Re-envisioning What it Means to be Canadian

Daniel Heath Justice

“We have to re-envision what it is to be Canadian,” said Daniel Heath Justice.  This Indigenous author and UBC professor of First Nations and Indigenous Literature was participating at the 3^rd Gathering: Festival of First Nations Stories.  The Festival was organized by the Orillia Centre for Arts and Culture in the town of Midland.  The Festival included Indigenous authors visiting and presenting at local schools, the Midland Native Friendship Centre, the Midland Cultural Centre, Public Library and Huronia Museum.  Playwright and musician Tomson Highway performed his music with two other artists, Songs in the Key of Cree on the Friday night.  

And on the Saturday, six authors and two artists shared their work, held dialogues and answered questions.

I had read Daniel Heath Justice’s book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter which taught me a great deal and so I was listening carefully to what he had to say.   Justice explained that Indigenous authors give context to the individual stories that we hear.  This context explains how people got to where they are.  If you don’t know the context, he explained, then problems appear to be a “problem of being”, not a problem that emerged from within a context.  That then, skews the solutions offered.

Daniel Heath Justice and Alicia Elliott at Gathering in the Midland Cultural Centre theatre (from OCAC facebook page)

Alongside him was author Alicia Elliott.  I had read her book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground earlier this year and found that this young writer has a courageous voice as she tells her story.  She weaves her own story with well thought out and clear contexts for how Indigenous people got to where they are now and the part that the Canadian governments and non-Indigenous people play in that context.  In her dialogue with Justice, she commented that although so many of the problems that are experienced today by Indigenous people were caused by colonialism, the solutions offered up by non-Indigenous people are often also colonial.  She gave the example of the problems experienced on reserves such as the absence of clean drinking water.  The solution offered up by some is simply for Indigenous people to move to the city which comes from a colonial mind set. This is instead of addressing the inequity of communities on either side of her reserve in Southern Ontario having clean drinking water while her community which has a water treatment facility, lacks the infrastructure to deliver this water to people's homes.

Cherie Dimaline holding The Marrow Thieves

Later in the day, Cherie Dimaline author of The Marrow Thieves which has won many prestigious awards spoke of her connection to the land near Midland.  Her Métis  family ended up in this area after being evicted from their land in the Red River Valley and then Drummond Island.  

Dimaline told the audience that she wrote The Marrow Thieves as a love letter to Two Spirit Indigenous Youth who are dying by suicide at an alarming rate.  I read this book last summer and couldn’t put it down.  During her presentation, Dimaline told the story of working with Indigenous communities whose land would be used for a cross Canada pipeline (that never got built).  Her job was to collect the stories of these communities and present them to the people who give permission for such projects.  She found that the communities that had become more "Christianized" were more likely to agree to having a pipeline than communities that retained traditional ways and connection to the land.  The traditional communities had sacred areas on the land whereas the more Christianized ones had churches.  Just as Daniel Heath Justice had said earlier, this Indigenous author was adding context for the audience.

Listening carefully to these and the other authors, I learned so much about the context of Indigenous lives as well as the connections to colonial thinking.  Chair of the Orillia Cente for Arts and Culture, Fred Larsen, thanked the authors for their work many times.  He stated that these and other Indigenous authors have been “doing the heavy lifting,” explaining our own history to us and telling their stories.  “It’s time for us to do more of that heavy lifting,” he said to the non-Indigenous people in the audience.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard an older white man say that to an audience before and I was heartened by his words.

Returning to the words of Daniel Heath Justice, “We have to re-envision what it is to be Canadian,” I looked up the word envision. The Cambridge on-line dictionary defines envision as “to imagine or expect that something is a likely or desirable possibility in the future.”  So perhaps re-envision is to let go of what we were imagining or expecting the future will look like and imagine something else.  Justice said that this re-envisioning includes how we relate to the land, our histories and our shared experiences.  He went on to explain that when Indigenous communities flourish, it’s good for everyone.  Justice cited the example of a Cherokee community in the US that is doing well and is providing health care for themselves as well as for the non-Indigenous people in the area.  However, when corporations do well, it isn’t necessarily true that it is good for everyone, especially when they relocate to make higher profits.

