Moose Factory Journal

Today we celebrated the Annual Memorial on Big Stone Island.  I had missed this event last year, because I was down south in Vermont celebrating Labor Day Weekend and a wedding there.

On September 30, 1999 a party was headed from Moose Factory Island to Hannah Bay — where many people go to camp, fish, and hunt. There were five canoes in the party.

When the party left Moose Factory Island, the weather was calm, and there were no signs of trouble.  However, after they had cleared the mouth of The Moose River and were actuall out in The Bay, a wind or storm came up — and suddenly. This does happen on The Bay (which is why I was so cautious when Ted and Judy were here.)  One canoe swamped. Another one or two canoes came to the rescue. One of the (rescue) canoes swamped. Eight lives were lost.  Most were from one family alone.  Further, the bodies (or what was left of them) were not all recovered until weeks later.  The Record Book here in the Church shows the date of the funeral for all to be October 5, 1999.

The catastrophe occurred near Big Stone Island which lies about halfway between the Moose River and Hannah Bay (into which the Harricanaw flows.)  The water in that specific area can be exceedingly treacherous.  The big rolling waves coming from across The Bay can get ever so much larger in that area because of a number of factors. One is that the configuration of the points jutting out from the mainland can have an effect on the tide — setting up a kind of enormous counterclockwise eddy. And, there are several shallows or sandbars; the big waves simply break over the shallows and sandbars.

Big Stone Island is mostly a large sand bar — with enough high ground to support some rocks and some vegetation — lying just a few yards off shore.  If the muck were not like quicksand, you could easily get from the mainland shore to The Island.  The Island is the closest place to the tragedy where there is enough solid footing, so that a memorial can be constructed and maintained.  In the last week, however, when we had the big wind that knocked out the power for a night, The Island was covered with seawater.  The water had literally blown up over it.

The families involved with the tragedy were camped out on The Island for the long weekend. Today there were at least four chopper trips (four passengers each trip) out to The Island. I went out with Bobby, Betty, and Elsie at 2 PM. Chief Hardisty from Moose Cree First Nation was there along with a counselor for support.  In all, there were about fifty of us.

We all visited for a while. I chatted with Elizabeth while she was making bannock at the fire in a teepee. Elizabeth had lost a daughter and three grandchildren in the tragedy.

Not much got said. We just kind of hung out, talked about the weather which was damp. After about an hour we formed The Circle.  We used much of the material from the Annual Memorial Service, held on the first Sunday of August at St. Thomas’ Cemetery.  But our formalities were shorter and simpler. I preached all of three minutes, basically just thanked the families for inviting me out to this place.  Their gift to me was possibly more than they could imagine. And in time their gift here would encourage others to come to this place. Several family members have not yet been to Big Stone Island.  They’re not ready yet.

We said prayers in Cree and English, sang some of the old hymns, read from the Scriptures in Cree and in English. Then we walked slowly to where the great white wooden Cross was planted and laid wreathes and concluded with more prayers.

Then there was The Feast: enough for 300 people and every kind of delicacy.  Offerings were made from The Feast.  The sun had come out.  The weather was gentle.

At four I had to leave — first chopper trip out.  Our pilot — a lady older than me — was worried about storms coming in.  She is very, very good — takes absolutely no chances.  She also invited herself to the celebration, was asked to do one of the readings, and was part of the family long before we were on our way back out.

Since then I have talked to two Elders about what happened — Jimmy and Lawrence.  Both have serious respect for the water right in the area where the tragedy occurred — for the reasons I listed.  Also, the canoes were heavily loaded.  There might have been engine trouble — in which case one could not steer the bow into the wind.  And then there was a question about the shape of the hull on some of the freighters; not all hulls ride the swells the same way.  Both agreed that in some crucial respects the 17-18 foot canoe is safer. It takes much less draft, and you can really hug the shore.  You may get wet, muddy, and bit. But you can’t drown on the mainland. In addition to that, the engine can actually shield you from what’s going on.  You may think you have more control over the situation than you really have.  The paddler doesn’t have that kind of power and will adjust accordingly, will look for safety and will be close enough to find it — or be blown into it.  The Elders remember when travel up and down the coast was all by paddle (or sail.)  Their Elders knew every creek and hummock along the way — and knew just exactly where to go when they got nervous — which was usually long before there was trouble.

The impact of the tragedy upon The Community was (and is) devastating.  People still talk, and remember, and think of those who are gone, and those who are left alone.

The kids have gone.  They left Thursday morning ten days ago.  The last twenty four hours, however, were not without drama.  On Wednesday evening we threw a big feast in the Parish Hall.  The wind had been rising all afternoon. By about six PM — in the middle of the feast — the wind managed to blow down a pole — or blow up a wire — or blow another unfortunate osprey into a wire.  The power managed to stay off until late the next morning. The last night for the kids, then, was all by candle light. They loved it.

