Standing Into Danger

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:
Eva@Lillicasplace, Crystal Collier, Sheena-kay Graham, Chemist Ken, LG Keltner, and Heather Gardner.

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 New Year to each of you!
I wish you health, happiness, love, and fulfillment in 2017!

This morning I've been looking back over the year that was
and looking forward to the year that may be.
I say "may" because my life rarely cooperates with my plans.

Mojave Desert from Davis Dam

Near Bullhead City, Arizona
November 27, 2016

I had two lessons to internalize in 2016
and not by choice or planning:
Be Careful What You Wish For
and You Can't Fight the Universe,
against the unrelenting drumbeat of Control is an Illusion.

Right now I'm trying to write this post with a weak, piggyback internet link,
on a computer with jumping, switching, resizing screens,
and an independent cursor that's half water skipper, half mule.

I missed posting for the IWSG in December because I spaced it out.
I can't believe I forgot it!
But those cheap Wednesday flights, lack of internet access,
and computer crashes can provoke an alternate state.
And Wednesday I am again flying on IWSG Day.

Flying to Calgary from Las Vegas

WestJet, December 22, 2016

Throughout my life I've wished for the day
that I could travel as much as I wanted.
Be Careful What You Wish For!

In 2016, with Terry retired, it finally happened;
and I've spent a month or more in Honolulu, Victoria, and Bullhead City,
with shorter stays in England, Italy, and Nova Scotia,
Phoenix, Baltimore, Vegas, and Calgary.

Being able to travel as much as I wanted is fabulous,
but I have learned that it is also stressful and challenging.
My brain is a scramble of seasons, climates, cultures, and time zones.
My regular, at-home routines and responsibilities have descended into chaos,
my waistline has expanded, and my word count has decreased.

Dinner in the Eternal City

Rome, Italy, May 2016

I've found myself writing on all sorts of tables, desks, and sinks.

My current spot is an honest-to-God desk
in the latest trailer we moved into on New Year's Day,
after dancing the night away on New Year's Eve,
after returning from a frigid Christmas in Calgary via Vegas.

Writing Nook

(the only spot where I could pick up the hotel internet in our room)

Royal Grove Hotel, Honolulu, Hawaii

My gentle husband, who wants nothing more than to play pickleball in warm sunshine,
has been trying to convince me for ages to spend some winter months
in Bullhead City, Arizona, just across the Colorado River from Laughlin, Nevada.

In a trailer.

Chasing Pickleball in the Warm Sunshine

Phoenix and Honolulu, January and March, 2016

No!@#$%^ way!" said I over and over.
"I will never, ever stay in a trailer in the middle of the Mojave Desert."

I should know by now.
You Can't Fight the Universe!

Every time I take an absolute stand,
the Universe strikes back,
and if I keep fighting it,
the result is usually ugly for me.

We were visiting Vegas, and our Air B&B plans fell apart.
A large convention had snapped up all the rooms in Vegas.
Terry scrambled and found us a room an hour and a half away in Laughlin.
He scrambled some more, and twenty-four hours later we returned to Vegas
with a trailer rented for November in Bullhead City.

Yes, I know it's January.
My husband will be playing in the Bullhead City/Laughlin Senior Games:
Two States, Two Time Zones, One Gold Medal!
He'll be competing in singles, doubles, and mixed pickleball events.
Apparently winning medals in two tournaments already just isn't enough!

A Happy Guy!

Winning a Medal for Riverview RV Resort!

Bullhead City, Arizona, December 15, 2016

This little salmon is so tired of swimming upstream.
Terry has morphed into a social butterfly on the pickleball circuit.
I just can't keep fighting the Universe,
so I'm drifting downstream in a swift current.
I caved and agreed to stay in our trailer resort through January.

Are those mixed metaphors?
I'm too tired to know or care.
The writing rule I wish I'd never heard of
is to not write mixed metaphors.
Argh! I catch myself doing it all the time.

Google

The ultimate irony for 2016 is that I'm really enjoying Riverview in Bullhead City!
The people are great, a trailer is easy living, and I'm having lots of fun!

Find a Flat Surface: Write!

Bullhead City, Arizona, November 8, 2016

Playing with My Camera!

Oatman, Arizona, December 8, 2016

As for writing?

Through all of zany 2016 I've kept on writing;
not as much as I wanted,
but writing no matter what the Universe threw at me.

My goal for 2017?
To finish my !@#$%^ memoir manuscript.
I'm going to keep writing through it all.
I'm going to focus on the positive and get it done!

Google

Just like when another life-long wish came true recently;
I finally saw a live, Brighty-of-the-Grand-Canyon burro,
and then he kicked me.
I focused on the positive and bought some burro food,
so I'd get more attention from the front end than the back!

Think It Through Before You Leap!

Pat demonstrates the right way to approach Pickles and other burros with treats in hand.

Oatman, Arizona, December 8, 2016

Good luck to my fellow entrants in the IWSG Anthology Contest!
I'm hoping to keep my computer hobbling along
until I find out who the winning writers are.
Maybe even force my shape shifting screen
and half water skipper, half mule cursor to cooperate
in McCarran International Airport,
so I can send congratulations to the talented winners.

Here's hoping my Denver Genius Bar
can solve my latest computer woes quickly.
I'll be returning to Bullhead City
for card playing and boot scooting very soon.

My mantra for writing and life in the new year:
Just Go for it!

Happy writing in 2017!

Just Go for It!

Me (front) and My Sister Donnie (rear)

Christmas Eve 2016

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Tobogganing on Christmas Eve 2016

My Sister Donnie and Her Family with Me (front):

Lisa, Martin, Gavin, Krista, and Donnie (right)

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

When you were growing up did you ever have to move far away
in the middle of the year and go to a new school?

My family moved a lot during my childhood,
so I was familiar with having to start anew in another school
at the beginning, in the middle, and sometimes toward the end of a school year.

On the Move Again

Me (left) with Roy and Donnie

This was the year I attended three schools in three provinces as a second grader.

We were visiting relatives in New York State on the way to School #3 in Nova Scotia.

Moving never became easy for me.
It was always difficult.
The trauma of leaving my friends and starting over always hurt.

But sometimes the experience was intimidating, even scary.
That was the case when my family moved to Lansdowne House
in late February, 1961.
I approached my strange new school with trepidation,
because I knew it would be unlike any school I had ever attended.

Church of England Indian Day School

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada, fall 1960

Photo by Donald MacBeath

The fact that it was a one room school with multiple grades didn't bother me a bit.
I had been to all kinds of schools in my young life.

The fact that I would be the only fifth grade student didn't bother me either.
I'd been one of two third graders in my one room school in Margaretsville, Nova Scotia, and that had worked out just fine.

The fact that I would have to share a card table with my brother wasn't intimidating.
Rather it raised every territorial and competitive hackle I possessed,
because it was Roy, my brother The Instigator, whom I had to share it with.

However, the thought of my father as my teacher and principal was intimidating.
I remember peeking into his junior high classroom when I was five or six,
overawed by those huge seventh grade boys near the door
and my father's towering, authoritative presence at the front of the room.

Dad hadn't demonstrated a lot of patience in the past
when helping my brother and me with school work,
and my Nana MacBeath wasn't the only person worried about him roaring at us.
We two could bring out our father's inner Military Parade Marshal lickety-split,
but even this didn't scare me.

Big Soldier ~ Kitche Shemaganish

(The Nickname the Ojibwa People Gave My Father in Lansdowne House)

Most Likely Prince Edward Island, Circa: 1952

What scared me was the thought of being one of four white children
in a school full of Ojibwa children who spoke hardly any English.
I had never experienced being a minority,
but I already was familiar with prejudice
and with how children could cruelly target those who were different.
I was about to be the one who was different.

Some of my Father's Ojibwa Students

Lansdowne House on Lake Attawapiskat in Northern Ontario

We were late getting to school that first time in Lansdowne House.
My father had left early to make sure the cantankerous stoves
had heated the school without burning it down during the night
and to haul the day's water supply for the school up from the DOT waterhole.

Mom fell behind the schedule to get us off on time,
surely hampered by the novel task of readying four children
for school with no running water or electricity;
and, it didn't help to have an excited four-year-old Barbie
going off to school for the first time.

We Five Shortly Before Moving North

Roy (left), Donnie, Louise (Me) with Bertie, Barbie

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada

Photo by Sara MacBeath

Anxiety preyed on me as we headed across the squeaky snow
and followed the narrow path through the bush to the other side of the peninsula.
We had experienced a warm welcome from Fanny and Nellie Kitchejohn the previous day,
but I worried about what going to a school filled with Ojibwa classmates would be like.

My fear of experiencing prejudice was visceral. The irony escaped me at the time.
As I trudged up the steps to my new school, I was the living definition of prejudice,
burdened with a "preconceived opinion not based on reason or experience"
that the Ojibwa children would greet me with prejudice.
(Definition: Google)

I tried to express the strong emotions I had experienced that morning
in an essay I wrote eighteen months later:

"I felt the ugly fear and uneasiness of prejudice most powerfully
as I crossed the threshold of my father’s school,
and a sea of coppery faces and coal-black eyes stared at the four of us.

I could sense the atmosphere of curiosity mingled with fear and shyness.
My brother, my two sisters, and I could not return an equal feeling
for we were four small white children lost in the midst of thirty some Ojibwa children.

Never will I forget the feeling in the pit of my stomach,
my shaking knees, aching throat, and pounding heart.
I know now what it is like to be on the receiving end of prejudice."

I didn't get much school work accomplished that morning;
instead I tried to blend in and mimic the Ojibwa children's
responses to their familiar school routines.

A chirpy "Here, teacher!" from me during roll call
earned me a glare from my father and his admonition
that I should reply with "Present, Mr. MacBeath."

Our father expected we four to model proper school behavior and English
for the benefit of the Ojibwa students, not to mimic them,
even little Barbie on her first day of school ever.

While my younger sisters Donnie and Barbie sat among the younger Ojibwa girls,
Roy and I sat at our card table at the back of the room.
We pushed our papers and books around and observed.

Some of My Father's Ojibwa Girls
Photo by Donald MacBeath

The Ojibwa girls quickly
took our younger sisters
under their collective wings,
guiding them through
the unfamiliar school activities
of brushing teeth
and washing hands.

They comforted and sympathized with Donnie and Barbie
when they had to eat and drink
the dreadful, government-issued bannock and powdered milk
that targeted Indian hunger and poor nutrition.

They even jumped up to help my sisters sharpen their pencils,
gathering around them in a colorful giggling group at the pencil sharpener.
No one jumped up to help me with mine.

I can still remember that first long walk to and from the pencil sharpener
and feeling all those dark eyes staring at me as I moved across the room.

Our Ojibwa classmates largely ignored Roy and me,
but I caught them sneaking furtive glances at us,
glances they quickly averted if my eyes met theirs.

The minutes to morning recess crawled by,
and I glumly anticipated standing by myself
behind a corner of the school out of the wind.
Recess and acceptance loom large in the minds of children,
and I was no different from countless others.

The dreaded recess time came,
and Dad drove us all outside to play.
I suspect he had a quick cigarette and a cup of thermos coffee
to settle his nerves at having the four of us in his classroom.
In fact, we may have had an extra long recess ~
one of the benefits of Dad's having his immediate supervisor
located an hour and a half away by bush plane.

I walked over to stand stoically by the swings
where the Ojibwa girls were pushing my sisters
higher and higher into the cold air.
I watched my brother attempting to chat
with a bunch of boys gathered by the steps,
thinking it was going to be a very long and lonely recess.

What happened next I recorded in my long ago essay:
"At recess, a very big Indian boy approached and hailed me. 'Hello, Nouise!'
I rallied round, managed a faint 'Hello,' and our problems were solved.
Within minutes we were running, jumping, laughing, and shouting with them all."

That was George Jacobs, and he and Simon Atlookan
became two of my best friends among the Ojibwa children.
I am forever grateful for his reaching out
to this suddenly shy and awkward white girl.

George (left) and Simon (right)

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada, Winter 1960

Photo by Donald MacBeath

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

Within days of arriving in Lansdowne House in late February, 1961,
my family was comfortably settling into life in the bush;
in fact, we were thriving,
and it was wonderful to be together under one roof again!

