Fifty days.

That’s how long it’s been since we were hit by Hurricane Fiona. Even in the calm(er) light of day, the devastation is appalling. In some places we lost ten metres of shoreline, sand dunes eroded by the storm surge. Trees still litter the countryside, although the roads and ditches have been cleared so that the plows will be able to get through, once the snow comes.

A friend was over from Calgary, a long-arranged visit, so we went out for a drive to the recently re-opened north shore. Shattered fishermen’s cottages and a disintegrated wharf.

Disaster tourism at its best.

Everybody has their power back now, although for some people the outage lasted for twenty-two days. The roar of chainsaws echoes late into the evening; piles of blocked-up logs and brush line roadways, waiting for pick-up.

We all watch the sky and pay morbid attention to the weather forecasts. We all know of trees that are half down, hung-up in the branches of a neighbour, simply waiting for another strong wind. This past week the grocery shelves emptied as the remnants of Post-tropical Cyclone Nicole approached. Last time we had three days worth of emergency supplies, now we aim for three weeks. Yesterday we had a lot of rain, about 50 mm, and some wind in the 80 kms/hour range.

Nothing in comparison to Fiona, really. It’s just that we’re all nervous, gun-shy at what might come next. And we share out thoughts. It is common not only to enter into a lengthy conversation with the cashier at the checkout, but also to have the next couple of people in line join in.

The Maritimes are known for their friendly communities, their sociable neighbours. Too friendly or sociable for some, perhaps, but that’s what you get when you leave the big city. Riffing on the ‘lessons learned’ by newcomers to the Island surprised at being asked all sorts of personal questions related to lifestyle, family, health, and income, Patrick Ledwell [a well-known writer, musician, singer, and stand-up comic; you have to multi-task to make it here] puts it this way: “PEI stands for ‘Privacy Ends Immediately’.”

Recently, all conversations have been about “the next nor-easter” and the damage it may cause. People have also been shaking their heads at the amount of money that the provincial government has been pouring into relief programs. “Must be an election coming,” they say.

This ability to focus on the negative, the ‘what-ifs’ and the ‘I supposes’, gives a certain dour shimmer to the atmosphere. Perhaps that’s why I feel at home here, it’s very similar to the pubs and villages of Yorkshire. As Monty Python so eloquently phrased it, people seem happy “chewing on life’s gristle,” and “I told you so” is the final arbiter for any argument.

I think it’s time to think positively for a change. It’s only six weeks until the celebrations of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and the joy they will bring. Although, as I overheard while in line at the store, waiting for the cashier to finish her conversation with the woman in front of me: “Is that carols they’re playing already? Well, it is after Remembrance Day I suppose. Nearly Christmas, can you believe it? They still haven’t moved the trees from our street. And it was twenty degrees again yesterday. I mean, I like the weather but it’s kind of scary, all that global warming stuff. And gas went up eight cents again yesterday, how are folks going to get to work? Or heat their houses, furnace oil is up over two bucks a litre now?”

Let’s follow Eric Idle’s example and “always look on the bright side of life, ta-da; ta-da ta-da ta-da” … oh, sorry, now you’re going to be humming that tune all day! It really is a classic earworm I’m afraid. Do you remember the film? Life of Brian. Brilliant, wasn’t it? Ta-da; ta-da ta-da ta-da.

I have three shining suns on my bright side. First, I’m delighted my third novel is now out! Missing is available from Amazon (print and e-copies) as well as Kobo, and our local bookstore here in Charlottetown. Here’s a quick link to the Amazon site:

https://www.amazon.ca/Missing-Rashford-J-T-Goddard-ebook/dp/B0BLRHDHBL

I’m also going to be signing (and selling) copies at the two Artisan Christmas Markets being held at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market on Sundays 11th and 18th December, so if anyone is going to be around, please drop by! “What’s it about?” you wonder? Well … as it says on the back cover:

Disillusioned and disgruntled, Gavin Rashford is trying to take early retirement from the police. He agrees to undertake one last task; to give a conference presentation about FILTER, the Focused Indigenous Language Training for Emergency Responders program introduced when Alsama separated from Canada.

He does not anticipate the social interactions associated with a small university in a small town: music, missing persons, money laundering, murder …

A quiet retirement can be so hard to find.

Missing

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. And yes, the fourth one is on its way, and will hopefully be out in the spring. Meanwhile, I’ve also written a short story, officially called a ‘novelette’, which will be published in early December. Piracy is a just a bit of holiday fun, a quick read while you’re taking a break between the roast and the mince pies. I’ll send out a note when this new story is available.

On a wet evening in eastern Prince Edward Island, two hundred well-dressed people scurry through the rain to board a wooden tall ship. A replica of Neo Victoria, the flagship of Magellan, the three-masted carrack has been brought to PEI to host a gala dinner and fund-raiser. The guests chatter and mingle, while a woman with a mysterious past displays an array of valuable jewelry. A group who misunderstood the invitation to be for a fancy dress party arrive dressed as pirates. Nobody expects what happens next.

Piracy

I am also working on a new website. This has been a bit of a challenge (Hah!) for a Luddite such as me, but it has filled my evenings in-between storm clear-up and watching Leeds United flail about. I hope to have the new website up and running by mid-December and will post links once they are available. Admiring comments will be gratefully received.

Ta-da; ta-da ta-da ta-da.

Saturday night, nine o’clock. The wind and rain warnings have been dropped, it’s just ‘normal’ bad weather out there. The hurricane hit thirty hours ago. We’ve been eighteen and a half hours without power, and from the appearance of the streets, it’s going to be a while before they get things up and running again.

We knew this one was coming, and had time to stock up on bottled water, canned food, bread, and the Maritimer’s favourite treat, ‘storm chips.’ Some people tell me that they’ve added ‘Hurricane Wine” to the list. Post-tropical storm Fiona made her way up the coast as a Category 3 hurricane, the cone of uncertainty ever compressing and always keeping Cape Breton in its sights. We are just west of there. Perhaps a hundred kilometres, and the weather reporters took great pleasure in reminding us that winds are ‘anti-clockwise round a low’, so we would face the brunt of them. And the most rain.