Justice explained that Indigenous futurist writing is important because those authors are imagining a world in which Indigenous people not only do well, but also lead the way in survival.  Quite a few of the authors I listened to at the festival explained that Indigenous people in Canada have already survived an apocalypse, in which their land, homes, language, culture, children, and health were taken away.  Who better to teach us about resilience and survival?  In a world which is in trouble due to a lack of respect for the land and the climate, Indigenous writers offer a worldview that holds part of the solution.  Einstein is often quoted as saying that problems can’t be solved with the same mindset that created them. 

In re-envisioning what it is to be Canadian, we have this profound resource of thoughtful Indigenous writers with diverse voices.  They are giving us the context and more of the history than we have been taught, to understand how we all got here.  They are telling the stories of what their lives are like now within that context and they are giving us a different idea of what the future could look like. Cherie Dimaline told us that The Marrow Thieves has replaced To Kill a Mockingbird in many Canadian classrooms.  It is also in production as a NetFlix series. These stories will help our youth to envision a different future.

There is a reason that conquerors and dictators kill the artists and destroy their work right at the beginning of a take over. Art has a power to convey meaning, give us courage and help us imagine a future that is different from the one that the usurpers seek.  That’s what makes it dangerous to dictators.  That’s what makes it critical for us.  It is fairly easy to buy or borrow a book by an Indigenous author and read it.  It is a little harder to open up your worldview to allow another story to enter into it.  I believe that it is a sign of intelligence to be able to take that new information and find a place for it within you, let that story work with you, become a part of that story, and imagine a new one.

Politics on TV is not the only story.  It is just a loud and repetitive one that celebrates bad behaviour with extreme attention.  There are so many other stories out there waiting to be heard, waiting to do their work and helping us all to imagine a better future.  

After absorbing the voices of the authors and artists all day, my partner and I went for a walk in the late evening, down by the lake, under the stars.  We stopped to look at all of the constellations in their magnificence.  They were so beautiful and their groupings created for us constellations that all have stories from thousands of years ago.  I felt humbled and immensely grateful in their presence.  And then I realized something.  This was the exact same feeling that I felt at the Gathering.

Colonial Musings

Waubaushene, the town that I live in, has been a townsite since the mid nineteenth century.  Before that it was the home of the Wendat people until the 1600’s when they were virtually wiped out in the French/English conflicts.  After that, the Anishinaabeg moved into the area until they were pushed out by European settlers.  Long before that, this area was mostly under a large inland sea which is why there is so much limestone around.

The name of this area has changed with the changing inhabitants and no one seems sure where the name Waubaushene comes from.  Some say it means “place of rocky marshes”, which would describe the water at the edge of the town very well.  Some people have shortened it to just Waub.

The early settlers were involved in the lumber industry and old pictures of the townsite show no trees at all.  The area was covered in White Pine once upon a time, but the early settlers deforested it.  Beginning in  1922, the Simcoe County Forest project planted 33,000 acres of what had become "wasteland" with Red Pines.  Subsequent residents of the Waubaushene townsite planted other varieties of trees and now there are huge Silver Maples, Red Oaks, Basswoods, White Pines, Scots Pines, Sugar Maples, Eastern White Cedars and many others.

Waubaushene Public Elementary School now closed

Times change and first the Separate Elementary School and then the Public Elementary School have closed.  The town’s kids are now bused to the next town to go to school.  The Elementary School property was sold to the Simcoe School Board for one dollar by the town a long time ago, so that the local children could walk to school.  But apparently, we have less money now then we once had and the school board decided to sell the building and the property.