Each day was a blend of the familiar and novel,
and our parents and we children were embracing our new life.

The Only Image I Have of Our Home

The Forestry House, Lansdowne House, 1961

Drawing by Donalda MacBeath

Text: Dear Nana, This is a picture of our home.

Note: Indian "Gods," Buckets of Meat Hung from the Eaves,

and a Box of Groceries on the Roof

The Artist and Letter Writer

Donalda, Fall 1960

Thursday, March 2, 1961
My father wrote to our extended family:

Hello There Everyone:
I am afraid that I will have to change the name of this publication
from The Lansdowne Letter to The Lansdowne Memorandum,
as I find that I don't have the time to write a daily edition anymore.

My time is fully taken up with my daily chores,
chores such as hauling up the daily water supply,
hauling in the oil for the stove, filling the lamps, carrying out the garbage, etc.
However, it is so wonderful to have my family with me,
that I would gladly do twice the amount of work and not complain.

No, I am afraid that the daily letter is a thing of the past.
You will have to consider yourselves lucky to receive a weekly letter.

We have been having a wonderful time since Sara came up here.
We are entertaining like crazy.
Last night we had two tables of bridge at our house.
We had the Mitchells, the McRaes, and the MacMahons
over for the night, or rather for the evening.

The night before, we had the Father and the Brother
over for the evening and had another rip snorting bridge session.
The Father and I beat Sara and the Brother,
though not by too much, only about 700 points.

Father Ouimet with My Father
The Roman Catholic Mission Kitchen
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Fall 1960

Brother Bernier with My Father

The Roman Catholic Mission Kitchen

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Fall 1960

The Father and I won the event on the last hand of the evening,
for we got over 800 points on this one hand.
The Father bid and made five hearts doubled,
and by doing so clinched a fast rubber to boot.

The children are settling down to school,
and life in the bush is most in a most satisfactory manner.
They are also getting along just fine with the Indian children.

I find it a unique and very rewarding experience
to be teaching my own children in school.
Most parents are never lucky enough to be able to get to know
their children as well as I am getting to know mine.
It is very interesting to see just how they get along with other children.
It is also a rather strange experience to see them through the eyes
of a teacher, instead of through the eyes of a parent.

My Father's School

Church of England Day School

I don’t want to brag too much, but Louise is a very intelligent child.
Not the most intelligent that I have ever taught,
but I would certainly rate her among the four or five
most intelligent that I have ever had as pupils.
She is a thinker, and that is a rare product
of today’s rather insipid educational system.

Roy is smart too, but very careless in his work.
He is also just like his father, in that he can’t spell worth a damn.
His writing also bears a remarkable resemblance to mine in its illegibility.
I think that mine is a bit more readable than his though,
so that doesn’t speak too highly for his, does it?

Roy and I, Often Together

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, 1953

Barbara and Donnie are a great help to me
in reaching my pupils in kindergarten and grade one.
I have made more progress with this group
since they joined them than I usually make in a month.

Barbara is a great favorite with all the older Indian children.
I guess it is because she is so fair, so young, and so cute.
They are always helping her to get dressed at recess
and undressed when she comes in after recess.

A couple of times, I have had to take Barbara to task for something,
and all the Indians rallied around her and comforted her
and glared at me most reproachfully.

Once, when I had to shake her, I just about had a mutiny on my hands.
I just hope all the attention and near adulation she is receiving don’t spoil her.

I think that in the long run, both my children
and the Indians are going to benefit from the arrangement.
The Indians are going to see just how
curious white children from outside react to school.
Already I have noticed that the Indians are becoming more responsive
in class and are showing more interest in their work.

My children are also going to get a lot of benefit from associating with the Indians.
The Indians do much neater work than white children and are more artistic.
They are also better behaved and more kind to each other than white children.
They are also more self reliant and honest than white children.
Perhaps some of these qualities will rub off on mine.

To Be Continued…

My Father's Newest Students

Barbie, Roy, Me with Gretchen, and Barbie

Margaretsville, Nova Scotia, 1958

Sometimes sharing my father's words are uncomfortable for me.

However, I promised myself when I started this journey that I would be honest,

and while I might edit my father's spelling and punctuation,

I will not edit his words.

The protective daughter and teacher in me come out

when I see my father's struggle with dyslexia;

and I think of him, my sister Barb, and one of my nieces,

all brilliant people, but bedeviled by the dyslexia

that clings to our family tree like lichen on a black spruce.

So, yes, I'll edit the mechanics of Dad's writing, but not the content.

And yes, it was difficult to type Dad's assessment of my intelligence

because I don't like to blow my own horn any more that my father did.
My four siblings are every bit as intelligent, driven, and accomplished as I am.
Even more so, truth be known.

And yes, it was difficult to type about Dad shaking Barbie in school.

A half century ago parents shook children sometimes
to get get their attention or worse.

Hopefully it happens much less now,

because now we understand the dangers of shaking children.

Of the five of us, Barbie was the one who stood up to our father the most,

and some of their standoffs are legendary.

Barbie was also the one most like our father in personality.

It's one thing to see your strengths and positive traits reflected in a family member,

but it's quite another to see your challenges and weaknesses mirrored in your child.

Dad may have been Kitche Shemaganish
or Big Soldier around the village,
but sometimes his fair, young, cute daughter
would give him a run for his money.

A rare photo of Dad and Barbie:
Dad was usually the photographer
and not the subject.
Alymer, Ontario, 1958
Photo by Sara MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

Notes:
1. Indian "Gods," Buckets of Meat Hung from the Eaves,
and a Box of Groceries on the Roof:
My sister Donnie recorded the Indian dogs that hung around our door step
and our unusual food storage system.
Because it was so cold, Dad stored all our frozen meat in buckets hug from the roof.
Sometimes groceries that could be frozen went up on the roof in a box.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Aerial Photograph of Lansdowne House

The Mainland and The Father's Island (Couture Island), 1935

You can clearly see the Father's beach where Dad's luggage was offloaded from a canoe.

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development / Library and Archives Canada / PA-094992

A Quick Sketch of Lansdowne House by My Father

Lansdowne House, Ontario

Wikimedia

Yikes, somehow I accidentally published the draft I was working on!
I'll have the finished edition of my Lansdowne Letter post up before I go to bed tonight!

In my last Lansdowne Letters post, I shared part of a letter
my father wrote to our extended family describing our early days together
in the remote northern community on Lake Attawapiskat.

My parents were really happy to have us together as a family again;
but even more so, I think, they were delighted to be a couple once more.

Sometimes in the busyness of our lives, we make the mistake
of taking ordinary life and its comforting rhythms for granted.
Much of life is everyday moments, and we should remember
that it is these small moments with our loved ones that come to mean the most.

Path to Our Water Hole

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Winter 1961

Painting by Donald MacBeath

Thursday, March 2, 1961 ~ Continued...
My father wrote to our extended family:

Sara is looking, and I think feeling, a whole lot better since she arrived in the North.
She is not so jumpy, and in spite of all our entertaining, she is more rested.

She has adopted about two or three of the Indian dogs and feeds them every day!
How those dogs love Sara.
They really recognize a sucker when they run across one.
Seriously though, they are starved,
and we only feed them what we would otherwise throw away.

Canadian Inuit Dogs: by fgiamma (can share on social media)

The children are a great help to me
carrying up the water every day, especially Louise.

Roy has begun to find the whole procedure something of a bind.
The ingenuity he displays in inventing excuses
to get out of carrying water amazes me.
I have never seen anyone who can dig up more aches and pains
than he can at water hauling time.

I make him do his share though, for I don't think it hurts
for children to have certain chores at home.

I never allow the children to go to the water hole alone,
and I always fill the buckets for them.
I wouldn't let them near it alone, for it is quite big,
and I am afraid that they could fall in.
They are forbidden to go near it except when I am with them.

A Strategic Roy

Notice how he has pulled the blanket to bring his toys closer.

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, Summer 1952

Photo by Sara MacBeath

A Different Approach to Life

I, on the other hand, had to be constantly tied down with my ubiquitous harness and rope.

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, Summer 1952

Photo by Sara MacBeath

Thursday night is regular weigh-in time for the MacBeaths.
Sara has gained between two and three pounds since she came up here.
We are stuffing food into her just about every time she turns around,
and in addition, I have her taking Cod Live Oil twice a day.

My weight shot up seven pounds the first week Sara was here.
I couldn’t resist Sara’s home cooking I guess,
especially her lovely homemade bread.

However, the intensity has worn off such temptations now,
and I have gone back on my diet.
In the last two days, I have managed to shed
over a pound of what I had gained back.
I am going to loose it all, for I feel so good when I am light
that I don’t want to ever be heavy again.

Honeymoon Days

My father always struggled to take weight off,

while my mother struggled to keep it on.

Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, Early September 1948

Photos by Don and Sara MacBeath

For the benefit of my Island subscribers, I should mention
that Sara has become an aunt again.
Louise gave birth to a baby girl the last of January.
Most likely Sara has written everyone about it,
but just in case she hasn’t, I thought I would let you know.
At the same time, I want to send
belated congratulations to the proud mother and father.

It has been snowing quite heavily for the last two or three days.
The damned stuff is just cascading down.

Going to school today I was plowing knee deep in the snow,
and this is on a beaten path yet.
If I strayed off the path, I would sink almost to my waist.
I know, I made this blunder once today when I was going for water.

You should see poor Gretchen in the snow.
She literally swims through it.
Even Gretchen seems to like the North and
is looking better since she arrived up here.

Bark Post

Louise has bought some beads at the Bay, and she is getting
Anne O’Flaherty to show her how to do Indian beadwork.
She is all excited about the whole thing.
Poor Louise, she gets so excited about things like this, doesn’t she?

We have really been isolated since Sara arrived.
I sent for some aerial wire, but it hasn’t arrived yet.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what is going on in the world.
For all I know, there could be a war in progress.
Even when I do get the papers and magazines, the news is a week old.
I will be glad when we get the radio functioning again.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Chicago Black Hawks

Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, circa 1961

Wikimedia

Amphibious Assault Ship USS Boxer (LPH-4)

at Norfolk, Virginia (USA), in 1961

Wikimedia

Two things have happened simultaneously.
I have run out of things to say,
and I have remembered that I have to put oil in the stove,
so I’ll just let the distaff side of the team take over from me.

Bye now,
Love, Don.

In defense of Roy, I feel I should set the record straight regarding hauling water.
At first Dad did accompany us to our water hole,
clambering down the hill on the snow-packed path to the frozen lake below.

He would grab the ice pick
stashed upright by our water hole
and chop up the inch or so of ice
that had frozen over it
since the day before.

Then he would fill our metal buckets
and send us on our way
back up the hill
to the forestry shack.

Flickr: Thirteen of Clubs License

This did not last very long.
Hauling water for a family of seven is a time-consuming task,
as well as physically challenging.
My father soon developed a bad back.

Dad fortuitously realized that Roy and I were
responsible enough and capable of hauling water on our own,
and we two very different people soon inherited the task.

Roy, from his earliest days, had demonstrated
an aptitude for accomplishing tasks

by expending the least amount of energy possible.

One of our family stories is how Mom first realized that Roy was very smart

by observing him pulling his blanket toward him so he could reach his toys.

For him, hauling water was a chore and there were better ways to spend his time.

I, from my earliest days,

had demonstrated an aptitude for

covering a lot of territory very fast.

It was Roy, just a few years ago,

who pointed out to me

that almost every photo of me as a child

has me harnessed to a rope

trailing out of the photograph.

Me in My Harness Carrying My Coiled Rope
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, Summer 1952
Photo by Sara MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

For me, hauling water was an adventure, and I loved the thrill

of chopping the ice hole open and filling the buckets.

At first Roy tried to wiggle out of the chore,

but soon he had a legitimate reason for avoiding the task.

He developed serious ear infections and tonsillitis
after arriving in Lansdowne House,

so he was frequently too sick to haul water.

These bouts worsened and resulted in an operation to treat his mastoiditis

and remove his tonsils in the Sioux Lookout Hospital about a year later.