Which we did. A good old fashioned nor-easter, whipping in with 100+ km/hour winds gusting to 120, 130, even higher, and somewhere between 100 and 200 mm of rain. That’s a lot of rain in a short time. Not up to the ‘monsoon on steroids’ levels of Pakistan, or the ‘once in history’ inundations of Brisbane and Lismore, but more than enough for a little island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, normally known for its potatoes and its beaches and its cute red-headed orphans. Not for storm surges and power outages and destroyed harvests …

Friday night. 0215. We have venetian blinds on our windows, and we wake up to them blowing inward like sails. The latches on the windows have popped, and I climb onto a small footstool so I can access the top sills. I force the windows down, then relatch the clasps. The blinds subside, foresails in the doldrums. The streetlights show water racing in rivulets down the street below, ornamental trees whipping back and forth, a parked car shaking itself awake with flashing lights and a strident alarm. The rain is horizontal, biblical, the wind a banshee.

Suddenly there is a loud explosion, not thunder, and a purple flash bounces off the roiling clouds. For a moment I think it is a car bomb but then common-sense kicks in; a transformer has blown. The common-sense opinion wins as the lights click out and there is nothing to see, inside or out, just the hazy retina-memory of a purple haze. Where’s Jimi when you need him? I go back to bed, lulled to sleep by the gale.

Saturday morning, eight o’clock. A wind-whipped street, the rain still lashing the windows. I wake to a crossfire hurricane, to a tree outside the China Garden restaurant that wasn’t there yesterday, either dead or alive. I have no idea where it has come from, its shattered limbs splayed across the sidewalk. Slowly people emerge from their apartments and congregate in the corridor. Our neighbour lost a window, it blew in at two thirty this morning, rain and wind pouring into the bedroom. Luckily, she was able to reinstall it, complete, and minimize the damage. Another neighbour was not so fortunate, the frame held but the glass shattered, his living room floor a sodden and dangerous mess until there was light enough to see.

We call our daughter, who lives out in the country. A tree has fallen onto her house and appears to be resting on the roofline. The apple tree has been uprooted, as have the big poplar and the hedgerow trees in the community pasture across the road. The dogs are getting squirrelly from not being allowed outside for a proper run. She’s had no power since nine o’clock last night. She’s been boiling a kettle on the wood stove, and the edits to her new book are going well. “I’m fine,” she says, just before the connection is lost.

The phone zings with another alert from the Emergency Measures people, beseeching us to stay indoors and not put ourselves – or first responders – at risk. Most of us comply but there are always those who believe that they are special, that the rules don’t apply to them, who walk their dogs or stroll the neighborhood looking for images to capture and post on Facebook or Instagram. Down the street outside I see someone wandering along, obviously determined to get his morning routine completed no matter what the namby-pamby emergency officials might think. He steps into the road to avoid the fallen tree, but the car driving down Queen Street sees him in time and brakes to avoid running him over. Shame, really. Through the gaps in the seams of the windowsills, the wind cries Mary.

Saturday afternoon, four o’clock. The hurricane warning is ended, the bridge is opened to certain classes of vehicle. There is still a steady rain, but the wind has died down to a stiff breeze. People emerge from buildings and start to slowly navigate the streets. I walk down six flights of stairs and check the basement. It is dry, much to my surprise; I had expected at least some flooding. I go outside and check the parking area, there are some scattered branches and pieces of metal from a disintegrated air conditioner, but not too much. I had put my car in a nearby parkade for the night, so it would be under cover and away from flying debris. As I walk to get it, I see the upturned trees in our neighbourhood park, the broken utility poles and the downed wires. It’s going to be some time before we get power restored.

Saturday evening, seven o’clock. The phone service appears to have stabilized now, we’re getting messages and texts from across the country, people wondering how we’re doing. Apparently, the news film from the storm has been horrendous, people are very concerned. We have no television, and data downloading is iffy on the cell phones, so we don’t really know what’s happening outside our own little cone of survival. We light the propane burner, a relic from our camping days, and boil some water for pasta, which is then set aside and later added to the frying pan full of onions, tomato, black olives, and bacon. We grate some cheese on top and open a bottle of wine. It’s dark, but the storm lanterns remind us of campgrounds long ago and far away.

Sunday morning, eleven o’clock. We decide to empty the fridge and freezer and take everything out to our daughter’s place. Last week we fixed up a generator there, so she can keep her fridge and freezer going. We load the cooler in the car and navigate the streets of downtown, then the highway. The main roads are clear, and there are two half-kilometre long line-ups at the only gas station that appears to be open. Some people are filling up cars, others portable containers so they can keep their generators going. The highway is lined with broken power poles, the wire scything through stands of wind-blown corn, soybeans, cabbages. Trees are down in yards, along hedgerows, in the woods beside a river. A camping trailer lies on its back, wheels upturned, looking like a fat puppy waiting for a belly rub.

Sunday afternoon, two o’clock. One of Victoria’s neighbours turns up with a chainsaw and a tractor. Half an hour later, the tree has been cut into pieces and pulled away from the house. He refuses payment. “If I’d known you were going to offer, I wouldn’t have come.” We are amazed that the only damage was a dent to the eavestrough, and a squashed pinecone on the roof. The squirrel that lived in the old red pine is a bit perturbed as he gets dragged for a free ride out across the grass.

Sunday afternoon, five o’clock. Friends contact us. They have (had) a cottage up on the north shore. They went out to check on it and found that the top half had blown off. They found this in a field a few hundred metres away.

They went to the cottage and found that the storm surge had dragged the bottom part of the cottage, plus the furnishings, fridge, stove, etcetera, out to sea. There is nothing left but the expensive pilings they installed last year, to keep the floor from being flooded at a high tide.

So now they have half a cottage, but it’s the top half. What the heck do you do with that?

Sunday afternoon, six o’clock. We get our power back. One of the benefits of living downtown, I suppose, and on the main transmission line that feeds the government offices, the hospital, and other important locations. We are an unanticipated consequence, but I’ll take it. Thirty-nine and a half hours is a long time in the dark, but most people are going to experience double that or more. It’s raining again, but nobody notices it without the wind assist.

Monday morning, eight o’clock. Friends from Ottawa e-mail to say they’ve just got back from Europe and seen the footage from Fiona. “Must have been terrifying to live through,” they say. “Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.” I reply immediately: “The ATMs are down, and the liquor store is closed. Please send money and scotch.” There is no response for a while, and then: “You’re a Leeds United supporter, you must be used to misery and anxiety.” Did I say ‘friends’?