A group of local women wanted to change the building into a community hub including the local library.  They got some support, but the local council lacked the imagination to envision this new idea.  And so, the school board sold the property to a local car salesman, Paul Sadlon, who is also involved in property.  All summer, a dumpster sat outside of the school whose sign still sadly reads "Have a Good Summer" and the residents wondered what this man had in mind. In late August a farm wagon with a painted sign was parked in front of the school that read “You are in Paul Sadlon Country.” 

School with farm wagon on right

Close up of the wagon at the school with the ironic "No Trespassing" sign

And here we thought we lived in Waubaushene, not Paul Sadlon Country!  It made me think of how North and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator and explorer who was part of exploring the “New World”.  The early explorers thought they had found India and called the residents Indians.

Well, Waubaushene is on the shore of Georgian Bay and sometimes boaters end up in Waubaushene thinking they have arrived in Honey Harbour, a holiday town to the northwest.  If the old ways of naming a place still apply, then will we end up being called “Honeys” or “ Huns” for short?  Maybe Waubaushene will be called Sadlonica or Paulville.  

Perhaps it is coincidental, but at the same time as the wagon appeared, construction started in our little town of five hundred for concurrent Tim Hortons and a Liquor Control Board where the town meets the highway.  This will likely put the Country Style Donuts and Subway sandwich outlets across the road at the gas station out of business.  Despite the fact that you can drive to one of three LCBO’s in ten minutes, we now are getting our own.  I suppose we need more coffee and alcohol in Paul Sadlon Country.  

There is a story I have heard that back when lumber was the only business in town, there was a hotel in Waubaushene where the men drank after working hard in the bush.  The story goes, that the women of the town burned the hotel down because the men were drinking all their wages.  The hotel was rebuilt and the drinking continued until it mysteriously burned down again.  Since then, the only place to drink has been the Legion.

But now we are in a new country and we are  getting a taste of what colonial thinking feels like from the colonized perspective.  It feels invasive to have a stranger with money arrive in town, buy up the school, put up a no trespassing sign and then call it his “country”.

Well, the story continues and now the farm wagon is still there but the boards with the words and picture are gone.  Did people complain about the name?  Has Paul Sadlon sold the property?  If so, why is the wagon still there. It is hard to understand the ways of the colonizer.

Wagon with signs now removed.

This past weekend, on a rainy Saturday, my partner and I decided to go to Huntsville for a Buskerfest.  My partner has always wanted to go to a Buskerfest.  The event was historically a Macaroni and Cheese festival in honour of the pasta factory in town but this year they have added buskers.  Arriving in downtown Huntsville, we could see vendors' tents set up on the main street.  Visitors could buy tickets to sample the seven competitors' mac and cheese while they watched street performers who were very entertaining despite the cool cloudy weather. 

At one point it began to rain and we ducked into the Town Hall which advertised an art show.  We had just got inside the foyer, when we were invited by a very pleasant woman to go on a tour of the city hall.  She only had two participants so far, so we agreed, having nothing better to do.  This woman took us first into the old section of the city hall, down in the basement.  The bricks that were laid in 1926 are now crumbling and the town has to decide what to do about this.  She touched one of the bricks and part of it came off as a cloud of dust.  I had to think to myself, "the foundation is crumbling."  It seemed like a powerful metaphor for the foundation of colonialism which also seems to be crumbling now.

We continued on the tour and saw the old outdoor steps which are no longer deemed accessible, the old theater, the new theater, council chambers and the accessibility elevator which has been added in later years. The tour ended in the rear foyer, where our guide pointed out the historical plaques.  According to these information plaques, George Hunt arrived in the area as a settler in 1869 getting the “free land” that was offered to settlers.  He went on to build a small agricultural centre whose growth was aided by the engineering of a water route to the area and by 1886, the railroad had arrived and the town was incorporated as Huntsville.  The Muskoka Colonization Road reached Huntsville the following year and the town was on its way.