Meanwhile I carried on hauling the family water,

sometimes with the help of my younger sisters Donnie and Barbie.

Barbie, like me, had a lot of fun hauling her tiny buckets up from the lake.

Every bucket had to be strained through cheesecloth
draped over the water drum near the door in our kitchen.

Then my mother would purify it
with a few drops of Javex liquid bleach.

Soon I took over the purification job too.

I would haul every drop of that water again,

if I could go back

and relive those days with my family.

They were the best of times;

but then, being with my family is always wonderful.

Together at Christmas

Donnie and Roy, Louise (me) and Barb, with Bertie in front.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 12/25/2016

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

Notes:
1. Louise's Baby:
My mother's sister Louise and her husband Carl Lindholm
added daughter Julie to their growing family at the end of January, 1961.

2. Isolation:
As I recall there were several short wave radios in Lansdowne House at the time, at
the Hudson's Bay post, the Roman Catholic Mission, the Nursing Station, and the Department of
Transport weather station. These short wave radios were the only means of communication
with the Outside between bush plane flights. The white people all had transistor radios, and
as soon as Dad's aerial wire arrived, our transistor radio provided us with current news and music.
I might as well have been on the dark side of the moon, for my world had shrunk to the visible
horizons of white ice and black spruce against the sky. I didn't pay much attention to the
transistor radio until I became a fan of WLS Chicago and it's Hit Parade a few months later.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House

The Hudson's Bay Post and Department of Transport Buildings and Houses, 1960

Photo by Sara MacBeath

A Quick Sketch of Lansdowne House by My Father

It shows the location of the Hudson's Bay, the Department of Transport,

and the Roman Catholic Mission on the Father's Island.

Lansdowne House, Ontario

Wikimedia

Map of Canada

Wikipedia

A half century ago everyone in Lansdowne House
eagerly awaited the mail plane on Friday.
Sometime around midday, a small bush plane from Nakina
would come winging over the southern horizon
bringing mail, supplies, and sometimes visitors.

Santa with Mrs. Mitchell

(The Hudson's Bay Company Manager's Wife)

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo by Donald MacBeath, December 1960

This meant that the community's white adults

spent Thursday evening writing letters and supply orders

to go out on the plane's' return trip to Nakina.

Roy, Donnie, and I quickly found ourselves joining

the adults in the Thursday night ritual.

On Thursday, March 2, 1961
my brother Roy wrote to
our grandmother, Myrtle Pratt:

Dear Nana,
All we have up here is gas lights
and a gas stove.
We are having a lot of fun.

February 28th it was 30 below zero.
Daddy got 40 barrels of gas.

It snowed yesterday and part of last night
and it snowed all afternoon.

The snow is three or four feet deep
before you get to the ice.

The only time the ice is good for skating is in the fall
and sometimes the ice is eight feet thick.
Love Roy to Nana.

Gas Light (Coleman Kerosene Lamp)

Roy's Letter

On the same day,
Thursday, March 2, 1961
I also wrote to Nana (Myrtle Pratt):

Dear Nana,
I am having a wonderful time up here.
The night I arrived we went
to the McRae’s for supper
and then to our new home.
It is very large and roomy.
We have to use gas lamps!
I sleep in a top bunk.

The next day there was no school,
and we spent our time trying to talk with the Indians.

The next day, however, there was school.
Donnie and Barbie had desks, but Roy and I sat at a card table.

We did the usual things,
but we had a couple of hilarious times
in school the next couple of days,
like Barbie putting her coat on upside down.

I have made two friends.
Unfortunately they are boys.
Their names are Simon and George.

Last night I went baby sitting and had a great time.
The McMahons fixed me a nice lunch,
and in the middle of enjoying it,
the baby started kicking the bed.
Of course, I didn’t know what it was.

I ran to the kitchen, found a butcher knife
and never let go of it all evening.
Goggle

I earned two dollars and spent it in two minutes
on a hobby, and that is beadwork.
These are the things I bought:
yellow, blue, green, white, orange, and blue green beads.
There are seven tubes of them in a different color.
Also special needles and thread.
Love, Louise.

P.S. Next time I will write a better letter.

Drawing of Beadwork Supplies

in My Letter

While Roy, Donnie, and I sat at the kitchen table writing letters

by the light of the hissing kerosene lamps,

our parents took turns typing theirs on the newly refurbished typewriter.

On Thursday, March 2, 1961
My mother wrote to our extended family:

Hi Everybody:
Don insists that I write a line on this letter,
but when he sees the mess I am making
he will never let me do it again.

I have just finished making out a list for a week's
supply of groceries for the week after next.
It is very confusing. However we won’t starve
for the survey gang left a ton of supplies behind.

Louise made two dollars baby sitting last night and was as proud as punch,
but worried when we told her not to even hint at money
for everyone here helps anyone that needs help out.

Poor Louise was practically in tears when she arrived home.
She was afraid we would make her take it back.

She invested her money today in the beads for her beadwork.
She also bought six suckers for fifteen cents. Quite a change.

The jackets and moccasins
the Indians make here are beautiful.

They trim them with beads
in flower designs and with fur.

Maureen and Anne were in this afternoon,
or I should say at the door with snowshoes on.

Even the snowshoes were decorated
with puffs of pink and white wool.

Mukluks Wikimedia

The children get along well with the Indian children,
and everyone here is good to them.
Maureen had Louise in helping her bake the other day;
and of course, Louise loved it.
Iona likes Barbie to go over and play with Glennie,
while Maureen loves Donnie and says to let her
go over and play with Dunc Junior anytime.

We’ve had lots of fun playing bridge.
Both times the score was very close,
even though I was on the losing side both times.

The first night I couldn’t get any cards,
but the last time I had good ones.
One hand Don took me to task for making a ridiculous bid.
I bid one no-trump, Maureen bid two no-trump,
so I bid three no-trump.
They all laughed at me and said that I didn’t have a chance.
I made it without any difficulty at all and with no help from my partner.

Playing Bridge

Wikimedia

It is really beautiful here,
and we have been very comfortable.

We walked over to the Island one evening.
It was a lovely moonlit night
with lots of stars.
It was a nice walk.

Well I better stop messing up this letter.
Love, Sara

thebirdingproject

One of my vivid memories of Lansdowne House
is the first time I babysat outside my home.
The McMahons hired me to look after Baby Glen
while they played bridge next door at the McRae's.

I was only ten (almost eleven); but I had had lots of experience
looking after my baby sister Bertie and my younger siblings,
and I arrived at the McMahon's home filled with confidence.

I had snuck a copy of one of my father's
Alfred Hitchcock's MysteryMagazines to read during the evening,
and after checking on Glennie, I settled down to enjoy the stories.
That was a big mistake for a young girl with an overactive imagination.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

Vol. 5, No. 11, November 1960

Etsy

When I suddenly began to hear strange banging noises,
I was acutely aware that I was alone in the wilderness
surrounded by Indians and wolves and worse.

My heart began to pound and the palms of my hands liquified.
I could hardly breathe, and I could hear
something crawling up to the back steps.
I exploded from the couch and raced to the kitchen
to grab a butcher knife out of the drawer.

When I turned toward Glennie's bedroom,
I could see a shadow on the wall beyond the fridge.
Someone was crouching with a long thin club ready to strike.
Clutching the butcher knife and creeping toward the fridge
was perhaps the scariest thing I had experienced in my young life.

I swung around the fridge with the knife raised high,
only to find a broom leaning against a stack of cartons.
The light from the back porch was casting their shadows on the wall.

When I worked up the nerve to check on the baby,
I discovered that Glennie was kicking his crib.
Talk about feeling stupid!

I made it back to the couch and held the knife the rest of the evening.
I did not read anymore Hitchcock that long night.

The moment I heard the McMahons saying goodnight to the McRaes across the yard,
I dashed back to the kitchen and slipped the knife in its drawer.

What I don't remember is my parents' reaction to my letter to Nana.

But I do recall my father telling me not long after
that you don't stab down with a knife.
Instead you thrust up, making it more difficult
for someone to turn the knife back on you.
Fortunately, I've never had to test that advice.

Norseman and Fuel Drum

Noorduyn Norseman Ski Plane

Waldorf, Howard Special Collection 008 Noorduyn Norseman

San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives (SDASM)

Flickr: License

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

The Brier Island Nature Reserve
Bay of Fundy
Photo by Roy MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

Notes:

1. Barrels of Gas:
Tractor trains traveled across the frozen landscape to deliver all the fuel that the community needed to run its generators, stoves, and other machines. The fuel came in 45 gallon drums. The 40 barrels of gas Roy referred to was for the stoves to heat the school.

Oil Barrels or Drums in the North

Flickr: Provincial Archives of Alberta License

2. Gas Lights or Lamps: The Coleman kerosene lamps my father used to light our home made
quite an impression on Roy and me. Each evening my father would light the lamps, a task we
watched with keen interest because we never knew when Dad would yell, "Open the door"
to throw a wildly flaming lamp into the snow.

The lamps had a fuel container at the base. My father started by pumping a hand pump to
pressurize the fuel. This forced fuel and fumes up into the lantern where they came in
contact with the mantle. Then Dad would carefully stick a match inside the lamp and light the
mantle. He could adjust the brightness of the mantle glow by increasing or decreasing the fuel
forced into the lamp. The You Tube video below shows how a modern, double mantle lamp
works which gives you an idea of how the older Coleman lamps in our home worked. I watched
my father change the mantles in the lamps many times.
collectorsweekly

You Tube: eReplacementParts.com

And for Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Sketched on Map of Ontario

from Atlas of North America:

Space Age Portrait of a Continent

National Geographic 1985, pages 166-167.

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:
Misha Gericke, L.K. Hill Juneta Key, Christy, and Joylene Butler.

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

This month's IWSG featured question is:
How has being a writer changed your experience as a reader?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I've thought about the relationship between writing and reading throughout my life,
especially since I began teaching children to write and to read in the late 1980s.

I don't think you can be a good writer without reading widely,
and once you start writing, I think it changes your reading experience forever.

Reading and Writing: Two Parts of One Whole

Reading and writing are so intimately related that participating in the two
over time deepens, enriches, and improves the experience of both.
I have come to view them as two sides of the same coin.

Back in 1990 or 1991, early in my teaching career,
I had the good fortune to attend a writing conference in Denver.
The keynote presenter was the incomparable Shelley Harwayne.

Shelley Harwayne

harlem village academies

For those of you who aren't familiar with Shelley Harwayne,
she was involved with the public schools in New York City for over thirty years.

During this time she worked as a teacher, staff developer, and superintendent
and was the founding principal of the New Manhattan School (P.S. 290, NYC).

As co-director of Columbia University's Teacher College Writing Project,
Shelley mentored and inspired a generation of writing and
reading teachers around the country and the world.

At that Denver conference Shelley said something I have never forgotten.
She said that if you wanted your students to become good writers
you had to marinate them in good literature.

As a result, my classroom and many others were stuffed
with the best children's literature we teachers could buy.

My Teammates and I on a School Field Trip

These colleagues were amazing and generous teachers

who inspired their students to read and to write

across their wide curriculum.

IMHO, one result of the focus on obtaining the best children's literature by teachers
was an explosion in the publication and availability of wonderful,
at times profound, children's books in an array of genres.

Some of My Personal Favorites

See Notes Below

However my students, and others in classrooms around the world,

didn't just read excellent children's literature.
They examined that literature to learn how authors wrote and structured books,
and they applied that knowledge to their own writing to improve it.

As the reading and writing processes spiraled around
throughout the year and in following grades,
students became better readers and writers,
and their awareness of how authors wrote good books deepened.
Students began to enjoy the books they read,
not only for the story or the information in them,
but also for the craft and beauty of the writing found in those books.

I have walked that spiraling path throughout my life,
and I have long passed the point where I value and enjoy
a book simply for its story or information.
I learn and derive pleasure from understanding
an author's skill in the craft of writing
and in his or her choice of words.

If a book is not well written, its impression on me
lasts as long as a bite of cotton candy on my tongue.

If a fiction book is skillfully and beautifully written,
I find myself reading and rereading passages to savor the actual writing,
even as I long to gallop ahead to learn the ending.