Monday afternoon, five o’clock. It’s been three days since the winds started to pick up, since I returned from parking my car in the parkade, out of the reach of flying debris. For next time, we now know that we need one of those old-fashioned transistor radios, the battery-operated ones, so we can listen to CBC and figure out what’s going on outside our own little bubble. We followed the traditional advice of having enough food and water to last 36 hours but now know that we should probably have double that, enough for five or six days. We need to figure out how to connect the pump on the well at Victoria’s place to the generator, so she can continue to have water. These are all important ‘lessons learned’.

The island – indeed, the whole of the Atlantic region – is a landscape of shattered dreams. Houses decapitated or washed into the sea; twelve metre waves producing historically high storm surges; thousands of trees down, tens of thousands of people without power. There are photographs of fishing boats washed up onto bridges, of barns and silos exploded, of roads ending in a jagged sinkhole. Most of us know that this storm has set a new benchmark. The lowest air pressure ever recorded in Canada. The highest wind gusts for the longest time. The rain. The waves. The storm surge. All future storms will now be measured against the fury of Fiona. But we also know that these benchmarks will be challenged, perhaps not this year but in the years to come.

The time (and cost) required to rehabilitate the region is incalculable. The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs until 30 November. That’s nine weeks away. One can only hope that we don’t get another big storm before then. The Farmer’s Almanack is predicting that the winter of 2022-2023 “will remembered as a time to shake, shiver, and shovel – a winter season filled with plenty of snow, rain, and mush as well as some record-breaking cold temperatures.” We’ll all be looking forward to that. As long as the roofs and windows are fixed, there should be plenty of wood to burn.

As Bob wrote and Jimi sang,

And the wind began to howl, hey; All along the watchtower

Can’t wait.

I have crossed a couple of things off my bucket list in the nearly three months since my last blog. I’ve been to the Yukon, and I’ve been to the ballet.

The latter, I must admit, wasn’t really on my bucket list, but when the opportunity came up to see ‘Anne of Green Gables: The ballet’ at a local theatre, how could I resist? I’ve seen the musical and the stage play, watched the film and some episodes of the television series, and I’ve read the book.

I’ve paid homage here on PEI to the various locations affiliated with the orphan and the author; and tried to separate the two for numerous visitors. I’ve lost count of the “you know she’s a literary invention, right?” conversations I’ve had with those who want to see the ‘real’ farm where Matthew and Marilla lived, not the National Parks replica. But a ballet?

So off to Summerside we went, not sure if we were in for the most excruciating evening ever experienced or something that would be OK. As it turned out, it was better than OK. Although (spoiler alert!) I hadn’t really realized that there are no words in a ballet, no script for actors or a narrator to recite. So, if you don’t actually know the story, there are a few moments where you’re wondering quite why this older gentleman is so happy at collecting an orphaned young girl from a train station …

The Yukon, however, was very much on my bucket list, as it was the only province or territory in Canada which I had not yet visited. [As an aside, Tasmania is my Australian equivalent, but we’re hoping to get there next year. More of that in a later blog.] Having decided that we were going to brave the post-pandemic(ish) travel landscape, we had our booster shots and flew out to Vancouver. This was early April, before the great spring rush sent everything sideways when airports still in pandemic mode suddenly faced a zillion passengers. Our travel was uneventful.

From Vancouver we flew to Whitehorse, and were immediately transported back into the past, a kinder, gentler time. Air North serves food. Free food. To all passengers. Even those who are flying on the pensioner discount. And their sandwiches are so good, they sell them in shops as well!

Then, just when you’re enjoying your second cup of coffee, and looking out at the ice fields, they bring around warm chocolate chip cookies, which are absolutely delicious. This airline is one of the few left that is owned by an individual, rather than a bunch of pension fund shareholders, and so there is still a human element. Highly recommended.

From the Yukon we went to the Sunshine Coast (ha!) in the Sechelt area north of Vancouver. Our youngest daughter and her husband have a place there, so we had somewhere to stay out of the rain and chill of the coldest spring in fifteen years. All the houses have moss on the roof, which shouldn’t really be a surprise – it is, after all, part of the temperate rain forest. We also got to visit friends on Savary Island, which is a PEI-like sandspit of land off the coast of Lund. All in all, we had a fabulous break, like many people our first flights and holiday for over two years.

And like many other people, I’m fed up with the pandemic, with the increasing cost of gas, with the depressing news out of Ukraine, with global warming, and with the burgeoning food crisis. I think it’s time we worried about something else. No, not monkey pox.

Earthquakes.

In an earlier life I was a teacher of geography, with a focus on physical landforms. I am sure that everyone has heard of the Great Rift Valley, which stretches some 6400 kilometers from Jordan to Mozambique. It is not really a single valley, more a series of contiguous trenches that mark a fault line where two tectonic plates have shifted. In North America, there is the Denali fault which extends 4000 kms from Alaska into southern Yukon and northern BC, and where there was a major 7.9 magnitude earthquake in 2002. And a smaller 3.5 one last week, by the way.

We often hear ominous forecasts about the San Andreas fault, which runs for about 1200 kms across California. It is what is known as a right-lateral slip – basically, the tectonic plate on one side shifts against the other, causing earthquakes and much death and destruction. But I was surprised – nay, shocked! – to recently discover an equally significant fault line in Canada.

We were driving from Whitehorse to Dawson City and came to a small roadside information board, located in a layby overlooking a wide valley. Naturally, we stopped to see what information was being provided. The valley, it turned out, was part of the Tintina fault, another right-lateral slip, and at over 1000 kms about the same length as the San Andreas fault. This is the biggest fault line in Canada! Who knew? I sure didn’t.

It is just as likely that the next big North American earthquake could take place along the Tintina fault as along the San Andreas fault. Why, then, isn’t the Tintina fault always in the news? Why don’t we have breathless projections as to when the next ‘big one’ might impact McQuestern? Are not the 10 people who live in Stewart Crossing (Statistics Canada, 2021 census) just as important as the 10,040,682 who live in Los Angeles County (American Community Survey, 2020)? I think we need to contact our Members of Parliament and ask them to focus on our own potential geological catastrophes, rather than those of our neighbours.