Our tour guide told this history very proudly.  After all, it was the story of the town that she knew and loved.  But for my partner and I, the history felt chilling.  The words “free land” slipped so easily off of this woman’s tongue but for us, it was stolen land.  In 1923, the Williams Treaty was signed for that land and the land where we now live in Waubaushene.  The land was taken but never paid for.  Just in the last few years, the government has finally been forced to honour that treaty, after being in the courts for years.  The crumbled foundation of a treaty not honoured by the Crown was removed and a new deal was reached that will allow the First Nations involved to strengthen the people in their communities well into the future.

The more that we learn about the history of this land, not just the story that the settlers and their families told but from the perspective of the families of those who were pushed off the land and cheated, the harder it is to feel comfortable with the status quo.  The foundations of colonization are crumbling for us. 

The town of Huntsville, where ironically, my partner’s father was born, is trying to figure out what to do about the crumbling foundation.  Should they shore it up, renovate, rebuild or relocate?  It made me think about our common story, our history.  What do we do with that?  Do we keep on telling the story of “free land” and keep shoring that up?  Or do we let it crumble and make space for the rest of the story?  It is up to us as we write the old stories in a new way.

Hylda and the Elder Mother

Hylda had been hiking all morning along the bank of the river.  She had stopped over and over again to look at the plants that grew along the path.  She greeted each one by name and stopped to admire what she found special about each one.  It was late spring and the Red Baneberries and False Solomon’s Seals were flowering.  The Coltsfoot flowers were gone but their leaves were emerging along the side of the trail.

The sun was high in the sky and she was getting very warm.  She spied a large Elder Tree up ahead.  It was covered in the beautiful white flowers that grew in umbrels all over the tree. Each tiny flower had five white petals and five long stamens reaching out to the bees that spread the pollen. Stopping to breath in their beautiful scent, Hylda decided that this would be a fine place for lunch.  Spreading out the jacket that she no longer needed for warmth, she sat in the shade of the Elder Tree and slowly ate the food that she had brought with her.  The scent of the Elder flowers was so heady that she found herself breathing deeply.  With the food in her stomach, the warmth of the sun and her deep breathing, Hylda soon curled up on her outspread jacket and fell asleep.

It wasn’t long before a kindly old woman stepped out from within the Elder tree.  She wore a green dress that was bordered at the neck line with Elder flowers.  Her curly wild white hair gave off the perfume of the flowers.  Her eyes were a deep blue.  Smiling, she took Hylda’s hand and indicated that they should start walking.  The woman followed willingly.  She felt like a little girl holding her mother’s hand as they walked along.

The Elder Mother and Hylda followed the river which curved to the right.  As they rounded the bend, the woman could see people ahead of them standing by another Elder Tree.  The people were dressed in clothes from a long, long time ago.  Together they sang out “Lady Ellhorn, give me of thy wood, and I will give thee of mine, when I become a tree.”  The Elder Tree was covered in berries and one of the women began picking them and putting them in a rough basket.  “I will make a tonic for my sick child with these,” she told the tree.  One of the men cut a length of wood from a branch of the tree.  “I will use this to blow on the fire and to make a whistle,” he told the tree.  Another woman took a piece of bark.  “I will use this to bring down the swelling in me old dad’s legs,” she told the tree.  “Our Elder Mother surely takes good care of us all,” she murmured. 

Hylda thought she caught sight of the kindly old woman smiling from within the branches.  But when she looked beside her, the Elder Mother was there, smiling just the same.  She tugged on Hylda's hand and they walked past these folks as though they were invisible and followed the serpentine curve of the river.  Up ahead, Hylda saw a priest standing with his back to an Elder Tree.  He was speaking loudly to a small group of women.  The women were dressed in clothing from long ago as well but not as long ago as the first group.  “Witches live in this tree.  Stay away from it or the devil will take up home on your roof!”  He cried.  “If you take any wood from this tree, you will be cursed!”  The women turned and sadly walked away from the priest. Hylda looked at the Elder Tree and saw the kindly old woman in its branches begin to shrink in size until she could barely be seen.