As for non-fiction, when a book is well-structured
and written in cogent, fresh language,
I understand the content better,
I acquire insight into improving my writing,
and I enjoy observing the craft of the writer.

Three of my Personal Favorites

See Notes Below

Some books I will reread entirely to better understand how
the author created an unforgettable reading experience for me.

These reading and writing experiences accumulate in my mind,
and the spiraling continues, both enriching my life immeasurably
and deepening my pleasure in both processes.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a giant among writers and readers,
certainly among those I admire most.

One of his many well-known quotes is about the process of writing,
and it is the one that resonates most with me as a writer and a reader.

He said of writing The Lord of the Rings that the story
“...grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind:
out of all that has been seen or thought or read,
that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.”

Personally, I expand the meaning of Tolkien's quote
to include my understanding of story as a reader.
My understanding of story as a writer
has added to my subconscious "leaf-mould,"
and it has enriched my reading experience
in ways that are hard to articulate or measure.

My treasured books are my treasured friends.
I hope my pleasure in writing and reading
continues to deepen the rest of my life.

IWSG Reads:
Since I joined the IWSG, I have read a number of books
by fellow Insecure Writer's Support Group members,
notably books by Alex J. Cavanaugh and Pat Hatt
that I have thoroughly enjoyed and reread.

Alex J. Cavanaugh Books

I Have Enjoyed and Reread

Google Blog

Pat Hats Books

I Have Enjoyed and Reread

Amazon Blog

I've made it a goal this year to read at least five books
published by Insecure Writer's Support Group writers.

I just finished reading my first for the year,
Matowak: Woman Who Cries
by Joylene Nowell Butler

If this book is any indication,
I will have a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience
ahead of me as I achieve my goal.

Amazon  Blog

This book is a fabulous read!
It's a murder mystery set in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada.
The book is grounded in reality all the way through.
The RCMP police work is engrossing and realistic,
and the details of the Canadian setting ring true throughout.
The two memorable main characters, RCMP Corporal Danny Killian
and suspect Sally Warner, lead readers on an intriguing chase
which kept this reader double guessing herself to the end.

And yes, I appreciated Joylene's effective use of foreshadowing which she does exceptionally well in her skillfully written book!

I'm looking forward to reading your posts to hear
how writing has changed your reading experience.

Have you read any good books by IWSG authors
that you can recommend?

Happy writing in February!

Notes:
1. Shelley Harwayne Bio

2. P.S. 290, NYC: Public School #290, New York City

3. IMHO: In my humble opinion

4. In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McRae
by Linda Granfield (WW1 History and Poetry)  Thriftbooks

5. Oscar the Herring Gull
by Roberta Heembrock (Fiction with Non-Fiction Notes)   Amazon

6.  If You Are a Hunter of Fossils
by Byrd Baylor   (Poetry ~ Science: Geology) Goodreads

5. The Prince of the Pond
by Donna Jo Napoli (Fiction ~ Fantasy)  Goodreads

6. Howling Hill
by Will Hobbs (Fiction) Amazon

7. The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
by Chris Van Allsburg (Fantasy) Amazon

8. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
by Brian Greene (Physics and Cosmology)   Wikipedia

9. The Trojan Horse
by Warwick Hutton (Mythology)   Thriftbooks

10. Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown
by Adam Shoalts (Exploration)   Amazon

11. Tolkien Quote:
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, p. 131 Google

Extending hospitality was a cardinal rule
in remote communities of the North a half century ago,
and tiny Lansdowne House was no exception.
It is amazing how much socializing and entertaining
went on among its twenty-two white people
(fourteen adults and eight children).

A Social Evening at the Roman Catholic Mission

Father Ouimet, Don MacBeath, Brother Bernier, and Mr. Baker (a Prospector)

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Fall 1960

I say white people, because at that time
whites and Ojibway didn't mix socially,
except at special events, during church,
or at the movies at the Roman Catholic Mission.

My father had a good relationship with the Ojibway in the community,
but the reality was that the Ojibway rarely visited white homes,
and white adults rarely visited Ojibway homes unless on official business.

My father, who worked for the Department of Indian Affairs,
was operating under prohibitions which he articulated
in his handbook The Northern School Teacher.
Two regulations that northern teachers strictly adhered to were
"No fraternizing with Indians of Opposite Sex"
and "No drinking with Indians on or off school property."

Bill Mitchell Talks with an Ojibway Man

Hudson's Bay Store, Lansdowne House

Photo by Donald MacBeath, Fall 1960

As a girl of ten, my interactions with Ojibway children took place primarily at school,
although we frequently played with the Kitchejohn girls outside our home.

As for my best friends Simon and George,
they were six or seven years older than I,
and it would have been inappropriate for us
in both cultures to associate outside of school.
Furthermore, as older teenagers,
the two boys had increasing responsibilities at home.

The Ojibway treated my family with courtesy and kindness.
The adults quickly realized our family was unaware of
some of the inherent dangers in the bush,
and they kept a sharp eye on us when we were outside playing.

If Baby Bertie so much as stumbled or sat down playing outside,
any nearby Ojibway adult came running,
usually with a stick of wood or other weapon,
for fear of a dog attacking her.
Stories of Indian dogs mauling or killing white children
circulated around the north, and even I had heard them.

Sled Dog ~ Not All Were Tied On

Pixabay

Most days in Lansdowne House were routine ones,
and life for us quickly settled into a pleasant rhythm,
with the white adults socializing among themselves
and entertaining visitors from the Outside.

On Thursday, March 9, 1961 my mother wrote
to her mother-in-law, Myrtle MacBeath:

Dear Mother:-
Another week has flown by.
Mr. Pratt, Assistant Manager
for Indian Affairs,
was down to Lansdowne
for nearly a week
and came in for a couple
of evenings to visit us.

Sally (MacDonald) MacBeath
Acadia University, 1947
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

The first time was to show us the plans
for our new house they are building
and to ask for any suggestions for color schemes.
They meant to get them from me when I arrived in Nakina,
but decided I would be too tired.

They suggested colors that were used in the last house they built,
so we said we wouldn’t make any changes.
The plans look very nice, and it will be modern with electricity,
running water, bathroom complete with plumbing, etc.

We played bridge with Uno and Mr. Pratt Tuesday night,
and Uno and I beat them. The score was very close.

Wednesday night Don and I went
to the Mitchell’s for bridge.
We had a nice time.
Mrs. Mitchell is quite a talker.

She has been in the North since
she married when she was nineteen.
She is somewhere in her fifties,
I believe, and looks very young.

Mrs. Mitchell, Wife of Bill Mitchell
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Her husband came from Aberdeen Scotland
about thirty-five years ago,
and he had lived in the North all that time.

They have a very nice home.
They have three children,
a boy and girl in their twenties and a boy twelve.

Mr. Mitchell and I beat Don and Mrs. Mitchell.
The score was very close again though.

Dad had to go to Nakina overnight on school business.
When they took off they flew low over the house to bid us good-bye.

Mike came in to light the lamps for me,
and if Don is detained by weather tomorrow,
the men will get together and bring us over water.

A Modern DeHavilland DC-6 "Twin Otter"

The North Relied on Bush Pilots and Their Bush Planes

Flickr: Sahtu Wildlife License

I am teaching school tomorrow morning,
perhaps in the afternoon too.
Maureen is looking after Roberta for me.
It will be quite an experience,
for I imagine the Indian children won’t talk to me.
All the Indians here are very friendly.

Don was unable to write for he didn’t know until this morning
that he would be leaving for Nakina.
I assured him that I would write and tell you the news.

The children are all fine and happy.
Don bought them a toboggan,
and it is hard to get them in the house
they love it outside so much.
They are building a toboggan run below the house.

I must close now and get off the mail and finish up the supply list.
I find it difficult to figure out exactly what we need,
but after a month of it I imagine it will come automatically.
I make all our bread except for the odd loaf.

I hope you and Aunt Maude are well.
Louise had letters started, but didn’t finish them.
We had to have everything in order
so we could get an early start tomorrow morning.

With love,
Sara.

Donnie and I, Still Tobogganing

Photo by a niece or nephew, Christmas Eve, 2016

My mother's newsy letter looks ordinary on the surface,
but it points to some real differences from life on the Outside.

Hospitality is one of them.
My father wrote of this in his handbook:
"When you are in the north be hospitable to all transient guests
such as pilots, missionaries, Indian Affairs Branch officials,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Provincial Police, and others.

"Always offer coffee or tea and invite them for a meal.
If guests of this nature have to stay overnight
always offer them a place to sleep.

"All travelers in the north carry sleeping bags and air mattresses,
and a chesterfield or even a smooth floor in a warm room will suffice.

"The need for hospitality can not be over emphasized.
Travel in the north depends upon mutual hospitality,
and from a practical point of view,
you never know when you may be forced
to accept the hospitality of someone else."

Have Bed, Will Travel

thewoodslife

During early 1961 we had a number of pilots and priests
bunking on the chesterfield in our living room.
I'm guessing that Mr. Pratt spent his week staying at the mission
or with Dad's former roommate Uno.

Guaranteed Mr. Pratt made the rounds to visit
all the white people in Lansdowne House
for coffee or tea, a meal, or an evening of bridge.

The only place outside of northern Ontario
that my family experienced the level
of hospitality we enjoyed in Lansdowne House
was in the outports of Newfoundland.

There too, people lived on the edge
with unreliable access to larger communities and services.
The most generous and compassionate people I have met
are among those who had the least.
When your very life might depend on another's hospitality,
you were hospitable under any circumstance.

I'll get to some other differences between the north and the Outside in my next post.

An Evening of Cards

Uno and Brian

Photo by Donald MacBeath, Winter 1960

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue.

Notes:
1. Our New House:
The teacherage in Lansdowne House had burned down before my father arrived in the community.
That is why he had to room with Uno and why we couldn't join him, until he got permission to use
the Forestry building.

2. Sleeping Bags:
Fifty years ago sleeping bags were not the mummy-shaped marvels of lightweight fabric,
waterproof synthetic down, and advanced construction available today. In Lansdowne House our
family slept in sleeping bags rated for Arctic weather down to -30 ºF or -34ºC, similar to the
Woods Arctic Eiderdown Sleeping Robe pictured above. The sleeping bags were toasty warm,
and they had an outside flap sewn to the top of the bag that we could pull over our heads and
shoulders. Our house had a stove fueled by oil which my father kept turned low at night.

3. A Personal Note:
I am on the road again which is why this post is late today. I may not have access to internet for
the next day or two. I will respond to comments and visit your posts as soon as I can.

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.

2 ~ Dad's and Uno's Shack

12 ~ Hudson Bay Store

14 ~ Mitchells' House

18 ~ MacRaes' House
22 ~ Site for the New Teacherage
between Dad's School and the Nursing Station

29 ~ Usual Path of My Canoe

When I arrived in Lansdowne House in late February, 1961,
I was a month shy of eleven, and my parents were already concerned about my age.

The Hudson's Bay Post
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario
Winter 1960-61

Photo by Don MacBeath

They were looking ahead and anticipating one of the most difficult problems
they would have to solve, a problem that troubled all white families
with growing children in the remote communities of northern Canada.
What to do with nubile sons and daughters?

Roy and I

Not Quite Nubile, But Getting There

School Photos, Fall 1960

In my mother's letter of March 9, 1961
that I shared in my last post,
she wrote a little about the background
of the Hudson's Bay manager's wife
Mrs. Mitchell.

Mrs. Mitchell, Wife of Bill Mitchell
Photo by Don MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

My mother mentioned that the Mitchell's had three children,
a boy and a girl in their twenties and a twelve year old son.
What Mom didn't relate was that the young Mitchell boy
did not live with his parents in Lansdowne House.

I have no idea where their son was living
whether with relatives or at a boarding school,
but guaranteed, he was away attending school on the Outside.
It wasn't just a question of their son obtaining a better education.
It was also about allowing him to associate with white children.

My father addressed
the problem
of older children
in his handbook,
The Northern School Teacher:

One of the biggest drawbacks a married teacher
faces in the bush is the rearing of his children.
The teacher is faced with one of two equally onerous choices.
He can keep the children with him in the bush,
or he can send the children out to a boarding school.

