Moose Factory Journal

We’re getting snow flurries today. Not many. But it IS snow.

Another funeral — this last Sunday: Charlie Gagnon. He died in Timmins and was brought up on Friday’s train. The family had all gathered for his final days and came up with him. Charlie was a veteran, and his remaining buddies were in attendance at the funeral. Chief Hardisty spoke. And, as always, there were memories brought forth, kind words spoken, and acknowledgements made.

Monday night — all of it — was taken up with getting Clayton’s new computer computing. He got an eMAC — just like this one, except newer, bigger and faster. He and Lynn have gotten into the Eastmain Journal, and that got endless pots of coffee and conversation going.

I got up late this morning. I’ve been too strung out over the past several days. Finally, last night I crashed. Today Dina is cleaning the place up. She had been down in Kingston for a few weeks — with her husband, Billy, who was hospitalized down there. Billy now is back home, better. And Dina — and the rest of us — are relieved.

Today is Harvest Thanksgiving in Canada. Everything is closed. The Hunt goes on. It’s partly cloudy today — with a chance of rain. Moosonee Airport shows 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thanksgiving here is not quite what it is in the States. At least, in this neck of the woods there isn’t quite the traveling there is in the States. For one thing, we’re in the middle of the Fall Hunt, and most of the families are hunkered down in their camps — waiting for the groceries to come walking by. But, also, here, anyway, folks aren’t entirely smitten with legends of white folk surviving tough winters in New England. It’s not that they’re opposed to the concept. They just can’t see what there is to give thanks for.

I have posted the Eastmain materials — such as they are, so far. For those who visit the Apple/Mac site, they’re all in the download section — titled: ‘Moose Factory Journal’. In that section are all the ‘Moose Factory Journal’ postings; and now there is a new file: EASTMAIN.1973.  The ‘Eastmain’ file contains another file of pictures — all jpg and all reduced to fairly small files. Also there is the ‘Eastmain Journal’. The journal needs a lot of work before it is presentable. I have sent it to anyone I know who knows The River. I also have shared it with some of the folk here — both for their criticism and also because it might just add fuel to the fire of getting an archive started. Ann called me this morning to tell me that one of her sons had gotten into it. No doubt, soon, he’ll have ‘that look’ in his eyes.

Monday morning, this week, I discovered notes to my old journal on The Eastmain. I had written up some stuff while the material was still in my head. I think I did most of the writing in early 1974. The trip was in the summer of 1973. The file was festering away for years. I’ll never know how I didn’t lose it. Absentmindedly I threw it on the truck this last July when I was in Maine.  And then, until this week, completely forgot about it.

A lot of the material was basically incoherent and very poorly written — the ventilating steam of a 30-year-old. It was, after all, a journal — made up from notes taken in the field. But a lot of information was there. And the point of view was there. I scrubbed the file a bit, cut about half the verbosity, and typed it up anew on Monday and Tuesday — finishing this morning around 3:30 AM. I’m now sharing it with the guys from the section I am still in communication with, asking them to find holes and mistakes. Haven’t heard back yet. There’s still lots more material on the trip for me to look at, if I ever catch up to it, or if it ever catches up to me. But with these notes I was able to pinpoint several more slides. I had completely forgotten that I never DID get into Prosper Gorge — walked right around it. What I had thought might be Prosper Gorge was, in fact, Bauerman Falls. The notes had brought enough memory back to me to figure things like that out.

Everybody these days belongs to a support group. It’s the thing to do. My primary support group, these days, is the Macintosh Users Corner that lurks somewhere in the server at Ecunet — wherever that is. It fills all my intellectual and spiritual needs. We have no controversies. All of us agree on one thing: Windoze stink. We may not always agree on what to do about that. Some might look for strategies of conversion. Others might suggest that suffering humanity is just destined to suffer. All of us have personal stories of inconvenience visited upon us by the Windoz masses and their in ability or flat out refusal to accept the truth: MACS are better.

ANYWAY,… one of the really alert members of this group posted a note around noon this morning informing us that Apple had let the cat out of the bag. (Cat = Panther = OS 13)

I jumped to Apple’s website. Sure enough. The cat was there. But I can’t get things from Apple in the USA. I have to order from Apple/Canada.  I went to Apple/Canada. No Panther. I did a search. No Panther. I grumbled. I fussed. I tried again. There was the Panther. I ordered the Panther.