When she looked beside her though, the Elder Mother was still large as life but she was not smiling anymore.  Tugging on her hand once again, the Elder Mother drew Hylda forward.  Around the next bend, she could see a group of women dressed in the same kind of clothing as herself.  They were standing in front of a huge Elder Tree covered in dark purple berries.  The berries were so heavy that the umbrels were now upside down as the berries dangled over the earth.  “Elder Tree, would you allow us to pick some of your berries to use for our health?” one of the older women asked.  She began nodding her head as if hearing an invisible voice.  She placed something from her hand onto the earth under the tree.  The women very carefully picked one umbrel after another and put them in baskets.  They traded recipes for Elderberry Syrup, dried Elderberry tea and Elderberry wine with each other as they picked.

Hylda looked at the Elder Mother who still held her hand.  The Elder Mother was smiling.  She let go of the woman’s hand and disappeared.  Looking at the Elder Tree and the happy women, Hylda saw the broad grin on the face of the Elder Mother in the tree before she receded behind the leaves and disappeared once again.

Suddenly, with a jolt, she was under the first Elder Tree again, lying on her jacket. She looked up to see the Elder flowers but they were gone.  Instead, she saw dark purple berries hanging down towards her.  Standing, she looked around her.  The spring flowers were gone.  In their place were bright yellow goldenrods and purple asters.  The sumacs were turning red.  Confused, she turned back to the Elder Tree.  She thought she saw the dark blue eyes of the Elder Mother deep in the foliage.  One of the eyes winked at her.  Picking a few berries, Hylda popped them in her mouth.  The juice woke up her tongue and she felt more alive than she ever had before.  A deep gratitude filled her heart and she felt at home for the first time in a long while.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 

When she opened them again, she was lying once again under the Elder Tree.  The sun was much lower in the sky.  Shielding her eyes, she looked up at the tree and saw the milky white flowers reaching up to the sky like clouds.  Getting to her feet, she saw the spring flowers along the trail once again.  She picked an umbrel of sweet smelling Elder flowers and put it in her hair.  Smiling like the Elder Mother she began walking back up the trail.  She wasn’t going home though.  She was already there.

What I Learned from the Loon

My partner saw it first, about one hundred feet away from our big cedar freighter canoe.  He pointed it out to me but I wasn’t wearing my distance glasses and I couldn’t make it out.  He kept telling me where it was over and over again, as it made its way through the water.  It was getting closer and closer and then suddenly, my eyes and my visual cortex connected and I saw it.  A single loon quietly gliding through the water. 

The loon passed by our boat without even looking at us and continued toward a small bay in Canary Island which was named for the abundance of Wild Canaries or Goldfinches.  We were planning to go into the same bay before we saw the loon, but now we didn’t want to disturb it.  So, we stayed where we were and watched. The loon just continued on its serene journey.

I thought about how iconic the loon is to people in Ontario and other parts of Canada.  It is a symbol of the northern lakes, of the wildish spaces that people build cottages in, of getting away from the city.  The loon’s haunting call on a lake will stop most people in their tracks.  Somehow, every sighting, every call, is a gift, a kind of magic.  I wondered why it is that Canada Geese and Cormorants don’t seem to have the same magic for most people.  In fact, they can elicit quite the opposite response.

 I wondered if loons feel so special because there are so few of them that we see.   If we had large flocks of loons everywhere, would they seem so beautiful?  Apparently, they do flock in the winter on oceans and only come back to our north to breed and raise their young.  Here in Ontario, we don’t see them in flocks so we think of them as solitary birds or breeding pairs with young ones.

Or perhaps it is the long mournful cry and the echoes that occur on a still lake, especially at night. Here are two examples of their calls: 

Loons swim with their bellies under water so they are quite low already.  They have solid bones and can squeeze air out of their feathers so that they can sink into the water even further if they need to become less visible.  They are also very adept at diving and swimming under water, propelling themselves with their webbed feet.  Their legs are positioned quite far back on their bodies which makes them excellent swimmers but very awkward on land.  They only come onto land to make nests, lay eggs and hatch their young.  Then then spend the rest of their lives on the water or flying.  To get up into the air, they need a long stretch of water that they dance over before finally taking to the air.  They cannot take off from the land.