If he keeps them with him, he deprives them of
the association with young people of their own race and kind,
and of educational advantages which are just not available in the bush.

If he sends them out to boarding school, he deprives himself and his wife
of that wonderful relationship between parents and children,
which should be the God-given rights of parents and children the world over.

This particular problem and these dreadful choices
are not peculiar to the Indian teacher.
They are the lot of all married couples who elect
to spend their lives in isolation,
people like Hudson’s Bay personnel,
Department of Transport employees,
free traders, and missionaries.

Apparently association with one’s own kind is considered more vital
to a child’s upbringing than association with parents,
for it is always the choice of sending children out to school which is finally taken.

It would have been my decision, too, if fortune had decreed
that I was to spend the rest of my life in the bush.

The problem is always intensified,
and the decision takes on a sense of greater urgency,
if one has a nubile son or daughter;
for, wonderful as the bush Indian is,
and some of them are very fine people,
white children from educated families and Indian youths from the bush
have nothing in common except sex.

A union of two young people from such wildly divergent
racial, religious, and socioeconomical backgrounds
can only lead to heartbreak and tragedy.

A Growing Family

We Five Just Before Heading North

Photo by Sara MacBeath

My parents were confident that my father could meet Roy's and my educational needs,

and they assumed they had several years before they were forced

to send Roy and me to live with relatives or to boarding school.

What they didn't anticipate was that their sensitive young daughter

would form close friendships with Ojibway members of the opposite sex

and that those friendships would have long-lasting consequences.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House Lies in the Wilderness

West of James and Hudson Bays

Flickr: Stuart Rankin License

Lansdowne House
Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

I'm sorry, everyone.
I've been unable to get a post together this week.
I've been down with the flu and tackling a long To Do List.

It's my intention to catch up on commenting, visiting your posts,
and getting a post out by next Friday.
Thanks for your understanding!

Winter in Northern Ontario

Flickr ~ J.H. License

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

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:
Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins M. J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson.

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

Every month, the IWSG announces a question that members can answer
in their IWSG Day post. These questions may prompt you to share
advice, insight, a personal experience or story.
Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post,
or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!!!
This month's IWSG featured question is:
Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it?
Did it work out?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aloha!
This month's IWSG Day finds me newly arrived in Honolulu
still recuperating from a serious bout of flu/cold.
I'm back to accessing the internet at a table in the Royal Grove's lobby.
I dearly love Hawaii!

Diamond Head Crater

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

My answer to this month's IWSG question is "No."
I have never reworked an old story,
but once I complete my northern manuscript that's exactly
where I am going.
I have lots of stories and even the beginning of a novel to retackle.

Plus, I want to have another go at the story I entered in last year's IWSG contest.
I crammed too much into 6,000 words, and I have lots I want to improve.
So I'll look forward to everyone's answers to this month's question with great interest!

My Latest Writing Hidey-Hole

The Royal Grove, Honolulu, Hawaii

And now for a little revealing fun!
I scribbled down some behaviors that identify me as reader.
Do you share any of these?

1. I have have dozens of books scattered about my home
waiting to be read.

2. I always have magazines stacked in my bathroom to sneak in
a little quiet reading.

3. I can sit in a bookstore for hours, drinking coffee and browsing
through books.

4. I worry that I don't have enough time to read and reread all the
books I'd like to in the time I have left.

5. I can't catch a flight without buying a book in an airport
bookstore.

6. I snap photos of books I see and would like to read.

7. I get anxious if I have a day that I can't read.

8. I know where you can buy a book to read late at night
on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas.

9. I love talking on the phone with my sisters and friends about
good books to read.

10. I think a new book smell beats a new car smell hands down!

I'd love to hear about a behavior that identify you as a true reader!

IWSG Reads:

I've made it a goal this year to read at least five books
published by Insecure Writer's Support Group writers.

I recently finished reading
As We Know it
by Carrie Butler

Goodreads Blog

I don't know about you,
but I spend time imagining what might happen
if the Cascadia subduction zone lets loose,
especially when I am in Seattle or Victoria.

Wikimedia

So I couldn't resist reading Carrie's novel on what
The Really Big One would do to the Pacific Northwest
if a full margin rupture occurred along the subduction fault
that runs from Cape Mendocino, California, USA
to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

I'm happy to say that Carrie,
unlike the script writers for numerous disaster movies,
gets the geology right.
That's really important to someone like me with a passion for geology.

It's not just the 9.0+ earthquake that will get you;
it's also the tsunami that will arrive within fifteen minutes and wipe the coast clean.
I, for one, hope to be nowhere around when this earthquake strikes,
and it will strike.
It's not a question of if, but when.

Tourist Elena Cordova is not so lucky.
She finds herself struggling to survive the earthquake, tsunami, and aftermath with strangers,
including Vincent a war veteran with both survival skills and PTSD.

Watching these two imperfect people fall in love as they fight to live was lots of fun.
I was rooting for their survival and love to the last page;
and truly the book was much more about love than geology ~
which was just fine by me.
As We Know It was definitely an enjoyable read!

One of Honolulu's Fascinating Trees

Happy Writing in March!

Do you remember the first time you truly connected with another on a deep level;
not child with parent, or sibling with sibling,
or even friend with friend, but heart to heart,
where you shared your innermost thoughts and dreams?

Early sexual experiences can have a profound impact in shaping a person,
but I would argue that entangling your heart can be more consequential.

Peninsula and Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Library and Archives Canada: PA-094992

I was catching up on a crate of mail the week before last
after returning from Bullhead City, Arizona,
and I came across an interview with the The Boss
in the December 2016 issue of AARP The Magazine
(Bruce Springsteen: "What I Know Now,"p. 16)

Springsteen said, "The first 18 years really shape you forever.
It's like a glass of water filled with mud.
You can pour clear water in until it appears clear,
but there's still mud there."

His words resonated with me because they struck me as so very true.
My life was largely shaped by six months in 1961,
March through August,
although certainly my teenage years added more definition.
A lifetime of hosing down hasn’t removed the mud of that year.

Lansdowne House

Looking Toward the "Mainland" on the Tip of the Peninsula

Photo by Donald MacBeath

I realized when I read the comments to my last post that some people
were thinking that I had a sexual relationship with an Ojibway boy.

Sorry about that ~ nothing is further from the truth.

But that doesn't mean that I didn't develop deep relationships,

much to the consternation of my parents.
My father used to joke that we had to get out of the North
because I kept falling in love with Indian boys.

And it's true.
The Ojibway boys I met in Lansdowne House, Lac Seul,
and Sioux Lookout were far more interesting than the white boys.
They were exotic, with sparkling dark eyes, black hair, and copper skin;
but it was their stories that got me.

We all have hungry hearts.
We all long to be understood at a deep level.
And while the white boys I had known in the past were cute and fun,
it was the Ojibway boys who had real stories to share about life.

Springsteen ~ Hungry Heart

Hungry Heart

Bruce Springsteen, E Street Band

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

I went out for a ride and I never went back

Like a river that don't know where it's flowing

I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

Everybody's got a hungry heart

Lay down your money and you play your part

Everybody's got a hungry heart

I met her in a Kingstown bar

We fell in love I knew it had to end

We took what we had and we ripped it apart

Now here I am down in Kingston again

Everybody needs a place to rest

Everybody wants to have a home

Don't make no difference what nobody says

Ain't nobody like to be alone

Everybody's got a hungry heart

Lay down your money and you play your part

Everybody's got a hungry heart

Songwriters: Bruce Springsteen
Hungry Heart lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing

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

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

The first time I saw a Ski-Dog,
it came racing along ice-bound Lake Attawapiskat, veered sharply,
and roared up the snow-covered hill in front of our school,
stopping abruptly near the steps.
Father Ouimet hopped off and dashed inside the school
to visit my father before recess ended.

Father Maurice Ouimet with My Father Don MacBeath

Photo Probably by Uno Manilla

All the children on the playground immediately crowded around the strange object
laughing and chattering, including my siblings and me.
It was an unknown thing to we MacBeath children,
but not to the Ojibway children who had become very familiar
with Father Ouimet’s marvelous machine.

I had no idea at the time, but this strange apparition
was about to take the north by storm.

View from the Edge of the Playground

with Lake Attawapiskat and the Hill in the Background

Photo Probably by Uno Manilla

Have you ever raced over snow and ice on a Ski-Doo?
Felt that exhilerating rush of cold air and spray of snow?

Rotax powered Bombardier SKI-DOO XRS 800

Wikimedia

I have, and chances are I did it before you!

When Father Ouimet returned outside from visiting my father,

he offered me a chance to ride on his Ski-Doo.

Of course I didn't pass up the chance,

but I'm not sure which made me more nervous,

to ride on a motorcycle with skis

or to wrap my arms around a Roman Catholic priest and hang on tight.

We flew down the hill and made a big, looping circle

out on the frozen lake, bumping over mounds of snow

and throwing up roosters of white.

The snow sparkled in the brilliant sunlight,

and the cold air stung my face and watered my eyes.

I'm sure my siblings and the Ojibwa children watching

from the top of the hill could hear my delighted shrieks

and Father Ouimet's laughter above the growl of the engine.

It was one of the most exhilarating events in my life.

All too soon we flew back up the hill,

and my brother Roy took his turn behind Father Ouimet.

Okay, granted the first Ski-Doos were manufactured in 1960,

and I didn't ride on one until early March 1961,

but I rode on the very first Snow-Dog!

"Snow-Dog?" you might ask?

Yes, Snow-Dog.

Were it not for a publisher's error in a sales brochure,

Ski-Doos would have been Snow-Dogs.

Wikipedia

Facebook

Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the Snow-Dog,

a small, lightweight snowmobile

designed to replace the dog teams used for transportation

by hunters and trappers in remote areas of the north.

He had previously developed large tracked vehicles

that could hold up to twelve people.

In fact, Bombardier gave one to Father Ouimet in 1949.

But what was really needed in the north was a machine for one or two people,

something that would make Father Ouimet's work easier in his northern parishes.

Ouimet suggested this to his friend Bombardier,

and from this idea Joseph-Armand created the Ski-Doo.

This is a late wood-bodied Bombardier B-12 snow bus,

similar to the early one Father Ouimet had and slept in.

Circa 1951

Wikipedia

In 1948 Joseph-Armand built a wooden prototype of a small snowmobile ~

You Tube ~ Ostieguy

And in the winter of 1959 Joseph-Armand hand-built the first two Ski-Dogs.

In April, 1959, he personally delivered one of them by bush plane

to his long-time friend Father Ouimet in Lansdowne House.

The Canadian Encyclopedia

As readers of my northern posts may remember,

my family and I were life-long friends with Father Ouimet.

Little did I know when I rode with him on his Ski-Dog

that I was riding on an invention that would change the north

and launch a new winter recreational sport.

1960's Ski-Doo Clips

Racing in Kirkland Lake, Ontario

Birth of the Snowmobile

You Tube ~ Leo C.

Father Ouimet reminisced about these vehicles

in French radio program about his life:

Here is my rough translation:

"Imagine I am the first ski-doo owner in the world!

Mr. Armand Bombardier of Valcourt gave me a snow mobile

that could seat 12 people in 1949.

It was amazing but too heavy and very difficult to transport in our regions.

I suggested building a device for a passenger of my height.

This idea caught on ...

... Mr. Bombardier came by plane to bring my snowmobile on April 15, 1959.

This fast means of transport has impressed the Indians."

(with the help of Google Translator and some dictionaries)

Very Similar to the Large Snowmobile

Father Ouimet Had

You Tube ~ Yvon Beaudet

This novel form of transportation fascinated the Ojibway community,

and Bombardier presented Father Ouimet with the Ski-Doo

which he went on to thoroughly field-test in Lansdowne House

during the following winters.

A four-stroke Kohler engine powered this first Ski-Doo,

and a single rubber track as wide as the machine propelled

its steerable wooden skis.

Facebook

Snowest

In 1960 Bombardier Limited manufactured 225 Ski-Doos in Valcourt, Quebec,

and fourteen years later it produced its one millionth!