Speaking of earth-shattering news, and as I mentioned in a teaser blog a few days ago, I am delighted to announce that my second novel, TRACKS, has now been published. For those of you who wanted a sequel to Traces, here it is, but it is also a stand-alone novel for those who want to see what the fuss is about.

Synopsis: Sergeant Gavin Rashford of the North-West Mounted Police has been posted to the remote reaches of southern Saskatchewan, where he soon finds that small town life can have both benefits and drawbacks. A chance encounter during a prairie storm leads to a challenging pursuit through the Alberta foothills – and an unexpected road trip to the Maritimes.

A mystery-thriller, both print and e-book versions are available from Amazon, Kobo, and other vendors including Apple, Thalia, and Scribd. TRACKS will also be available at Bookmark in Charlottetown.

This is not really a blog – hopefully that will follow later next week. I am interrupting the Jubilee Long Weekend to announce that my second novel, TRACKS, has now been published. For those of you who wanted a sequel to Traces, here it is, but it is also a stand-alone novel for those who want to see what the fuss is about.

Sergeant Gavin Rashford of the North-West Mounted Police has been posted to the remote reaches of southern Saskatchewan, where he soon finds that small town life can have both benefits and drawbacks. A chance encounter during a prairie storm leads to a challenging pursuit through the Alberta foothills – and an unexpected road trip to the Maritimes.

A mystery-thriller, both print and e-book versions are available from Amazon, Kobo, and many others, including Apple. TRACKS will also be available at Bookmark in Charlottetown.

I checked another item off my bucket list yesterday, flying into Whitehorse on an Air North jet. It’s my first time going to the Yukon, the last of the Canadian provinces or territories left for me to visit. The flight was smooth, and the service friendly. As we travelled north through the clouds, I reflected on some observations made the previous day, during my flight across the country.

We had checked in at 3 a.m., which is really an inexcusable time to expect anybody to be awake, and my first thought was that the airlines have either given up worrying about who gets on the plane or the staff have developed the ability to see beyond the mask when matching faces to passport photographs.

My second thought was that although many companies have used the pandemic to update and upgrade their products and processes, Air Canada has apparently decided to stay with the tried and true. The inflight breakfast was the same as it was 751 days ago, the last time I was on a plane: omelet, sausage, salsa, individualized tub of flavoured yoghurt and a stale croissant with a plastic container of a fruit-based product that looked like strawberry jam. Coffee or tea. I guess I could have had the pancakes instead.

I had forgotten the massage chair vibration of light turbulence, and the stronger pockets when you must close your eyes and imagine you are in a boat whistling across the wind-chopped lake, bumping over the waves and laughing as the spray hits your face. Instead of being strapped into a tube at 28,000 feet.

In Toronto, I discovered that the elevator to the Maple Leaf Lounge is holding on to its reputation of being the slowest elevator in an airport. Anywhere.

The flight to Vancouver was on a bigger plane than those which can land in Charlottetown, and so the safety briefing was a video rather than a person. In the past these films have either been static or boring, with cartoon comedy the height of innovation. But not now. The new film was impressive, with each segment located in a different province or territory. I was particularly taken with the ‘how to fasten your seatbelt’ segment, which starred a young woman on a dog sled in the Yukon. The illustration of how to brace yourself in an emergency, by leaning forward and holding your ankles, was demonstrated by a beach yoga group on the shores of Prince Edward Island, and the cut-out view of the plane showing the various emergency exits had been mown into a Saskatchewan wheat field. All very clever. The final scene focused on an inshore fisherman sitting on a stool, surrounded by lobster pots and coils of rope, reaching down, and pulling a yellow safety vest from a pouch under his seat.

The flight itself was uneventful. The same breakfast was offered, but declined, and I slept a bit, and then we landed. Here I discovered that the ‘priority’ labels on one’s luggage are still more decorative than functional, attached with flair by the person who checks in the bags but tending to be ignored by those actually responsible for prioritizing the delivery of said luggage.

This is probably an opportune moment for a lengthy discourse on the relative merits of entitlement and privilege versus the proletarian equitocracy of a unionised workforce*, but I’m still mad that my luggage was almost the last item to arrive on the conveyor belt. On the plus side, most of the other 500 passengers from our Boeing 777-300 had already collected theirs and the baggage hall was nearly empty as I manoeuvred my trolley out to the taxi rank.

We stayed overnight in Vancouver, in the rain, and headed back to the airport in the morning. The Air North check-in desks are in a far corner of the ticketing hall, three desks jammed up near to the toilets and some construction. The staff were cheerful and pleasant, our bags were processed quickly, and we made our way through security to wait for the plane.

To my amazement we were served lunch, a free (!) sandwich, and then a hot chocolate chip cookie for dessert. Blissful. I highly recommend this airline.

The clouds cleared as we crossed the icefields of northern British Columbia, glacial tongues extending down the valleys between chains of sharp-peaked mountains. At Carcross the sun glinted from the roofs of houses that formed a necklace along the shore, the lake still frozen, the road a grey straight-line interruption to the natural curves of the landscape.

Mountains, glaciers, frozen lakes, boreal forest – it all seemed a long way from PEI. As we settled in for the final approach, the trees gave way to an urban landscape, an industrial estate, suburban cul-de-sacs, cars lined up at traffic lights. I am looking forward to this visit, a few days in the north at the start of a holiday that will also encompass the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. But more on all that later.

*I thought I’d made this word up, but it seems that it was first coined a decade ago by Radu Buzescu, who according to Google was either “a Romanian noble from Wallachia in the late 1500s, during the reign of Michael the Brave”, or else someone with no social media profile on LinkedIn. I’m opting for the latter.

Buzescu, R. (2012). Equitocracy: The alternative to capitalist-ultracapitalist and socialist-communist democracies.  Published by iUniverse.

It’s a bright but cold spring morning. There is still snow on the ground, especially along the tree lines at the edges of the fields, and the ground itself is still frozen underfoot. Once again those of us in the northern latitudes are getting ready for the official end of winter, the Spring Equinox, which takes place on 20 March again this year. Our clocks ‘sprang forward’ last Saturday night, and yesterday I saw the first pussy willow buds break out in the sunshine. These are all signs that the summer is coming, and with it the chance to get back into the garden. For those of you in the southern hemisphere who are getting ready for autumn, enjoy!

