Some long hours later, he awoke in a field hospital, tended by a surgeon and a nurse. It was then that the nurse told him she thought the location of the battle was just outside the French village of Peace.
Three days after our long chat, the entire Canadian delegation breakfasted together. While preparing to board the bus for a scheduled visit to Beaumont Hamel, the memorial to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Hoppy felt a bit under the weather. After examining him, our doctor suggested he remain behind and not participate in the scheduled events for that day. As a conducting officer, I was detailed to stay with Hoppy in case he needed help— or, if he later felt better, to drive him to rejoin the tour.
Within a couple of hours, Hoppy felt better—and guilty about missing the day’s events. At his insistence, we climbed into our rented car, and with a Michelin map of Northern France set off like a pair of Canadian tourists in an attempt to catch up to the rest of the group.
No sooner had we agreed upon the best route to the memorial at Beaumont Hamel than we arrived at a construction detour in the highway. Not knowing which alternate route our tour bus had taken earlier, we made our choice and headed east. The numbers of sheep, cows and livestock we encountered along the way attested to the fact that this was definitely not a major highway.
As we travelled through the picturesque countryside of France, we were silent as we enjoyed the sights. Besides, driving this twisting, winding highway was taking all of my attention.
As we topped a small hill, Hoppy yelled, “Stop! This is it!”
“This is what?” I asked, as I pulled over and stopped.
“This is where I lost my leg,” said Hoppy. Taking his crutches from the back seat, he exited the car, crossed the ditch and ducked under a snake fence surrounding an overgrown hay field. When I caught up to him, we proceeded to a point some 100 metres from the road, down a hill and into a small valley.
Then he stopped.
“This is it,” he said. “This is the spot where I caught it.”
There was nothing else he needed to say. He became silent.
I felt like an intruder in this private pilgrimage to a hallowed spot, so I retreated the short distance to the car. Before too very long, his solitary vigil completed, Hoppy returned, and still in silence, we both took our last look over this small, tranquil valley with so much history.
It was then that Hoppy gasped, “Look! Look up there on the horizon, just over that hill!”
Sure enough, there was the odd-shaped steeple of the village church, the last visual memory of Hoppy Hopkins before he lost consciousness that day, some sixty years ago—the very steeple he had described to me on the day of his arrival in France.
Back in the car, we proceeded down the hill, across the valley and up the rise leading into the village. As we reached the top of the hill opposite us, Hoppy and I both gasped at once. There on the side of the road was a sign announcing our entry into the village of “PYS.”
The nurse in the field hospital had indeed been correct. And Hoppy’s years had not betrayed him. His aging memory had served him well.
Call it coincidence, or call it fate. It had taken sixty years, but Hoppy Hopkins had finally completed his pilgrimage and returned to his village called Peace.
Vern Murphy
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
The Other Language
My Aunt Imogen Spark didn’t speak a word of French. Her neighbour, Mrs. Letourneau, didn’t speak a word of English. They had lived next door to each other for thirty-six years, and neither had learned to say so much as hello in the other’s language. They were two of the stubbornest old geese I had ever seen.
If you had your eyes half open, you wouldn’t miss much in the Ontario-Québec border town I grew up in. Especially if you were a little spy-bug snooper like me: at fourteen, that’s what my mother called me. I guess I was curious, and it was easy to keep track of the goings-on in our little town.
The trees never caught on very well; they were rather stunted, with skinny trunks and big spaces between the branches. People in our neighbourhood didn’t go in for hedges or fences much, either. The nearest thing to a fence was the picket one between Aunt Imogen and Mrs. Letourneau’s front yards. It didn’t come up past their knees. One of the few things the town did manage to agree on was well-lit streets. So I had an unobstructed view of our neighbours’ yards and houses. For example, because we lived right across the road, I knew exactly how many times my cousin, Mavis Spark, sneaked in through the side porch window late at night, while young Mike Letourneau sneaked in his.
In summer, I’d sit on our front steps and simply watch what was going on. Across the street, Mrs. Letourneau would be leaning over the fence into Aunt Imogen’s yard, examining a quilt pattern. She would be talking fast in French, and I could catch phrases like, “C’est très beau, très beau!” She would point out unique features of the design using grand gestures. Aunt Imogen would have no idea what she was saying, but would look satisfied.