Unfortunately Joseph-Armand Bombardier died in 1964

and did not live to see that one millionth machine,

but his wife and Father Ouimet were present

for the celebration of this milestone in August, 1973.

Facebook

Newspapers,com

Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907-1964):

Getting Around in the Winter [philatelic record]:

Joseph-Armand Bombardier: vision et détermination

Library and Archives Canada

Online MIKAN no. 2266912

Flickr License

Father Ouimet's personal Ski-Doos were important to his priestly
and missionary duties in the remote Oji-Cree villages west of James Bay.
He and I corresponded over the years,
and sometimes he mentioned his Ski-Doos.

On December 18, 1982
Father Ouimet wrote to me:

"Well, I am still in this world.
Still in good shape, but getting older every day ~
Pretty near 71 years old.
Should be retired ~ but no way ~ nobody to relieve me.

I am alone in charge of 5 missions: Lansdowne House,
Fort Hope, Ogoki, Webique, and Summer Beaver.

Travelling a lot.
Last winter I covered 8,258 miles by snowmobile.
That's a lot of fresh air."

On January 11, 1986
Father Ouimet wrote to Terry and me:

"Still living, only 74 years old, still a young man.
Like ever, I am running on a snowmobile.
I have a very nice machine in fact,
a Christmas gift from my friend ... Bombardier."

Father Ouimet's first Ski-Doo, the one I rode on,
was obtained by the The Museum of Ingenuity J. Armand Bombardier in 1969.
Sled Magazine

Father Ouimet was honored for his role in the history of the Ski-Doo
by carrying the Olympic Torch for the 1988 Calgary Winter Games
on a 1988 Bombardier Ski-Doo.

Calgary Herald
Sled Magazine

This was the first time the Olympic Torch was carried by snowmobile.
Father Ouimet led off the snowmobile contingent near Shanty Bay, Ontario on its 1,740 mile snowmobile journey from Shanty Bay to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

For a photo: click here

No Snowmobile for My Father,

Only His Trusty Snowshoes

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1961

Photo Probably by Duncan McCrae

The last time I rode with Father Ouimet,

it was under much different conditions.

My sister Barbie and I had braved a frigid night

to cross the ice to the Father's Island

to watch the Saturday night movies in the rec hall.

When it was time to leave, the temperature had plummeted way below zero,

the Indian dogs were howling in the bitter cold,

and the wolves were answering from the ice.

Father Ouimet stopped Barbie and me on our way out

and told us that he thought he should run us home on his Ski-Doo,

the night was so cold, and it was too dangerous

for the two of us to cross the ice alone.

So we waited and watched as Father Ouimet,

in his black cassock with a roped Crucifix hanging from his waist,

rewound the film reels and slipped them into their metal shipping cases,

banked the fire in the stove, and tidied the hall.

The Ojibway were long gone by the time he was finished,

and we followed Father Ouimet over to the Mission

under a sky filled with bright stars and weaving, dancing lights.

The sounds of the dogs and wolves were primal,

and Barbie and I were glad of the ride home.

Barbie clung to Father Ouimet, I held on to both of them,

as the little Ski-Doo left the Mission and roared across the ice to the Mainland.

We all were wrapped against the bone-gnawing cold,

but the frozen air burned our lungs and eyes.

Yet again, all too quickly, our ride was over,

and we hustled into our toasty kitchen with Father Ouimet.

Our appreciative parents fortified him with a cup of hot tea

before he disappeared into the northern night.

As long as I live I will not forget Father's Ouimet's wonderful Ski-Dog!

Weaving Dancing Lights

Flickr: Emmaneul Milou ~ License

Notes:

1. Transcript of an unidentified, undated radio show:
Mémoires du Père Maurice Ouimet o.m.i.
(Monastère des Pères Oblats Cap-de-la Madeleine)
Thanks Jean-Claude Gilbert O.M.I. Superior

2. Miles to Kilometers:
8,258 miles = 13,290 kilometers
1,740 miles = 2,800 kilometers

3. Joseph-Armand Bombardier:
For more information about the inventor of the Ski-Doo and other machines check out this link:
Musee Bombardier

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House

Lansdowne House, Ontario

Wikimedia

Original French Transcript:

"Imaginez que je suis le premier propriétaire de ski-doo au monde. M. Armand Bombardier de Valcourt m’a fait cadeau d’une snow mobile

qui pouvait asseoir 12 personnes, en 1949.

C'était épatant mais trop lourd et très difficile à transporter dans nos régions.

Je lui ai suggéré de construire un appareil pour un passager de ma heuteur.

Cette idée a fait son chemin ... (omitted sentence below.)

... M. Bombardier est venu par avion me porter ma moto-neigge le 15 avril 1959.

Ce rapide moyen de transport a épaté les Indiens."

(Mémoires du Père Maurice Ouimet o.m.i.)

Omitted Sentence:

Le 28 mars 1949 je couchais an arrière de mon ski-doo.

(On March 28, 1949, I slept in the back of my Ski-Doo.)

Just in case you're wondering why I'm taking so long to reply

to your comments and visit your posts.

This is what I have to do right now to access the internet!

LOL ~ Too many friends stopping to chat in the lobby

or breezeway to get anything done!

I'll be by as quickly an I can!

Aloha!

Without a doubt there is one thing we four MacBeath children
who attended my father’s school in Lansdowne House remember,
and not with fondness: the daily government health program.
We all, including my father, disliked it for various reasons.

Church of England Indian Day School

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

My father wrote of this program in Indian schools throughout Northern Ontario
in his unpublished handbook for northern teachers:

“Another problem faced by the Indian teacher,
and incidentally, a constant source of irritation and frustration,
is the modification of the normal school program
which is necessary to accommodate the health program
being carried on by The Indian Affairs Branch
and The Department of National Health and Welfare.

The Indian children rarely wash before coming to school,
and they quite frequently do not have breakfast before school.
The Indian families do not have regular meal hours like white people do.
In a lot of families, it is rare for the whole family to sit down together for a meal.
Something is usually boiling on the stove,
and the members of the family just eat when they are hungry.

Because of the irregularity and haphazardness of the eating habits,
and the fact that the children do not wash too frequently,
our health programs are practical rather than theoretical.

The teacher is expected to do his best to clean and nourish the pupils in school.
In the morning after the opening exercises, the pupils have a period
when they wash their hands and faces and brush their teeth.
The soap, towels, and toothbrushes are kept in the school,
and it is responsibility of the teacher to see
that the various toilet articles are kept reasonably clean.

In addition to the ablutions period, the teacher has to dispense
powdered milk and vitalized biscuits twice a day to the children,
usually before the morning and afternoon recesses.
The vitalized biscuits and the powdered milk are provided
in quite ample quantities by the branch to be dispersed by the teacher in school.

It is quite a nuisance having to mix up the powdered milk twice a day
and to make sure that the utensils and drinking cups are kept clean.

It is very time consuming too,
but when you see how much the children like the milk,
especially the little ones,
it seems to be more than worth the effort.

Some of Dad's Little Ones

The biscuits, on the other hand, cause you very little trouble
but are not very popular with the children.
I think the main difficulty with the biscuits is their appearance.
They are sort of like a better grade dog biscuit.

They remind me of the biscuits that my father used to feed to his foxes
when we had a large fox ranch back on Prince Edward Island.
They are flat, hard, light brown in color with a slight cinnamon taste,
but as nourishing as all get out.

One or two biscuits constituted a very adequate supplement to any diet, and
six biscuits were sufficient to maintain health and strength over quite a period of time.
The children were not too fond of them, but I always made sure
that each child ate at least two biscuits a day.

There was one boy by the name of Soloman
who had me puzzled for quite a time.
He would take all the biscuits that I would give him.

One day just to see how many he would take,
I let him take as many as he wanted.
He took sixteen biscuits.

I asked him why he liked them so much,
and he told me that he did not like them, he hated them;
but his dog loved them.
Oh well, at least the dog was well nourished.”

My Father's Handbook

What my brother Roy, my sisters Donnie and Barb, and I remember
with intense dislike is the wretched lumpy powered milk.
The biscuits were edible, but the milk was ghastly.

My father expected the four of us who attended school
to model everything for the Indians.
So we too had to wash our faces, brush our teeth,
eat the biscuits, and drink the milk.
Getting the milk down was doubly hard because
we always ate a good breakfast before school,
usually hot porridge with more powdered milk.

At some point during the first two or three days, Dad realized
I was helping my mother bake bread and prepare meals at home.
He decided I was capable of mixing up powdered milk twice a day.
He showed me how, and one of his irritating chores became mine.

There was a small room at the back of the classroom
where our coats hung, the oil stoves sat, and supplies were stored.
Twice a day I dragged a cardboard drum more than half my height
out of its storage area, dug out cups of milk powder,
and dumped them into two five-gallon buckets of water.
Then I stirred and stirred, trying to squash all the lumps
on the sides of the buckets until that milk was frothy.

The overpowering smell of several cubic feet of milk powder
in that drum threatened to upend my stomach as I prepared the milk.
No wonder my father pawned that chore off on me!
I was always thankful to secure the cover on the drum and stash it away.

Dad's Children in His Classroom
The storage room was behind the white wall.

Then the Ojibway children and my less enthusiastic siblings lined up
with their cups, ladled out a serving, and headed back to their desks
to eat their biscuits and drink their milk.

All of us were welcome to go back for as many servings of milk as we wanted
until the buckets were empty, and extra biscuits were available on my father’s desk.

We four would force down our milk;
Roy glugged, Donnie stalled, Barbie pretended and shared,
and I gagged my way through the dreadful, blue-white liquid.
At least the biscuits had a better flavor.

Soloman’s dog was not the only Indian dog getting fatter.
A number of times I saw my two younger sisters
slip government biscuits out of their pockets and toss them
to the dogs hanging out near our back door step.

The Four of Us Who Attended Dad's School

Back: Roy and I

Front: Barbie and Donnie with Gretchen between their feet.

Our school did not have running water.
Dad had to carry the water for mixing powdered milk
and cleaning the buckets, cups, and toothbrushes
from the nearby DOT waterhole or from our home.

He strained the water through cheesecloth
and purified it by adding a few drops of chlorine bleach,
because the lake water was dangerous for human consumption.
The nurse Mike O’Flaherty had confirmed this fact
after he, Dad, and Duncan McRae collected water samples
from around the peninsula and those samples were tested.

Dad crosses the peninsula on a water-sampling excursion.

Photo Likely by Mike Flaherty

Dad went through a short period when he had Mom boil
the school’s water on our kitchen stove, and he hauled
the heavy buckets of boiled to school twice a day.

Soon he conscripted Roy and me to haul the water after lunch
from home to school for the afternoon powdered milk.
The path though the bush was long and narrow,
and we slopped more water than we managed to carry to school.

Boiling and lugging water so far proved to be onerous and time-consuming,
so Dad soon reverted to straining lake water through cheesecloth
and purifying it with Javex.

All classrooms have their daily routines,
but this government health program in the Indian schools took the prize.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Boars Head Lighthouse
Tiverton, Long Island, Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

Lansdowne House

Surrounded by Water

Lansdowne House and the Father's Island, 1935

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Library and Archives Canada / PA-094992

Not everyone has the opportunity to have a parent as a teacher,
but I was fortunate to have both of mine for a number years.

Some students, especially in high school, would shudder
at the thought of facing a parent in the classroom;
but I counted myself lucky because I had both during my high school years.

My Parents on Their Honeymoon

Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1948

My parents were excellent teachers, among the best I encountered
from kindergarten through my Masters in Education.

In the end the siren call of teaching lured me from the Oil Patch into the classroom,
where I spent the majority of my working years as an elementary teacher.
It was a choice I never regretted because I consider the education
of children among the most critical responsibilities of any society.

My parents were in my heart and mind as I taught,
for the most important lessons I learned about teaching
occurred not in university but in my parents' classrooms
during the times I was their student.

Solving an Introductory Multiplication Problem

My Classroom

Aurora, Colorado, USA

My father in particular influenced my teaching
because he also taught me while I was in elementary school.
I landed in his classroom for the first time in Lansdowne House
for the last half of grade five.