I have just been re-reading some of my old blogs. Two years ago, I was in self-isolation, having got back to Prince Edward Island just hours before the borders closed and the world seemed to stop.
Roger McGough, one of the Liverpool Poets of the 1960s, is still very much alive and well. He recently published a book of contemporary poems, entitled ‘Safety in numbers’ (Penguin Books).

The title poem is apt:

Safety in numbers?
Not any more.
The room starts to fill?
I’m out of the door.

A year ago, I was musing on the fact that I had only been off-Island twice since my return, two quick trips to our neighbouring provinces. Today, I have to confess that I have not been off-Island for the whole of this past year. The furthest I have ventured in the last twelve months have been Summerside and East Point, both of which are about 60 kilometres away.

That will change next week, though. I have had to book my car in for a service and oil-change, plus a dealer-recall fix, so that means a trip to Moncton. Two hours on the road, a passage over the bridge … into that terra incognito, where there be dragons. The car is going to be at the garage for about three hours, so I’m hoping that the nearby garden centre is open. Even if I don’t buy anything, it will be good to see a bit of normality in the world. Heaven knows we need it.

We are fast approaching the Ides of March, but I don’t think even Caesar would have seen one like this coming. In the past month, the eyes of the world have shifted from truck protests across Canada, and copied elsewhere, to the mass destruction of Ukraine. One only hopes that the attention-seeking antics of a few right-wing conspiracy theorists don’t draw inspiration from the crazed actions of a totalitarian megalomaniac. One can imagine the convoy leaders sitting around in their hot tub: “well, air horns and blocked streets didn’t work, let’s try some missiles and a tank convoy.”

The chaos of the convoy has been overshadowed by the events in Europe but should not be forgotten. The people who wanted the Governor General to dissolve the government and establish a ruling council of other parties, with their participation, are not simply misguided. They are driven by an ideology that resists and seeks to eradicate what they see as ‘liberal values’ – notions of multiculturalism, gender-equality, social justice, or anti-racism. They seek a falsely remembered ‘perfect world’ of the mid-20th century, when the Canada in which they lived was (mainly) white, well-paying jobs were available without the need for an expensive post-secondary education, and women stayed home to tend house and look after the kids.

Problematically, they are becoming increasingly militaristic in trying to achieve their goals. According to an article in The Globe and Mail newspaper, “26 Canadians have been killed and 40 injured by ideologically motivated people” since 2016. That is not a lot in absolute terms, but it is too many. As Canada prepares to welcome refugees from Mariupol and Kyiv, from Kherson and Chernihiv, the ethnocultural make-up of Canada will continue to evolve. The anger of those who see themselves as excluded from a socially responsive technological age will continue to grow as the demographics of the Canadian workplace change.

In the midst of this perfect storm of COVID, climate change, and conflict, both internal and external, let us not forget those who were our concern just seven months ago, the thousands of Afghans who were deserted when western forces left Kabul in disarray. They were to be prioritized for evacuation, our governments told us, and all resources would be brought to bear to facilitate their resettlement. Many of my colleagues are still there, still waiting. Their e-mails and phone calls to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) receive a generic “your file is in process” response, if the caller manages to get through at all. The Taliban are conducting house-to-house searches on a daily basis, upending people’s lives, looting and destroying personal property. Nearly 400 civilians have been killed in that period, and 7 million people in Afghanistan are facing famine. But now all our resources are being sent to help those trying to escape the slaughter in Ukraine.

The laser-sharp focus of IRCC is wobbly in the extreme. When I was part of a team working in the Balkans, specifically Kosovo, in the early 2000s, we were appalled when the Canadian emphasis (and funding) shifted mid-project to South Sudan. That was the area of focus for a while, then there was a shift to Syria, and then Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. What chaos will grasp the short-term attention span of our Ministerial advisors next? The hundreds perishing as they try to cross the Mediterranean or the English Channel? The people of Pacific Ocean islands rapidly being inundated by rising sea-levels? The hundreds of thousands fleeing extreme poverty and violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras? How can a government enact policy conceived in the crucible of reaction? Is there no plan?

This time last year I tried to refocus on the positives of our world. As we mark the second-year anniversary of the pandemic, I think its alright to repeat those reflections, although it is a sad state of affairs that I don’t have to actually change them, I can just cut and paste from 13 March 2021: “I hope that people continue to buy local, even when the big superstores get their supply lines straightened out. I hope that society invests time and money into resolving the staffing crisis at long-term residential care homes. I hope that musicians will be able to play live gigs again, and artists to have gallery openings. I hope some people will continue to work from home, and the number of daily commutes remains lower than it was a year ago. I hope that governments put as many resources into fighting climate change as they did into developing vaccines. I hope that Leeds United finish in the top six of the Premier League.”

I guess I do have to update that one: I hope that Leeds United don’t get relegated from the Premier League.

To the list, I must now add a couple that really should have been there last year, and a few new ones: I hope that there are no more bodies discovered in unmarked graves in the grounds of what used to be ‘Indian Residential Schools’; I hope that we manage to meet a few more, if not a whole lot more, of the Calls To Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; I hope that the war in Ukraine remains ‘conventional’ and that nuclear options are not selected; I hope that nobody accidentally (or on purpose) fires a missile into Poland or another NATO state; I hope that Pierre Poilievre doesn’t win the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada; I hope that China does not enter into a military support pact with Russia; I hope that China does not try to ‘liberate’ Taiwan; I hope that the refugees of the world, whether fleeing from conflict-, climate-, economic- or other catastrophe, are greeted humanely and with compassion by those of us who are living in more settled environments. Really, most of them just want to go home – as will we, once the unthinkable happens to turn our lives upside down. Because make no mistake, our time will come.

I was reminded of McGough’s work by a friend now living in Perth, Western Australia, who sent me this poem, written in the mid-1960s, post-Cuban missile crisis. Huge shout out of thanks to Simon Clarke for sharing.

Survivor
 
Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.
 