Other times, they had long “conversations” about gardening across the fence. Aunt Imogen would point from a special concoction of fertiliser in a bucket to the base of her delphiniums and back to the bucket. Often she made a whipping motion with her hands. Mrs. Letourneau would smile and nod, glancing over at her own perennials. Sometimes, while hanging out wash, one or the other would point to the sky as if something unusual might fall from it into their yards. In winter, they used a type of sign language to demonstrate the more subtle points of snow removal. Raising imaginary shovels, they looked like they were in a game of charades. But neither one ever crossed over the fence to the other’s yard. And this had been going on as long as I could remember.
Almost anyone else in town was more bilingually adept, if you could call it that. Garage operators mastered the basic linguistic tools for fill-ups and oil-changes in the other language. French waitresses could carry on polite, even jocular, exchanges in English and vice versa.
It was hockey where you noticed it most. The town’s English team had an alarming array of francophone curses, which splintered the icy air when they heaved themselves at their opponents. The French team had their artillery of curses, too, the meanings of which were all too obvious to the Anglo players. Add to this the fans from both sides heckling each other and the noise was deafening. As a result, my mother didn’t let me go to games very often. But I went a couple of times, and saw Mavis Spark sitting all alone on the French side. Every time Mike Letourneau scored a goal, she’d jump up and cheer, shaking her long red scarf.
One spring day, around dusk, we heard sirens. Ambulances and police cars were seen driving down our street. Everyone came out of their houses: Qu’est-ce qui se passe? What happened? We stood on our porch and watched the red lights throb in the distance.
Mrs. Letourneau and Aunt Imogen must have received the phone calls at the same time. Mike and Mavis’s car had hit black ice. It was over in seconds, the police said later. Aunt Imogen came out of her house first, groped her way down the front steps, fell on her knees in her frozen yard and wept. Mrs. Letourneau came out of her house then. Long strands of gray hair had pulled away from her face and she was wiping her hands on her apron. Mrs. Letourneau hoisted up the layers of skirts she always wore, and lifting first one leg then the other, carried on right over the picket fence. Then she did a surprising thing. She turned around, looked back at the fence and kicked it hard. It buckled, sending up a spray of big white slivers. Then she knelt down on the ground with Aunt Imogen. The two women held each other, sending up a wail of agony only they understood.
The fence was never replaced. They planted delphiniums where it stood, blue spires that spilled over into each other’s yards, like grace.
Jeanette Lynes
Antigonish, Nova Scotia
10
THIS GREAT
LAND
I have vaulted over an immense land which is both forbidding and beautiful and it took my breath away. There are no people more fortuna
te than we Canadians. We have received far more than our share.
Marc Garneau, astronaut
Ogemah
We are all creatures of the wilderness, children of the frontier, even though the frontier has been pushed back into the mists of the North, even though the wilderness has given way to concrete. Wild and mysterious, savage and forbidding, this is the cyclorama against which the drama of our past has been staged; for better and for worse it has helped to fashion us into our distinctive Canadian mould.
Pierre Burton
It had been the best year of my life. I had signed on with the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which still reigned in Canada’s north after three hundred years. An adventurous soul, I had fled the stifling poverty of Cabbagetown, in Toronto’s inner city. Before this, I had taken a year off after graduating high school and enjoyed an exciting career working swing shift in a hockey puck factory. It was grimy and sweaty work and I was sure there had to be a better life out there, somewhere. Having spent my summers as a ranger in Algonquin Park, I had a secret ambition to be a bush guy and impress female tourists with my uniform and outdoorsy ways.
One day I saw an ad in The Toronto Star. “Join the HBC, See the North!” the ad cried out. It was illustrated with a handsome young native family, waving to a departing floatplane. I sent in my resume, carefully leaving off my puck-making credentials. The thought of escaping to the north kept me going through a long, hot Toronto summer, during which I saw more hockey pucks than Gordie Howe. At some point, I suddenly became aware of the monotonous, soul-draining torment that factory workers face every day. It clearly explained the despair and premature aging I had seen in my parents. And I knew my own soul was withering.