On Friday, a week ago, just after the kids had gone, another old canoeing friend arrived in Moosonee with his bride. They were to come over to The Island Friday evening. By that time, however, the wind had managed to close down all the traffic between here and Moosonee. Dick and Deidre had to spend Friday night in Moosonee. They came over the next day; and we did the sights.

This week Sharon Murdoch came to town for a few days. She talked Cree with Daisy Turner and talked MACS with me. She has an ancient MAC, can update it no further than System 7,  and is about to plunge into OS X. Hopefully she’ll now have a better sense of what she is getting into than I had when I got my machine.

This week, also, I have, finally, begun to do something with the .MAC (Apple) website.  Some people have had trouble accessing it. The address is supposed to be:

http://homepage.mac.com/jedmonds/

However, for some reason, the following sometimes works better:

http://homepage.mac.com/jedmonds/Menu10.html

I don’t know why this can be. But try it, if you have trouble.  And, if you still have trouble, tell me, and I’ll keep fussing with it.

I am posting old and new photos to that (.MAC) site.  There are beginning to be some shots of and around Moose Factory Island. Also, there are ancient Wabun shots.  The Wabun shots go back to the 60’s and 70’s. Ted Nye brought back my old file of slides and added some of his own; and Dick Neunherz brought in some especially precious relics. I’m not posting everything — just stuff that some people may be interested in — and which I like.  Just run through the photo album pages, and the pix should pop up.  I am being careful not to post extremely large files. That makes downloading the page easier, but at the cost of the picture’s quality.

There ARE a few shots that are **also** in the Moose Factory Journal File. This file is a straightforward file-sharing file; you have to download everything.  The shots there are copies of shots in the other (photo album) pages; but they are MUCH larger files; and they have significantly more definition.  All of which is to say, if you see a shot that you like in the photo album pages, tell me; I’ll redo it in a more robust version; it will take a while to download; but the quality will be much better.  There’s no way some of those big files could ever squeeze through some email servers — or show up on a web page, if you’re using a dial-up connection.

No picture can be posted to the Prexar site; the site is too small.

Another change in The Journal is that now everything is written in and posted from Mariner WRITE.  I use Mellel for fussy things — because of its flexibility. But Mariner WRITE does some wonderful things…. You can open a WORD document with Mariner, work with that document in Mariner, and then save that document in WORD rtf — so that any WORD freak can open and read it — and **without** stress.  In other words, you don’t need WORD to do WORD.  Mariner WRITE costs [us]$70 (download version). If you bundle it with their spreadsheet, you pay [us]$129.  WORD (for the MAC) costs [ca]$570.  MS OFFICE (the bundle) costs [ca]$709; it includes ENTOURAGE (for email and inferior to Apple’s MAIL), WORD, EXCEL, and POWER POINT.  Also, Mariner’s WRITE, being smaller, is more nimble than WORD, uses less memory — in all, is not BLOATED (or over-priced.)  Check it out:  www.marinersoftware.com

This afternoon I played tour guide for some folks from Guelph (Ontario). I get the idea that the tourists don’t really get much guidance when they are here.  When I did the ‘Polar Princess’ boat ride out into The Bay with Ted and Judy, there was not a single native person to explain what things were or what things meant.  The only resource around that I know of is the Cree Cultural Center here on The Island. For some reason, the tour people are discernibly less than enthusiastic in recommending it, although it’s the best show in town. Maybe it’s because The Center charges $5 per head admission.  When St. Thomas’ Vestry allowed as folks really should contribute something when they visited The Church, the tour company complained loudly. It didn’t seem to matter that the parishioners have to clean up each week after the mess (and replace the stolen books printed in Cree).

There has been much talk over the past few weeks about a road. DeBeers is going to get their stuff into their mine — somehow.  The possible routes to Attawapiskat seem to be many. I have heard: that their equipment could be trained to Churchill, then barged to Attawapiskat; that their stuff could be trucked to the East Side (Quebec Side) of James Bay (probably Eastmain or Waskaganish) and then barged to Attawapiskat; that a road could be built from Hearst, Ontario, bypassing Moosonee, to Attawapiskat. This option gives Attawapiskat the shortest run to main highways. Then, of course, there is the possible Moosonee route. That route could go right next to the train route — straight into Moosonee — and then up the West Coast.  But, also, there is gossip about a possible route that could come into Moosonee from the East.  The one thing everybody seems to be agreed upon is that the Ontario Northland route from Cochrane to Moosonee is insufficient.

Everybody seems ambivalent about a road. A road would bring in development and jobs. It also, however, would accelerate the transition here to a different culture. And giving up the past is very painful, indeed.

