If you head into the northern bush,
you understand solitude.
As a young girl in isolation,
I sometimes thought
No one in the entire world
knows where I am right now.
No human may ever have stood
on this exact spot.
I was caught up in the Romance
of the stunningly beautiful wilderness.
When you are off by yourself
you experience profound silence.
Only the sounds of nature intrude.
At times I could hear my blood
moving through my veins
and the Lub dub, Lub dub of my heart.
But sometimes during the day
and often at night,
it was not silent.
A constant noise cut the silence:
the eerie, unforgettable howling
of the Indian dogs.
Tuesday, October 11, 1960
My father wrote:
Hi Everyone:
This is going to be fairly short,
because I’m feeling quite miserable tonight.
I am, and have been having,
a session with the flu.
Bill Mitchell tells me that
every new arrival at Lansdowne House
usually has one or two bouts
before he becomes acclimatized.
I didn’t do too much today,
didn’t even eat,
just went to school
and let the pupils in out of the cold.
I didn’t teach,
because I only spent
about a quarter of my time in the school.
The rest was spent
in the backhouse behind the school.
After school,
I came home and went to bed.
I want to go back to those Indian dogs
and their howling for a few moments.
I mentioned the howling to the Father today,
and he told me that the main reason
the dogs howl is that they are starving,
and they are howling with hunger.
That piece of news makes
me feel worse than ever.
Before I was just annoyed
when I heard the poor brutes howling,
but now, I will feel sorry for them.
It is very easy to believe this,
because the Indians are
very cruel to their dogs.
They never pet them,
or let them into the house,
or feed them,
and the poor brutes are half starved
and go slinking around
with their tails between their legs
all the time.
They exist on whatever
they can find in garbage piles
or catch in the woods.
Occasionally their diet is augmented
by one of the weaker dogs
or a cat who happens to get careless.
When a cat happens to get eaten though,
the Indians are quite annoyed,
because for some reason,
the Indians treat their cats just as kindly
as they treat their dogs unkindly.
The cat is always allowed indoors
and is always given the choicest portion
of whatever the family is having to eat.
The Father tells me,
that in spite of all his efforts
and the efforts of the Protestant Padre,
the Indians still consider
that all cats have either
a benevolent or malevolent spirit
residing in their bodies
and treat them with considerable deference.
We will have to be careful
when we take Gretchen up here,
to see that she doesn’t end up
as a tidbit for some of the Indian dogs.
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We Five with Our Dachshund Gretchen
Donnie, Barbie, Louise, Bertie, and Roy
Margaretsville, Nova Scotia
Spring, 1959
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved
that I find a source of
never ending amusement
is the habit they have of
always letting the males go first.
The males always enter church first
and leave it first.
They also eat first
and always enter
and leave a building first.
This habit is even strong
among the children in school.
At recess and at noon,
the girls never leave their seats
till the boys have put on their coats
and have left the building.
If there are several girls
waiting at the pencil sharpener
to sharpen their pencils
and a boy comes up,
the girls automatically stand aside
and let him sharpen his pencil.
I have been trying,
with very little success, to teach
the boys to treat the girls with respect,
but they only think that it is foolishness.
Even the girls look at me askance
when I try to get them to go first.
I have never seen a man
haul water from the lake yet,
and only once have I seen
a man cutting wood
and hauling it into the house.
That is woman’s work.
Well, so much for today.
Bye now,
Love, Don.
Like my father, I could never forget
the howling of the Indian dogs.
This is the best best video that I could find
to show what sled dogs howling sound like.
These dogs (and the ones in the photos above)
are much healthier andbettercared for than
the Indian sled dogs of Lansdowne House.
Till next time ~
Fundy Blue