Ah, February! This shortest month has tried hard to make itself memorable and has given April such a run for its money that not even T. S. Eliot would complain. Here on the Island, we have had storm after storm, over 250 centimetres (over eight feet) of snow falling in the past seven weeks. Fortunately, (?), the roller-coaster of climate-change-impacted weather systems has given us some 10-degree days (10C) in there as well, so there has been some melting and the snowbanks are not as high as they could be.

On PEI we are slowly lifting our pandemic restrictions and have managed to do so without having convoys of protesters blocking streets and blasting air horns for weeks on end. On behalf of all Canadians, I apologize to those of you whose lunatic fringe took the idea and imported it to your own countries. I trust that they are watching events unfold in Kyiv and thinking, actually, my life here in a western democracy isn’t too bad. Even if the government makes me wear a mask and suggests I get vaccinated. They could just have bombed me into submission.

Our restaurants and music events are back to fifty per cent capacity and yesterday we removed the need to show a VaxPass to gain entry to venues. I’m not rushing out just yet though. I have downloaded lots of tunes and amuse myself listening at home.

A few days ago, I was listening to Stompin’ Tom Connors, who like Anne of Green Gables fame is an Island icon who is not actually an Islander, both being adopted from away. At least Stompin’ Tom is a real person, who lived and breathed Island air before going off to fame and fortune in Ontario. He celebrates PEI with his song, Bud the Spud – about a trucker who carries a load of potatoes up to Toronto. Have a listen if you get a chance – it’s a fun song. Although Bud the Spud from the bright red mud can become a bit of an earworm. Anyway, that started me thinking about potatoes.

As you may have heard, we experienced an outbreak of the potato wart fungus last fall. This is one of those “they did what?” stories. The fungus was first discovered on the Island about 20 years ago, and the scientists recommended that the crop be destroyed, and the two fields involved be taken out of production and planted with trees. Apparently, the fungus can live for ever in the soil, so it made sense to stop growing potatoes in those fields. Then the problem would go away.

At this point a certain large producer apparently became involved. They employ lots of people and warned of the catastrophic impact on the economic life of the province if their two fields were taken out of production. They employed some of their own scientists to produce a study and persuaded the government that it would be okay to wait a few years and then plant wart-resistant varieties. Which they did.

Twenty years later, 2021 was the best harvest year for potato growers ever. Nearly two and a half billion pounds of potatoes were harvested and stored, ready for export. In October, the media was full of stories about the ‘best one in generations’ harvest. Farmers were warned to take care not to flood the market and drive down prices.

Then, in November, potato wart was discovered again – in a field of less than one acre. This time, the government in Ottawa imposed a total ban on exports of table potatoes, and what had been a bumper year suddenly morphed into a disaster. It should be noted here that potato wart is an ugly disease, but it is not dangerous to people. You probably would not want to eat an infected potato but if you inadvertently did, the virus is not a human pathogen. Not like some other viruses we might mention.

With the American border closed to export, the big question was: what do you do with 2.5 billion pounds of potatoes? These are table potatoes, and so their shelf life is measured in months not years. And assuming a farmer is to plant and harvest a crop this year, where would she/he/they put them when the storage barns are still full of those from last year?

Some people bought truck loads and donated them to food banks around the country. A few weeks ago, the US allowed the resumption of direct shipments to Puerto Rico, which doesn’t grow potatoes and so has no risk of cross-infection. The border to the mainland, however, remains closed. The provincial government gave farmers money to destroy part of their crop and so 3m pounds of perfectly good potatoes were dumped on the frozen fields and then ‘chipped’ by running a snowblower over them – this allows the potatoes to rot into the ground once the weather warms up. But you’re only allowed to do that up to the end of February, because the potatoes must be frozen in order to be chipped. [Really! That’s not a pun!]

Then someone had a bright idea – let’s give away the crop.

On Saturday, five potato producers across Prince Edward Island opened up their storage barns and had a ‘Fill Your Boots’ event. People were invited to come along and pick up as many potatoes as they would like – and you didn’t need boots, you could use any kind of container. I went along to one farm with my shopping bags and was amazed.

There were over a hundred people queuing to get into the barn. People had laundry hampers, hockey bags, large carboard boxes, little trolleys on wheels, Rubbermaid tubs, and so forth. Many, like me, had shopping bags from large grocery chains. The fellow in front of me had four plastic milk crates, two in each hand, his fingers hooked through the mesh; I couldn’t help but wonder how he was going to carry them when they were full of potatoes.

I followed the queue deeper into the barn and through the haze a wall of potatoes appeared. It must have been almost twenty feet high and forty feet across. At the base were farm workers with snow shovels, who helped fill the various containers for the grateful customers. My bags loaded, I staggered back outside to the sunshine. And thought to myself:

What am I going to do with 40 lbs of potatoes?

I went snowshoeing yesterday, for the first time this winter. We have had two big storms a week apart, each of which dumped over 30 centimeters (AKA a foot) of snow. There were strong winds as well, gusting to over 100 kilometers an hour, which in addition to knocking out power all over The Island also sculpted the snow into wonderful drifts.

Sometimes these big storms are followed by a period of high pressure, with sunny skies and a bright wintry landscape. At other times the low-pressure system lingers, with grey cloud and periods of soft drifting snow. The light is flat, and it can be difficult to see the contours of the land. Yesterday was such a day.

Victoria has dug a trench to the coop, but the chickens and ducks refuse to come out. They cluster around the door and cackle derisively, scratching at the straw-strewn floor as if to show us what ground should feel like. The idea of getting cold feet from being outside is certainly not a priority.

The dogs, in contrast, are in heaven, albeit one with limited or conditional terms. Running in the deeper snow is a short-lived exercise, one which only lasts as long as it takes us to snowshoe thirty or forty metres. At that point they leap on each other and roll about, then race up and down the tracks left behind us. The further we walk, the longer the track, and so they build up their run, in perpendicular laps.

As we walk down through the woods the narrow single file track of a fox crosses the path, precision in each step. He came from the corn field and under a strand of fallen fence wire, then kept going between the rowan (also known as the mountain ash) trees. These still hold many of their berries, it was a good year for them, although the robins have stayed around to gorge themselves. Like many wild trees, rowans tend to fruit heavily every second year, so this fall Victoria picked buckets of the berries and made rowan jelly, a wonderful addition to roast pork or lamb dishes during the winter months.