The contrast between him and my previous teachers was striking.
Yes, my father was well-educated, brilliant, and organized,
but his greatest teaching gifts were his ability to build rapport with his students
and his skill in adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of his individual students.

My father was decades ahead of his time.
Almost forty years later in my Diverse Learners Masters Program in Denver,
I was learning teaching strategies my father had taught me in Lansdowne House
in the remote wilderness of the Hudson Bay Lowlands in 1961.

You might think that a ten-turning-eleven year old
would not be thinking about how teachers teach,
but you would be mistaken.

Counting my father,
I followed the calling of seven consecutive generations
of teachers in the MacBeath line.
Teaching was in my blood.

My Father During His Undergraduate Years

Acadia University

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada

My father discussed many aspects of teaching First Nations students
in his unpublished handbook "The Northern School Teacher."
I'll share just one here.

My father wrote:
"Another difficulty faced by the Indian teacher is that of text books
and the subject matter of the text books,
especially for the readers in grades one to five.
The children just had no way of relating these books to their personal lives.

"Pleasant Street," which I think lead from "Funny, funny Sally's house,"
to "the little store on Pleasant Street,"
had absolutely no resemblance to the narrow woodland trail
which meandered along the shore of the lake from the one-room shack
where Speared Turtle and his twelve children lived
to the Hudson's Bay Company Store
which is usually the only commercial outlet
with which the children ever came in contact.

And Gilbert Thunder of Kasabonika Lake
couldn't care less, and certainly couldn't understand
how "funny, funny Spot, fluffy, fluffy Puff, and pretty, pretty Sally
play and run down, down, down."

From an Unknown Dick and Jane Reader

Back to Front: Dick, Jane, Puff (cat), Spot (dog), Tim (teddybear) and Sally

Google

It is uninteresting to poor Gilbert,
for Gilbert Thunder is twelve years old,
and even though he is only in grade one,
it's not because he is stupid.
Actually he is quite bright.

The reason he is only in grade one is because
there has been a school in Kasabonika for only the last two years.

And the idea of Spot and Sally running and playing together
is utterly incomprehensible to poor Gilbert,
for his dog is named Kitche Schikeg (Big Skunk)
and is a big brute of unsavory appearance, questionable ancestry,
and deplorable deportment.

Kitche Schikeg is not a fluffy little, long-eared pet
with whom the children romp and play.
Kitche Schikeg is a mangy looking, half-starved beast of burden
whom you do not approach unless you are armed with a large stick
and who would bite your hand off if you tried to pet him.

Basilisk & Ginger at Main Base / photograph by Xavier Mertz/ cropped by M. Louise Barbour
Format: Glass negative Notes: First Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914
From the collections of the Mitchell Library
State Library of New South Wales www.sl.nsw.gov.au
Flickr ~ No Known Copyright Restrictions
Usage

I will admit that the Indian Affairs Branch
is on the horns of a dilemma.
The primary purpose or goal of all Indian education
is the ultimate integration of the Indian population
with the white population,
and the teacher has to familiarize her charges
with the white man's way of doing things.

But surely there must be a better way to familiarize poor Gilbert
than boring him and baffling him with this inane drivel
about "funny, funny Puff" and "pretty, pretty Sally.

I think that the suitability or non-suitability of the textbooks notwithstanding,
a partial solution to the problem depends to a large extent on the individual teacher.

The success of the teacher's efforts depends upon his ability or inability
to adapt the textbooks and curriculum to the pupils and the situation.

I remember going to the school at Pikangikum once to inspect the school.
The grade four reading lesson that day was about school safety patrols and traffic signals.
To illustrate the lesson the teachers and the pupils had built a beautiful working model
of a traffic light powered by four flashlight batteries.

This would have been a wonderful teaching aid for outside
but it was of no earthly good to children
who never have and most likely will never see a car or street
and whose only conception of traffic
was canoes on the lake in the summertime
and dog teams on the ice in the winter.

Learning the White Man's Way
Dunking for Apples on Halloween
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

I do not want to blow my own horn too much,
but by way of illustration,
I want to tell about how I handled the identical lesson
when I was teaching at Lansdowne House.

I briefly explained about traffic and the necessity
of having stop lights, school safety patrols, and safety rules.

Then I got the children discussing things in or about Lansdowne House
which might need regulatory measures in the manner of safety rules.

We started off by drawing up a set of safety rules for canoes,
rules such as never standing up in a canoe situation.
and always making sure the canoe is drawn up out of the water
and tied whenever you stop on an island for dinner or for the night.

Wikipedia

We got so enthusiastic about safety rules
that we drew up two more sets of rules:
one for safety on the ice during freeze-up and break-up,
and one for safety around aeroplanes.

A Norseman on Skis

Flickr ~ NOAA: Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren License

This last set of rules might seem strange for children
who have never seen an automobile,
but not when you consider that they are very familiar
with the bush planes which bring in all the mail,
take a great many of the families to and from their winter traplines,
and which always bring the government officials on their periodic visits.

Before we left this particular lesson for good,
we also drew up sets of rules for the care and maintenance of canoes,
the care and maintenance of kickers (outboard motors),
and the care and maintenance of snowshoes."

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 a student in my father's class in Lansdowne House,
I experienced him using many strategies,
that I was later trained in during my teaching career,
strategies such as making learning relevant to his students
adapting lessons to meet the needs of individual students,
and designing lessons with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic components.

I think back to that place and time,
and I am in awe of all that my father accomplished as a teacher.
I saw him continue to do so when I was in high school.

My mother may have been one of the best teachers I ever had,
but my father was the best.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Hudson Bay Lowlands (green)

Wikipedia

Location of Northern Communities

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:
Christopher D. Votey, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Chrys Fey, and Fundy Blue.

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Every month the IWSG announces a question
that members can answer with advice, insight,
a personal experience, or story in their IWSG posts.

Or, the question can inspire members if they are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!!!
This month's IWSG featured question is:

Have you taken advantage of the annual A to Z Challenge in terms
of marketing, networking, publicity for your book?
What were the results?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Home again, and it feels wonderful after months
of knocking about from Calgary to Honolulu.

Heading for Home

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

With regard to this month's IWSG question,
I have never participated in the annual A to Z Challenge;
so, of course, I have never taken advantage of it in terms of
marketing, networking, publicity for anything.

I have enough on my plate with my memoir, my blog,
my photography, and my wanderlust.

A Giant Dragon Invades Waikiki

Honolulu Festival Parade, 2017

I struggle with schedules every day.
I'd crash and burn before I made it to C.
I know better than to set myself up for that meltdown.

So I'm wishing all those tackling the 2017 A to Z Challenge the best of luck!
I hope that you find this year's challenge full of rewards.

C is for Conch Shell Blower

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

I'm looking forward to the next few weeks at home
where I can write in my familiar study
with all my materials at hand
and internet service I can count on.
I'm a happy gal!

Leis Drape the Duke's Statue at Sunset on Waikiki

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Keeping it short and sweet this time.
Have a happy and productive month of writing in April.

Sky and Water on Waikiki

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

I'm not sure where I'll be this time next month,

but guaranteed I'll be writing.

Take care!

Note: The photos are from our recent trip to Honolulu.
I'm having fun with my new Waterlogue App.

Deprivation.
When I was a girl and I wanted to know what a word meant, I had two choices.
I could ask someone, or I could look the word up in a dictionary.
I learned early on, certainly by grade two,
not to ask my father for the meaning of a word.
His invariable response was, “Look it up in the dictionary.”

We only had one dictionary, a massive Funk and Wagnalls
with over a thousand thin pages filled with small black text and illustrations.
It was heavy, but I never really appreciated how heavy,
until at sixteen, I knocked out my sister Barbie with ours.

A Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary

ebay

To look up a word like deprivation was a nuisance for ten-year-old me,
and it usually led to a chain of words like deprive, destitute,
and dispossessed in my search for meaning.

I could intellectually understand a word like deprivation from our dictionary,
but I didn’t grasp the fullness of the word
until I saw deprivation with my own eyes in Lansdowne House.
Reality delivered a gut-punch.

A Remote Winter Landscape

The Father's Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

I found it difficult to accept the living conditions of my Ojibwa friends.
My family had it hard.
We had no electricity, no running water, no functioning toilet,
and we five children shared bunks in one of the four rooms in the forestry house;
but our home was luxurious when compared to the homes of my friends.

They lived in wood and tarpaper shacks.
Few were more than one room hovels
in which twelve and fourteen people crowded together.
Often the only piece of furniture was the wood stove
in the center of the log shack.

I slept in a down-filled Arctic sleeping bag on a bunkbed.
My friends slept on heaps of blankets and furs thrown in the corners of their shacks.

At night my father kept the oil burner going full blast
to drive out the cold of the sub-Arctic night.
My friends slept at 35 and 45 below zero in unheated homes.

The Forestry House

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

My mother always served us hot and nutritious meals.
Granted the potatoes, milk, and sometimes eggs were powdered,
and all our vegetables came out of cans.
Meat was whatever chunk of beef or pork
my father could hack with an axe
out of the buckets of frozen meat he kept on our roof,
out of the reach of the starving Indian dogs;
along with canned Spam and bully beef;
but the food was satisfying and regular.

My Ojibwa friends ate irregularly, mostly scraps of rabbit, moose meat, or fish
supplemented with porridge, canned milk, and lard which they bought at the Bay.
Many were malnourished, some starving.
Without the daily ration of milk and bannock received at school,
more children would have suffered vitamin and mineral deficiency diseases
and worse hunger.

Seen Through Donnie's Eyes

The Forestry House, Lansdowne House, 1961

Drawing by Donalda MacBeath

Text: Dear Nana, This is a picture of our home.

Note: Indian Gods (Dogs), Buckets of Meat Hung from the Eaves,

a Box of Groceries on the Roof,

and the Weather Vane on the Chimney

My brother, sisters, and I bathed once a week
in a round galvanized steel tub filled with water
which my mother heated on our gas stove.
My friends rarely bathed at all.

I had a home filled with books, toys, and music.
My friends had nothing.

I made few friends among the Ojibwa girls.
Ojibway society is male-dominated,
and from birth Ojibwa women were trained to remain in the background.
While the Ojibwa girls my age talked and played games with my younger sisters,
my brother and I wrestled and ran with the boys.

Consequently my best friend in Lansdowne House was Simon.
Simon was seventeen years old and in grade four, one of my father’s star pupils.
Simon had passed every grade in school,
but there had only been an Anglican school in the village for the previous four years.

Some of Dad's Boys at School

Simon (right) and George (second from right)

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo by Donald MacBeath

Normally a First Nations child had to attend school for two or three years
before his teacher could start teaching him any academic subjects.
The language barrier, cultural differences, parental apathy or hostility,
and resentment at being cooped up in the classroom
all interfered with a child’s ability to learn.

As my father used to say, to my current embarrassment,
“It takes about one year just to housebreak an Indian child,
and another to teach him enough basic English to establish communication with him."

As a result many of the Ojibwa and Cree children
in the northern fly-in communities were one to two years behind,
even if there had been schools in their villages longer than they had been in attendance.

Simon had twelve brothers and sisters,
a number of whom were in school with me.
They all lived in a one room shack with no electricity, running water, or sanitary facilities.

Their father was dying from muscular dystrophy
and could no longer work the winter traplines,
so the family subsisted on welfare.

Their only entertainment was the twice weekly movie shown on the Father’s Island,
usually an old Tom Nix western or The Three Stooges.
Had Simon’s father been able to work,
Simon wouldn't have been in school.
He’d have been working the winter traplines with his father.

The Three Stooges

L to R: Moe Howard, Curly Howard, Larry Fine

Wikimedia

Simon used to talk to me about life.
At seventeen he was curious about the outside world and had a strong desire to learn,
but Sally and Spot on Pleasant Street didn’t help him much.

Simon had been Outside once.
A rabid sled dog had bitten him,
and he had been flown to Sioux Lookout for a series of rabies shots.
The trip was the highlight of his life.

Coming in for a Landing

Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada

Photo by Donald MacBeath, 1961or 1962

Simon was smart, and he would have liked to further his education,
but he was too old to remain in school much longer.

There was sickness everywhere:
malnutrition, muscular dystrophy, and tuberculosis.
The homes were crawling with lice,
and the school children were periodically deloused
by the nurse whether they liked it or not.

