertie would have plenty of playmates
in babies Duncan, Kathie, and Glen.
Donnie and Barbie, at newly seven and almost five, had each other
and were not accustomed to ranging far from home to play.
But Roy and I were a different matter.

Good Buds, Donnie, Bertie, and Barbie (right)

A Few Months Before Going North

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1960

At nine and ten, Roy and I had diverging interests and a love-hate relationship.
Only fourteen months separated us in age, and we were serious rivals,
forever trying to outwit and outdo each other in everything.
We were accustomed to visiting our friends and relatives all over Smith's Cove
and roaming its woods, fields, and shores together and separately.

Our parents had tried to prepare us for a very different reality,
where we were unlikely to make friends among the Ojibway children
and where we were unable to go far from home in the dangerous and unforgiving bush.
We would be on our own and without school and church activities,
telephones, or television (not to mention electricity and running water).

Sibling Rivalry

Roy (3) laughs as the photographer tells me (4) to pull my skirt down

so my underwear won't show.

Some things you don't forget, ever!

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 1954

So that first morning when we awoke in Lansdowne House what did our parents do?
After breakfast and cleaning up, and with no school for the day,
they shooed us all outside to fend for ourselves.

The day was brilliantly cold, as only the North can be,
with a vibrant blue sky, stark black spruce,
dazzling white snow, and deep blue shadows.

Winter Morning

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, December 1960

Photo by Donald MacBeath

As we took a few tentative steps beyond the back doorstep,
the snow squeaked loudly and the Indian dogs scrutinized us.

It was bitterly cold, but calm,
so the subzero temperature was bearable in the bright sunlight.

-20º, -30º, -40º ... ?
I don't remember; when it's that cold, it doesn't matter.
It's flat out, brutally cold.
Our mother had hustled us into thickly layered, warm clothes
so we moved with sausage legs and arms.

The silence was overpowering when we stopped and looked around.
I could almost hear the sparkles dancing in the snow.
The only signs of life were the wary Indian dogs
and the smoke rising from the nearby log cabins.

"Go on! Go play!" our father encouraged,
firmly shutting the back door behind us;

and so, we ventured into the empty space between
our home and the silent Indian log cabins.

A minute or two later,
around the corner of the nearest cabin
two young Ojibway girls appeared:
Fanny and Nellie Kitchejohn.

Likely Fanny on the left
and Nellie on the right ~
Blame my half-century memory.
Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

We approached them, encouraged by the shy smiles of the two girls

with their beautiful copper skin, flashing eyes, and dark hair.

I raised my right hand in greeting and said, "How!"

followed by "Me, Louise" as I patted my chest.

"Me, Roy," added my brother solemnly.

"Speak to them in proper English" bellowed my father

from the back door he had cracked open surreptitiously.

After that my memories are less distinct.

I wrote in a letter to Nana about ten days later

that we had spent that first day "trying to talk with the Indians."

We learned their names, and they learned ours.

Somehow a toboggan appeared.

It may have been the one that usually stood against the forestry shack,

or it may have been one that belonged to the Kitchejohns.

Regardless, we were soon taking turns pulling each other

around one of the log cabins on the toboggan.

We did this for a long time, until we were frozen sausages.

The two Ojibway girls especially loved pulling our younger sisters around.

We even dashed briefly into their log cabin to warm by the wood stove.

Small, dimly lit, sparsely furnished around the edges, it was deliciously warm,

and their mother welcomed us quietly, despite her reserve.

Sleighing Toboggan

Historical Photo, Canada

Photo by Alexander Henderson (1831 - 1913)

Wikimedia

Our parents were shocked and pleased when we finally went inside our home.

They had worried about nothing, it seemed.

They had forgotten that children naturally speak in a universal language

when they approach each other with openness and friendship.

They had also neglected to consider the love of First Nations people for children.

Within a couple of weeks, my younger sisters had made the rounds of the village.