Further down the trail it looks like a couple of rabbits have loped around the edge of the frozen pond and then gone up the bank next to the beech tree. The brittle brown leaves of the beech, curled in the cold, shine golden in the weak light, their ribs highlighted by a sheen of fresh snow. The shadows in the woods prevent me seeing whether rabbit and fox trail intersect.

Once we get through the woods and out to the garden we are exposed to the soft snow. It’s just below freezing, perhaps minus three or four degrees, and there is no wind. The small flakes drift down, white emerging from grey, and the landscape blurs. A northern or yellow-shafted flicker undulates overhead, making a dash from one clump of trees to another. A type of woodpecker, this one has obviously decided the COVID border restrictions are too onerous and has foregone the opportunity to migrate south for the winter.

We trek down the edge of the garden, past the skeletal orchard, outstretched branches dotted with dormant winter buds. The raspberry canes and grape vines are sleeping deeply, patiently waiting for the long warm days of May before they even think about spending energy. There are still some seeds on the heads of two sunflowers, swaying gently on their ten-foot stalks, but the blue jays have eaten most of them.

The dogs run down to the berm near the pond. The berm is left wild, rife with goldenrod and rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan), dotted with daisies and clover. Now it is a haven for voles, and the dogs dig madly in the snow, seeking the narrow tunnels among the roots as they chase their elusive prey. It is a rare and surprising occurrence when they actually catch one, hunter and hunted both frozen in place, staring at each other in confusion and trying to figure out what to do next. Usually, the dogs get bored first and dance off to another clump of grass. The vole waits until nothing is moving in the immediate area and then goes back into its tunnel, slow and nervous movements at first, followed by a quick dash.

We circle the pond, the water lilies and pickerel weed well hidden by ice and snow. The dogs run out into the middle, skidding to a stop like children who have found an unexpectedly slippery section of sidewalk. The water level is high, so hopefully the goldfish will survive another winter, settled alongside the frogs in the muddy lower depths. Last year the bullrush root I got from a friend’s place put out two new shoots, it will be interesting to see if a proper clump develops this spring. The dragonflies like to rest on the leaves that arch into the pond like flying buttresses supporting the corndog spires.

As we start to head back, the local pair of ravens glide past. They nest somewhere in the old trees down by the Confederation Trail, and regularly perform a perimeter check of their territory. Potential predators such as eagles are escorted away, and potential irritants such as humans are checked to make sure we stick to our own paths.

On this day, our path leads us back through the planted garden. I tend not to prune back the herbaceous borders in the fall. This is not entirely laziness on my part. Apart from anything else, perennials often need a cold snap in order to set seed for next spring. But more importantly, the seed heads add both interest and nourishment to the winter landscape. The tightly folded cups of the Queen Anne’s Lace, the graceful arcs of the hollyhock, the spikes of monarda, aquilegia and agastache, all stand stark against the snow and delineate the shape of the flower beds.

In this monochromatic January landscape, the echoes of last summer’s colour are visible, and so is the promise of the spring to come.

It has been some time since I last posted, so let me begin by wishing everyone a happy new year, and the hope that you are coping with the vagaries and turmoil of these Omicron days. My New Year Resolution is to try to write a blog post each month this year. I hope this survives better than the ‘lose 25 pounds’ and ‘train to run a half-marathon’ resolutions of years past.

This first post starts with an example of humble pie. I was congratulating myself on my novel, which seems to be almost at the one-sale-a-day average now and so I was giving myself a proverbial pat on the back.

[If you haven’t got yours yet, please do so immediately! I need to keep this momentum going.]

Anyway, basking in my success, I then saw this:
https://www.tor.com/2021/10/20/you-should-really-be-reading-victoria-goddards-nine-worlds-series/

I read this and thought, proudly, how brilliant that my daughter’s work is getting such recognition.
I did, honest.

No, really, what I thought was: “mmfph.”

No-one, as far as I’m aware, and I’m pretty confident about this, has EVER given any of my work – academic or creative – such a review. Talk about setting a high bar!

I have just finished the draft of my second novel, and I’m now editing that to see if I can get someone to experience a small moment of serendipity [that] slams into you like a lightning strike and a clap of thunder. Please, if anyone gets there, let me know!

[As a sidebar: If you don’t find such serendipity from my creative efforts, you might try the new academic book from one of my doctoral students, which examines some of the pressing issues of the day in the field of school leadership. Turbulence: Leaders, Educators, and Students Responding to Rapid Change, by Lyle Hamm, is now available from Rowman and Littlefield [www.rowman.com]. Well done, Lyle – congratulations on this achievement.]

All that aside, I’m not sure why we say we’re “eating humble pie” as a sort of apologetic response, an admission of guilt or failure. After all, in his famous diary, on 8 July 1663 Samuel Pepys wrote: “Mrs Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinarily good.”

Traditionally, and recorded back into the 1330s, the noumble pie was made from the heart, liver, entrails, and so forth, of deer, the stuff left when you’ve carved out the steaks and the joints. What we sometimes call offal. Linguists think that by the 1500s ‘a noumble’ had evolved into ‘an umble’ and so humble pie was born. Perhaps it’s something to do with eating the lesser valued ingredients, rather than the top end steaks, but I really don’t know.

I think it’s a shame if that is the case. After all, there’s nothing wrong with offal! When I was at teacher’s college, back in the early 1970s, I lived in residence for my first year. Every Thursday the dining room would serve roasted calf heart. I will confess, the novelty wore off quite quickly. After the first two weeks, every Thursday my friends and I would buy fish and chips for dinner.

That said, chicken livers are wonderful when sauteed in olive oil with garlic or onions. Devilled kidneys are a traditional English breakfast delicacy, and Tom Noest has a good recipe at https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/devilled-lamb-kidneys-recipe. But for me a nice steak and kidney pie in a flaky pastry crust is a wonderful meal. With or without oysters. With chips on the side*. And gravy. And a pint of beer. And a dollop of brown sauce. Heaven.

And I do like tripe, another great food that has been in totally dismissed in literature. A load of tripe indeed.

Whenever I visit France, my friend Robert and I go to the local market and buy tripe sausage, much to the disgust of our wives. We grill them on the BBQ and then spend the evening deciding which grand cru goes best with tripe. The answer, determined after hours of experimentation over many evenings, is: all of them!