All of which suggests that, if I wasn’t the first, I had to have been amongst the very first. I’m hoping I’ll get an award, if I am the first. And, once again, Moose Factory leads the pack.

An Elder died in Timmins a day or so ago. The coffin will be arriving on Friday’s train. No one knows what will happen then. All of the family will be arriving on that same train. We’ll just have to go from there.

Last Friday the big exodus began. The fall hunt is on. Schools are on break. And everybody is ‘away’. Church, yesterday, was all but empty.  Many folks went ‘up’ river to their camps. But a lot went out into The Bay — to go to camps along the shore — both east and west. We worried about them. The weather has been wet and sullen for the past several days.

I’ve had a flurry of correspondence regarding The Eastmain River.  Last month I had a visit from Adrian Tanner, a retired ethnologist from Newfoundland, who has been doing genealogical studies here at Moose Factory. He also is working with people on the East Side on another project that seeks to document and examine the old native routes.  There are many routes that have now been lost — to flooding.  More dams are being built, as the James Bay Hydro project enters another (new) phase. Adrian is seeking to collect information about those routes lost.  He and others will try to do some archeological work on the imperiled routes before they are gone.

The archeologists want to dig at one or a number of old traditional camping grounds.  Often these are right on the portages. The specific location of the portage, then, is critically important.  Hopefully the best site(s) will be located and researched before the waters rise.

The information brought in by canoeists can be helpful for a number of reasons.  The information can substantiate — from a different perspective — information gathered from natives.  AND, the canoeist has ‘road-tested’ the route.  When there is more than one trail around an obstacle (and there often are) the canoeist (whether white or native) appreciates the distinctions.  Native travelers had high water portages as well as low water portages. And those different portages were not always on the same side of the river — or on the same island *in* the *middle* of the river.  The native never walked a yard more than necessary; and he never exposed himself to danger.  The elegance of that balance in the native routes is remarkable.  The canoeist appreciates that balance and understands its technology, experientially. He may not understand HOW the native determined the route. But he sees the result.

HOW the native achieved the route may well be a function of the native culture. I’m guessing, but this is what always fascinated me the last ten years or so that I tripped — from the mid sixties when I tripped with the likes of Joe Baptiste right through the Bay trips, and especially on The Eastmain, where the technology of getting down that River safely and efficiently is so intricate and precise.  The native simply understands the River differently. The canoeist can locate the native’s footsteps, perhaps — and will, if he survives.  But the means by which the native achieved his route will elude the canoeist unless he is willing and able to think outside his own cultural reference.  You never try to ‘master’ The River. You try to listen to it and let it talk to you.  For me, that’s where it starts.

When I ran The Eastmain in 1973 I shot about 130 slides of The River.  Most were multiple shots of the same subject: Rupert Bay, Prosper Gorge, Great Bend around the campsite at the foot, Conglomerate Gorge, Clouston Gorge, Basil Gorge.  Conglomerate Gorge on down, now, is dry. I had to have been one of the last people shooting pictures of these subjects while they were still alive.  For the last two weeks I have been trying to sequence the slides in coherent order.  Only the order of the shots around Great Bend came to me easily.  Somehow THAT was hard wired into my memory.  The rest I had to sequence by looking at each slide and observing similarities to (hopefully) the next or previous slide.  In doing that I have been reintroduced to The River — as it was, thirty years ago.  I’ve written to Eastmain Village — looking for someone who still remembers The River.  I think some of the Elders may really appreciate some of those pictures.  We had many cloudless days that summer; and several of the shots came out really well.  The River was good to us, and it danced.

Adrian talked of a move afoot to establish an archive.  The archive could house accurate route information, artifacts from the archeological sites, and pictures of rivers that are now flooded or dried out.  It all would help the people of this region remember and understand the roots of their past.  I’ve been writing old canoeing buddies — to see what they can come up with.  The route information, gathered by canoeists, evidently still resides in different files.  But there is no central clearing house.  The window of opportunity will close as all of us old-timers die off. Heb Evans already has left us.