Donnie with her long curls, Barbie with her blonde hair,

and Bertie determinedly tottering around on her unsteady legs

were welcomed warmly and with shy curiosity everywhere.

Roy and I were also treated with warmth and respect,

but we were invited into Ojibway homes less often.

As older children, I think we were more intimidating;

whereas Donnie, Barbie, and Bertie were irresistibly cute.

I, in particular, was a conundrum.

As an independent and outspoken girl,

I didn't fit into any recognizable female role.

Neither child nor adult, I had to find a niche I could occupy.

Siblings, Going Their Separate Ways

Canoeing on Lake Attawapiskat, Spring 1961

Photo by Donald MacBeath

Notes:

1.   20 Below = -28.8º C
  30 Below = -34.4º C
  40 Below = -40.0º C

2.   A Personal Note:
I'm sorry about the irregular publishing of my Northern posts the last few weeks. After a lot of
time and frustration, I've resolved my computer and internet problems. No more library! Unless
there is a snafu when we move to another trailer shortly. Terry is a happy guy as he cheerfully
announces the subzero temperatures and snowy weather in Colorado, then prances out the door
to play pickleball in the Arizona sun. I have to admit that the warm sunshine and dry roads are
lovely. Bullhead City is turning out to be quite a nice fit! I'll be making the rounds to visit your
blogs asap.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Neskantaga (Lansdowne House)

Human Rights Watch Report on the Safe Water Crisis

in First Nations Communities in Ontario

Make It Safe

Well, the surprise is on me!
Just when I had everything worked out with technology,
and I thought I was good to go with me and posting,
I had an unexpected development!

Presents Under the Christmas Bush

Mojave Desert Near Oatman, Arizona

Santa came early on Tuesday and gave me
the best Christmas present I've ever received!

McCarran International Airport,

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Christmas in Calgary with my family for the first time this century!!!

So I've been packing and traveling, and here I am,

not in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but in snowy Calgary.

Out the Front Door

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Sometimes you just can't fight the universe!
Fighting the universe landed me in Bullhead City,
which to my consternation, is growing on me!

So I signing off posting until January 4th,
unless I find a pocket of time!
But I will get around and read your posts as much as possible!

In the spirit of Christmas in Lansdowne House,
I'm sharing my all time favorite Christmas carol,
The Huron Carol, also called Twas in the Moon of Wintertime.
Click Here (You Tube is not letting me add it to my post.)

It was written by Jean de Brébeuf in 1643.
Jean de Brébeuf was a Jesuit missionary among the Hurons in Canada.
The original title is Jesous Ahatonhia,
but I first knew it as Gitche Manitou,
a traditional Algonquin name for God.
Gitche Manitou is Canada's oldest Christmas song.

This song means a great deal to me
because of the time I spent in Northern Ontario
among the Ojibawa and Cree Indians when I was a young girl.

Wishing you and yours the best of Christmases
and a very happy new year!

Northern Nights in the Bush

Flickr: J.H. License

The Lansdowne Letters: Cursed

The Lansdowne Letters: Teaching the Non-English Speaking Student

IWSG: Wednesday, September 7, 2016: What Helps Me Find Time to Write.

The Lansdowne Letters: Changes

The Lansdowne Letters: It's a Go!!!

The Lansdowne Letters: Keepers and Burners

The Lansdowne Letters: Stressed to the Max

IWSG: Wednesday, October 5, 2016 ~ How Do I Know When My Story Is Ready?

The Lansdowne Letters: A Grandmother's Worries

The Lansdowne Letters: Ready to Go!

The Lansdowne Letters: Family is the Best!

Time Out

IWSG: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 ~ Trying to Let Go

The Lansdowne Letters: So Far North

The Lansdowne Letters: Touchdown in the Remote Wilderness

The Lansdowne Letters: The Greatest Blessing

The Lansdowne Letters: A Lesson Learned

The Lansdowne Letters: @#$%!

The Lansdowne Letters: How!

The Lansdowne Letters: Surprise!