My grandma used to make a lovely tripe and onion stew, where the tripe was boiled in milk for some hours, until it was digestible. Hmm-umm. I guess tastes evolve.

Perhaps that might be a theme for a future blog – delectable dishes I have enjoyed but that you won’t find on the menu for Skip the Dishes or similar food delivery services. After all, if our supply chains continue to deteriorate, and food prices continue to increase, we might well have to relearn some of those old recipes and try to make the most out of what we have available.
Oxtail soup, anyone?

________

*By this I mean ‘proper chips’, in the English recipe sense – not French Fries, which are too thin and salty. And certainly not Canadian ‘chips’, which are actually crisps. And should only come in plain, cheese and onion, or salt and vinegar flavours.

Today is a good day

Today is the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. According to the government, this “solemn day has been established to honour the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities, and to ensure public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools as a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

It is the first time I have experienced the first celebration of a new national holiday and, to be honest, it doesn’t seem to have been very well organized. Although the idea received a unanimous vote from the House of Commons, making this a federal statutory holiday, not all provinces have fully agreed with the concept.

In some provinces, such as British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick, the concept has been embraced but the application is lacking. In essence, if you are a federal employee or work in a federally regulated industry, like a bank, you get a paid day off. If you work in a provincially regulated job, you don’t.

As well as confusion regarding who gets to celebrate what, there also seems to be a lack of a master plan.

Prince Edward Island is one of the few provinces that has fully embraced the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, possibly because one of the sponsors of the bill, Senator Brian Francis, is from PEI and was previously chief of the Abegweit First Nation.

Chief Darlene Bernard of the Lennox Island First Nation on PEI has suggested that there are five ways in which people can honour the purpose of the day. First, to wear orange, which has become the ‘official colour’ of this day.

Second, to participate in an event, should one be happening in your community. This is more difficult right now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but will perhaps be easier in future years. A few cities, such as Ottawa, are hosting spirit walks, where participants wear orange and walk in socially distanced groups to a predetermined destination.

Third, to support Indigenous artisans, and seek out quillwork, birch bark biting, beaded items, and other art for purchase. Fourth, to be considerate, and recognize that Indigenous people across the country are grieving. And fifth, to learn the history of residential schools in this country.

I am wearing my orange t-shirt. In this I am joining many Canadians to honour the experience of Phyllis Wedstad, from Williams Lake, BC, who wrote:

I went to the Mission for one school year in 1973/1974. I had just turned 6 years old. I lived with my grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve. We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.

https://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html

I thought I would use some of this day to reflect on some personal interactions I have had with those who experienced the residential school system.

When I first came to Canada, in 1984, I had only been teaching for a few months when the rules changed. Suddenly, you had to have a university degree, not a simple Teachers’ College Certificate of Education. So, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program at the University of Saskatchewan. I was teaching in the north at the time and thought it would be useful to know more about that area and the people. I must confess, I thought everyone in Canada had learned all this in school, and so this was my chance to catch-up.

I decided to take a double-major of Native Studies and Indian and Northern Education. I soon learned truths that I had never dreamed existed.

***

One day I was in the locker room at the gym, after playing squash with a friend. A classmate was changing at the same time. As he dried himself after his shower, I noticed a series of deep scars across his back.

“What the heck happened to you?” I asked.

“I spoke Cree at school,” he said.

Then he told me how he had been at a residential school, in the early 1970s. He had been speaking his own language, Cree, to a younger cousin who had just arrived at the school and who did not yet know English.

He was whipped as a punishment.

“They used an old fan belt from the tractor,” he said.

***

I had the good fortune to take a class from the late Howard Adams, a wonderful Métis scholar and activist. His great-grandfather was Maxime Lépine, who had fought with Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont during the North-West Resistance of 1885. It was from Adams that I learned about the road allowance people, impoverished Métis communities that had been established on ‘Crown Land’ between the railway tracks and the roads.

From the 1930s through until the 1960s, these homes were bulldozed and burned. The official story, even now, is that the purpose was to clear land and create pasture for settler farmers. In 1938 the community of Ste. Madeleine, Manitoba, was destroyed. The school, store, and 35 homes were all burned to the ground, and the dogs in the village were shot dead, ostensibly to “prevent the spread of disease.” A decade later, in 1949, the community of Lestock, Saskatchewan, was bulldozed and the people sent on trains to Green Lake, a community some 500 kms away. A year later, the houses were burned.

However, Howard Adams argued that these evictions were done in order to remove a potential eyesore from the Royal gaze. He noted that in both 1939 and, again, in 1951 there were Royal Visits to Canada, where first King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) and then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip travelled across the country by train. “It would not have been in the best interests of the Canadian political class,” said Adams, “for the Kings and Queens of England to see the poverty in which my people lived.” I have not been able to find any documentation to support this claim but as one of my mentors used to say, it is a claim that has optical significance”.

***

Later, when we lived on Baffin Island, I met an Inuk teacher from a place called Grise Fiord, now Ausuittaq. He told me how his parents had been among the eighty-seven people from seventeen families who, in the early 1950s, were taken from Inukjuak, in northern Quebec, and relocated almost 2000 kilometres from their home. This was so that Canada could show the world there were Canadians living in the High Arctic, which in the Cold War years of the time was an important geopolitical strategy.

The fact that they were taken from the relatively lush tundra of northern Quebec to the High Arctic, where they found a much colder climate, unfamiliar terrain, constant winter darkness and limited varieties of wildlife that they could hunt, was irrelevant. In 2010 the Canadian government issued a formal apology, saying that it regrets the “mistakes and broken promises” it made in forcing some Inuit to relocate to the High Arctic in the 1950s. They still live there, though.

***

The use of corporal punishment, the banning of language, the bulldozing of homes, the forced relocation of entire communities – these are not unknown events. They are in the public record. They are spoken of in the oral histories of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. And yet they are not in the public discourse, they are not in the curricula, they are not widely known.

I am writing about them here because it is my way of sharing some of what I know, what I heard or experienced directly, what I believe to be true. I hope that these stories will generate some conversations with your families, friends, and colleagues.

Today we honour the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. As many Indigenous leaders have commented, in order to have reconciliation we must first have truth. Today is a good day.

.