Make that 23: 15 kids, 8 adults.  Evangelicals. From the south. Doing good. Actually, a great group of great kids. They **painted** the Old Church. We managed have nearly the whole week with sun. Just a monumental task: ladders, scaffolding, the works, and some very decoratively painted kids. The locals are taking note; and they ARE appreciative. Some sigh and wish that this kind of energy had come from the community. It would be lovely to see all this exuberance jump-start the same kind of enthusiasm here. But I think that will take time. But, if you want to get the ball rolling, get an Evangelical.

The young gentlemen are all sleeping in the Church Undercroft – a big room with its own half bath.  Several of the young ladies are holed up in the other end of the building, also in the basement – with an EMPTY room in between themselves and the young gentlemen. The rest of the young ladies (and most of them, in fact) are on the top floor — where I sleep. I think the concept was/is that they are safer up here with me than anywhere else. They consider me their momentarily surrogate father.  And, with that context in mind, they have commandeered the bathroom — which I never get near. Or, when I do, there’s no hot water.   I will miss them when they leave (tomorrow.)

Some worm got loose in the PC world this week. I got over a hundred bogus emails yesterday. At first I thought my machine had gone berserk. Then I found out that MACS are immune – to this particular blight, anyway. We MAC owners now are all sitting on our perches high above the mob, and we just cluck. I set my junk email filter to toss everything that did not already have an address salted away in my address book. I know I’ll miss some VERY IMPORTANT email that way; but folks will have to be patient. We live in trying times; it’s a Windows world.

We lost power yesterday at about 4:15 PM. Something went wrong in Ohio. That managed to bring down Hydro One in Ontario. And THAT did something newsworthy to New York. Naturally the New Yorkers blamed the Canadians.  THAT was news here.  We were privileged, though, to be part of the North Eastern Black Out while we stumbled around in the dark. All the local CBC stations were down. I kept up with things with Radio Canada International on the shortwave.

We got the lights back on at 1:30 AM this morning. Only 15% of The Province is back on line. Cable (and therefore Internet Access) here at Moose Factory is still out. No news, yet, from The States.

This is my first entry since June’s posting. There is some catching up to do…. Heading south for vacation, I lingered a moment on Lake Temagami and caught up (after 30 years) with some old friends. Then, off to Vermont where I caught up with (some of) the cousins. Then, off to Maine. While in Maine I got the USA taxes done, got a physical exam, and did lots of things around the house: mostly carpentry, painting, and brush. On my way back North I brought the canoe. It turns out that Old Town Trippers are not made the way they used to be made (back when I got mine.) The ‘skin’ now is much thinner than it was in the old days. That made my old canoe actually worth something. I brought it north, traded it in to WABUN, and used the money for a handmade wood & canvass canoe. Exactly what I’ll use a new (and lighter) canoe for remains to be seen.

I have the Immigration, Customs, and Ontario Health Card routines down to something of a system. These things have to be updated each year. The Immigration papers have to be renewed as I ENTER Canada; that dictates the timing of my vacation travels. I was armed with all kinds identification – the crucial pieces being from The Diocese.

When I got here, Iris had already left in order to be with her mother. Her Mom had been ill for a long time and died shortly after Iris got to her. My first weekend brought a wedding and TWO Memorial Services.

One of the Memorial Services was along the same lines as the one on this first Sunday of August last year. Last year we had about 350 people at The Service. This year we had at least 600.

In addition to that there were another 300 Inuit on The Island. They had come to dedicate a stone just erected in the Cemetery. Written on the stone are all the names of people from those far northern communities who died and who were buried here at Moose Factory in the Cemetery.  The planning for this event goes back at least ten years. The planning included raising the money for travel and for the stone; also, it took years to ferret out all the names, and some even may still be missing.

The Inuit held their Memorial Service Saturday Morning at 10, first in The Church and then out in The Cemetery by the stone. It was a powerful and emotional event. People simply wailed. There were still folks kneeling before the stone at 2 PM when the Wedding was about to begin. Hopefully there is now the beginning of some kind of healing and closure for an exceedingly painful chapter in these people’s history.

Visitors… Ted and Judy Nye were here for the tail end of The Gathering – which, again, was much like it was last year. We took in the Feast – every kind of game including delicacies from the Far North. We had a wonderful visit, checked out the sights, and took a cruise on into The Bay aboard the ‘Polar Princess’.  I opted for the ‘Princess’ which is longish, heavy, and covered — rather than chartering one of our local ‘taxis’ — a 35 foot freighter with a 40-60 horse power engine.  A taxi captained by someone like Joe Tip is much the preferred concept.  But Joe was out of town, and the weather had that hot clammy feel.  I was afraid a nasty storm might come up quickly.  The one thing I did NOT want was for us to get stuck 10-15 miles up The River — waiting out a storm.  Storms can be brisk around here; and, unless you know The River really well, there can be trouble.  As it turned out, the weather throughout was hot and calm — typical of early August.

Today a church group of kids arrives (if they don’t get hung up on the power shortage) to help out for a week. I’m scrambling to make The Rectory respectable. This next week will be a stretch. I’ll have 20 people in the house.