Some of the Ojibwa, especially females,
suffered from an hereditary disorder that deformed their hip joints.
They hobbled along lurching from side to side,
the women often burdened down with tikinogans, water, or wood.

Childhood diseases such as chicken pox were disastrous
because they could culminate in pneumonia and death.

Mother with Baby in a Tikinogan

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo by Donald MacBeath

I observed the living conditions of the Ojibwa around me,
and I gleaned more listening to quiet conversations
among my parents and their friends
over morning coffee or evening bridge;
but my raw, emotional understanding of deprivation
came from my conversations with Simon.

Deprivation is more than the lack of basic necessities
such as adequate food, shelter, and potable water.
Over time, deprivation damages the psyche and ravages hope.

Simon and his classmates were the generation caught in a drastic transition.
Up until the early 1960s, the Ojibwa in Lansdowne House lived off the land,
following their traditional lifestyle of hunting, trapping, and fishing.

The government, in its attempt to prepare aboriginal people
for assimilation into mainstream white Canada, built schools
and encouraged the First Nations to abandon their ancestral lifestyles and settle in villages.
Their cultures were derided and their languages were discouraged.

The white adults in our village facilitated the transition in various ways
and regarded white culture as superior to the primitive ways of the Indians.
But I, through Simon’s eyes, saw the changes as a loss of hope.

Simon wasn’t learning the skills he needed to follow the traditional livelihood of his people,
and he was not acquiring the education he needed to survive in mainstream society.
He didn’t fit into the old ways, and he didn’t fit into the new.
With no economic opportunity, no jobs, and nowhere to go to get a job,
Simon faced a bleak future.

I don’t remember the exact words of our long ago, heart-to-heart conversations,
but I still feel his discouragement and hopelessness.

The collapse of the Ojibwa’s traditional lifestyle was sudden,
and before the end of the 1960s, the people in Lansdowne House
spiraled down into welfare dependency.
By the early 1970s the social fabric of the community had unraveled,
and the Ojibwa floundered in a quagmire of violence, vandalism, and substance abuse
in a squalid environment of derelict buildings, trash, and oil drums.

Lansdowne House became one of the most violent
and hopeless native communities in northern Ontario.

Source:
When Freedom Is Lost:
The Dark Side of the Relationship Between Government and the Fort Hope Band
by Paul Driben and Robert S. Trudeau, 1983

Rusted Surface of an Oil Drum

Flickr ~ Petur License

I think of the children I knew, and I wonder what has happened to them.
I can’t imagine what they must have endured,
for life during the last fifty years in Lansdowne House has been harsh and challenging.

I think of Daisy and Fannie and Nellie and George,
but most of all I think of Simon.
He was my first real friend, the first one with whom
I exchanged thoughts and feelings of consequence.

Deprivation was no longer a word, but a reality with the faces of friends.
I began to sense the injustice and the indifference of a random world
where some are born into so much and others into so little.
I wondered why, and I have still not found a satisfactory answer.

Maureen McRae

Father's Island, Lansdowne House

Roman Catholic Church, Windcharger, and Dad and and Uno's Shack in Background

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Surrounded by Water

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

It’s difficult to express how isolated Lansdowne House was a half century ago.
Even today the village is one of the remotest
in one of Canada’s least known and least visited regions.

There are a number of names and boundaries for the ecosystem the community exists in,
but there is no disagreement over the fact that it is located in a vast wetland
of stunted forest, muskeg, bog, and fen,
crossed by slow-moving rivers and dotted with countless lakes.

Flying Over the Albany River (Right)

Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960

Photo by Don MacBeath

Whenever I fly over the area, I am struck by how wet it is,
for it appears to be more water than land.
I am also struck by how empty it is,
for it is rare to spot any sign of human activity.

To get to Lansdowne House today, fly you must,
because there is no permanent road into the tiny community,
and the region is almost impossible to travel over
unless it is frozen and the winters roads are passable.

Trucks Crossing the Albany River on a Winter Road

Northern Ontario, Canada, 2004

The edge of the road is marked by small trees.

Heavy vehicles must maintain wide spacing and slow speeds.

Wikimedia

Lansdowne House’s isolation today is a far cry
from its isolation in the winter of 60-61.
Now the community is connected year round
to the Outside with an all-weather airport
and internet and telephone services.

It no longer has to rely on the telegraph or short wave radio,
and it is no longer cut-off from the Outside during freeze-up and break-up.

The Ojibwa have modern housing and electricity and motor vehicles.
Yes, cars and trucks!
(To see a photo: Click Here)

Whenever I look at a map of the new Lansdowne House’s tiny streets and its one road
snaking down to the tip of the peninsula where it once stood fifty years ago,
I’m reminded of living on Long Island off the tip of Digby Neck.

Whenever the ferry service across Petit Passage shut down,
there was nowhere to go except up and down the length of the island,
back and forth in a car on the main road.

In Lansdowne House there is nowhere to go
except up and down the length of the peninsula,
back and forth in a car on the only road.

Old Lansdowne House (Upper Right)

New Lansdowne House or Neskantaga (Middle Left)

Lansdowne House All-Weather Airport (Middle)

Map Data: Google

Imagery: Digital Globe, Landsat

A year after I left Lansdowne House, in the summer of 1962,
I tried to express my feelings about the isolation I had experienced in the village.
I wrote (rather floridly):

“Winter in the Northland is bright, blue, brassy, and barren.
The naked birch and scraggily fir people the rocky shores
and march across the bleak horizon.

Thousands of tiny lakes, scarring the land,
lie locked in the frozen grip of winter.

Occasionally a hungry pack of fierce wolves can be seen roaming the empty wastes.
More frequently smoke from a tiny Indian settlement of cabins,
a church, and a Hudson’s Bay post floats lazily up into the still cold air.

A silence hangs over all, broken only by the biting buzz of a lone power saw,
the ring of an ax, or the protesting squeak of sleigh runners
hauled over the snow by huskies.

The Northland is silent, lonely, barren, and deadly.
Underneath her apparent peacefulness and lonely beauty danger lurks.
Her watchfulness never ceases. She waits, and waits, and waits
for the unwary or careless intruder who dares to cross over her borders.

The more you love the Northland, the more you respect and fear her.
The life that is there pulses with a vital rawness.
There is no in between; you must love the North fiercely
with all that is in you or hate her just as passionately.”

Locked in the Frozen Grip of Winter

Peawanuck, Weenusk First Nation, Northern Ontario

Flickr: J.H. Licence

Once I wandered off by myself
along the shore of the peninsula between the ice and the bush.
I stopped and looked across the frozen surface of Lake Attawapiskat
to the treed horizon and realized that no one,
not single person in the world, knew where I was.
I was truly alone.

Looking at the surrounding wilderness I thought,
“Maybe no other human has ever crossed this spot."
I wondered at the rawness of the land and at the absolute silence.

In the bitter subzero cold, the air seemed frozen, crystalline.
I felt I could shatter it with a tap of a finger,
and the shards would collapse soundlessly into the snow.

The profound peace I felt at first slowly changed into uneasiness
as I glanced at the scraggily black spruce at my back.
I thought, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is hears it, does it make a sound?
If I fell and cried out and no one heard me, did I make a sound?”

Those numberless stunted and spindly trees
and those sweeping stretches of ice
made me feel small and insignificant,
and then the bone-burrowing cold and the wild solitude
sent me hurrying home to the security of warmth and love and consequence.

I have never felt so alone, and in this crowded and connected world,
I may never feel so isolated again.

Black Spruce, James Bay Area

Flickr: Peupleloup Licence

What I didn’t understand as a young girl
is that the intimidating and dangerous wilderness I experienced
was home to the Ojibwa around me.

They and the nearby Cree had inhabited this region for thousands of years,
surviving on the food, shelter, and medicine the land provided.
They knew and understood their land and were deeply connected to its forests and waters.

When I lived in Lansdowne House over fifty years ago,
the Ojibwa lifestyle of trapping furs to trade for supplies
at the Hudson’s Bay post was disappearing;
and after I left, the people became welfare dependent in less than a decade.

Little development has occurred since then,
and the Ojibwa still depend on the moose, caribou, Canada goose,
and lesser snow goose their land provides.

The Hudson's Bay Post
Clerk Brian Booth and Two Ojibwa Men
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario
Winter 1960-61

Photo by Don MacBeath

The recent discovery of rich chromium deposits in the Ring of Fire
holds the promise of jobs, economic development, and a waged-based economy
for Lansdowne House and other remote Ojibwa and Cree villages in the area.

But the Ojibwa and Cree love their land
and value their traditional cultures.
They are concerned about the impact
mining and development could have on their land
and about whether or not they can maintain
their cultural identity in the face of massive change.

I remember the silent solitude and wild beauty surrounding Lansdowne House,
and I know that development and change are irreversible.

I worry that this vast and fragile wetland, so rare and precious,
will be broken and fragmented and lost
and that the indigenous people who have lived there for millennia
will not be the ones who prosper from the riches of their land.

My Father Crossing the Peninsula

near Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960

Notes:
1. Winter Roads: In recent years the province of Ontario has invested in building and
maintaining winter roads to connect Lansdowne House and other remote First Nations
communities to permanent roads and railway systems, but the roads are passable only
from mid-January to late-March and only if the weather is wintery enough to provide
the heavy snow-pack and ice required for the roads. With rising temperatures and
unpredictable weather due to climate change, these winter roads are increasingly
unreliable. cbc.ca

2. References: In writing this post, I referred to Canadian Geographic: Special North Issue,
March/April 2017, Vol. 137, Vol. 2: "Out of Sight" by Jesse Gamble, pages 38-45.
I also watched, yet again, the Ojibwa documentary "We Love Our Land" filmed in Neskantaga.

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House Lies in the Wilderness

West of James and Hudson Bays

Flickr: Stuart Rankin License

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Hudson Bay Lowlands (green)

Wikipedia

Lansdowne House
Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

We got outta Dodge just before the snow started to fly!
We'll be in the warm Mojave sunshine later today.

Along I-70, passing through bands of rain and flurries,
we stopped at one of my favorite spots on the San Rafael Swell:
The Black Dragon Canyon.

Black Dragon Canyon

Near Green River, Utah, USA

April 26, 2017

Photo by M. Louise Barbour

No time to be fancy as Big T is pacing the floor ready to hit the road.

So quoting fromWikipedia:
"The San Rafael Swell is a large geologic feature located in south-central Utah about 30 miles (48 km) west of Green River, Utah. The San Rafael Swell, approximately 75 by 40 miles (121 by 64 km), consists of a giant dome-shaped anticline of sandstone, shale, and limestone that was pushed up during the Paleocene Laramide Orogeny 60-40 million years ago. Since that time, infrequent but powerful flash floods have eroded the sedimentary rocks into numerous valleys, canyons, gorges, mesas and buttes. The swell is part of the Colorado Plateau physiographic region."

I studied this in Geology 100!!!
Been over it many times on foot, by car, and by air.

Okay, gotta go ~ Terry just dragged my suitcase out the door!

IWSG: Wednesday, January 4, 2017: Going with the Flow!

The Lansdowne Letters: Prejudice

The Lansdowne Letters: Big God, Little God, and Our New Life

Oopsies! Big Mistake!!!!!

The Lansdowne Letters: Adapting to Changes

The Lansdowne Letters: Letters in Nana's Mailbox

IWSG: Wednesday, February 1, 2017 ~ Two Sides of the Same Coin

The Lansdowne Letters: A Cardinal Rule of the North

The Lansdowne Letters: Nubile Sons and Daughters

The Lansdowne Letters: Be Back Next Week

IWSG: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 ~ Aloha!

The Lansdowne Letters: Hungry Heart

The Lansdowne Letters: A Spin on a Little Ski-Dog

Technical Challenges ~ LOL!

The Lansdowne Letters: Ablutions and Indian Dogs

The Lansdowne Letters: On the Horns of a Dilemma

IWSG: April 5, 2017 ~ Short and Sweet

The Lansdowne Letters: Deprivation

The Lansdowne Letters: Alone

On the Road Again ... Picture of the Day