I kept watching the loon.  It had such a quiet, solid presence in the water.  If it sensed danger, it would simply sink down or dive and swim away.  It was in its element.  It calmly went about its business.  We wondered if there was a female loon somewhere on a nest or if this was a single loon.  Males and females look alike so we couldn’t tell what gender this particular loon was.

I liked the calmness of this bird and the fact that it didn’t care that we were nearby.  It knew that it could protect itself easily in case we became a threat.  I liked the solid feel that it had as I watched it.  I wondered what it would be like to mimic that loon as I went about my business. 

A few days later on a hot humid morning,I decided to swim in the lake before the boat traffic picked up.  The water was glassy and inviting.  The local residents’ association members were raking dead water plants that had washed up on the beach.  They volunteer to take care of the beach so that it is clean for those who wish to swim.  The water plants are piled up higher on the beach and my partner and I often come down with big bins to cart some of it home for our gardens.  It makes great mulch and compost. They have also adopted the corner space between the walking trail and the road to the beach.  Small gardens with perennials in them keep sprouting up and a bench has been added so that walkers and cyclists can take a rest overlooking the beautiful lake as well as the sunset.

But I was there to swim.  I swam to the end of the swimming area and made a ninety degree left turn to swim south along the shoreline.  There were a few boats on the water with me but they were far away.  I could hear the birds’ morning song in the trees along the shore and the gentle lap of the water as I did my slow breast stroke.  With only my head above the water, I felt like the loon swimming low.  I imagined myself making my way through life, supported and calm.  I know that some people don’t like to swim in lakes because they are afraid of all the other life forms that are in the lake.  I like to swim in lakes because then I feel connected to all the other-than-human life that is at home in the lake.  I take great pleasure in the privilege of being there with them all.

I thought about the fact that our bodies are roughly three quarters water.  I thought about the water inside of me and the water that I floated in.  It felt like I was in “my element”, as they say.  Then I remembered that according to Deepak Chopra, on an atomic level, we are ninety-nine per cent air.  We are made up of electrons whizzing around protons in space.  So, it would follow that while on land out there surrounded by air, we are also in our element.  The chemical elements that make up our physical bodies, such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen come from what we ingest from food, fluids and breathing.  So, it would follow that when we are connected to Earth, then we are also in our element.  So, what about fire, the fourth element?  Well, the Sun is fire and its energy is transformed by plants into matter which we also eat, so in the sunshine, we are also in our element.

If you watch the news, the world seems to be full of strife and anxiety.  There is much to be concerned about and action should be taken on many issues.  It is easy to feel hopeless and afraid and become paralyzed or to grab at quick fix solutions.  What can we learn from nature when we design solutions?  What can I learn from this loon?

When people are scared and worried about scarcity, they often act badly and blame others for their fear.  When people are calm, they can use all of their intellect and intuition to create solutions.  Is it possible to mirror the loon’s calm alertness and feel supported by our environment?  Is it possible to know when to call, when to dive, when to fish, when to sink?

As I swam, I realized that I was being supported by the water all around me.  I float quite easily at this point in my life.  I needed to look around me for boats to stay safe.  I needed to decide where I wanted to go and then just navigate through the water calmly.  If a boat had come too close, I could simply swim to the shore and stay away from it.  I tried to feel “in my element”.  I embodied the feeling of support and my ability to navigate.  I loaded these sensations into my nervous system so that they would be available to me when the going gets nerve wracking.  I know that I can use my voice as does the loon to find my kin, my kindred spirits, my community.  I call up the density and peacefulness of that loon when I feel anxious.  I take slow deep breaths and remember the feeling of being in the water.  As I turn off the “stress response” I can once again access all of my intelligence and intuition and I can make good choices for myself, my kin, my community and my world.  And I am grateful for what the loon taught me.