In early November of 1975, a letter from HBC headquarters in Winnipeg arrived. It contained a job offer, a hotel reservation and a plane ticket to Winnipeg. A short time later, I woke up in the Hotel Fort Garry, right across the street from Hudson Bay House in downtown Winnipeg. I had thirty bucks in my pocket and a whole new life ahead of me.
At the HBC office, I was greeted by a guy named Len from the Garden Hill Reserve in northern Manitoba. He showed me the ropes and gave me a ticket to board the Polar Bear Express, a train from Manitoba, up to James Bay. I would be trained to purchase fur from the native trappers and to run the little general stores the bay still had scattered about the north. My destination was a little reserve called Ogoki, on the Albany River.
The people of Ogoki were Cree, like Len. He told me that both the Cree and Ojibway words for my position was “ogemasis,” which loosely translated meant “little manager.” If I played my cards right, I would make manager within a couple of years. In days gone by, the HBC called their manager the “Factor,” but the natives called him “Ogemah.” Well, from that moment on, I was determined to make Ogemah, and nothing was going to get in my way.
I spent the following year in the single-minded pursuit of “Ogemahness.” I moved from northern Ontario to northern Saskatchewan and then on to Baker Lake in the Northwest Territories. Sadly, I soon discovered that because of my extreme youth, I would not soon be accepted as an Ogemah. An Ogemah had to be older and much wiser than I could possibly be, even with my newly forming downy whiskers.
It was in Baker Lake that I got the call—I had been promoted to manager, and the remote Lac Seul Post would be mine. Elated beyond measure, I flew out on the next DC-3, and made my way to Sioux Lookout, Ontario, and then by boat to my new post on an isolated island. The HBC outpost there had been in continuous operation for over a hundred years, and there I was—the newest Ogemah! Five miles across the lake was the Kejick Bay Reserve: log houses, no water, no sewage, no power, no phones and some of the best trappers in Canada.
The post had a World War I–vintage, 32-volt generator and a single sideband radio. At 5:30 P.M. each day, I powered up the generator and allowed the vacuum tubes to warm to the orange glow that meant it was ready. If the conditions were right, I could contact the HBC posts at Webequie, Grassy Narrows, Landsdowne House and Sioux Lookout. On a good day, I could reach the radio operator in Thunder Bay and actually make a radiophone call.
Although the people were kind and understanding as I learned their ways and tried hard to fit in, no one actually called me Ogemah. I referred to myself as Ogemah a few times, just to see, and was greeted with puzzled looks and occasional laughter.
Isolation led me to read a lot, and I enjoyed the abundance of Hudson Bay Company legends and memoirs I found at the post. I learned that in days gone by the Hudson Bay Factor often enjoyed a lofty position in native communities, and was frequently called upon to be a counsellor, doctor, lawyer, clergy, police officer or undertaker. In a pinch, one would seek out the Factor for help or advice. A respected Ogemah enjoyed the prestige accorded a chief, elder or medicine man.
Unfortunately, those days were almost over. It seemed that Ogemah prestige was fading along with the fur trade itself. I felt I was living through the end of a significant era, to which there would be no return. I began to despair when I realized what I had missed. Still, I enjoyed getting to know the trappers, and slowly grew fond of the people of Lac Seul and they of me.
The end had come to a long, hot summer. I had learned much from the Cree of Kejick Bay, including how to read the weather and when to stay off the lake, which could be whipped into a maelstrom with the howling north winds. Not even the most experienced trappers would brave the waters of Lac Seul when she was angry.
It was on such a day that I was surprised to see a small boat carrying four people picking its way towards the post through the unforgiving rough waters. Something had to be very wrong for anyone to attempt crossing in this weather.
It was Philip and his wife, with their young son Andy and his wife, Sarah. Sarah had just arrived home the previous week with their newborn child, named Mequin, which meant “feather” in the local dialect. The baby, born several weeks early, was very tiny.
I got soaked dragging the boat up onto the beach as the breakers crashed over its transom. The four grim-looking soaked figures scrambled ashore, and Andy turned to me, without emotion, and said, “Our baby is sick. Can you help?” Sarah pressed a bundle into my arms, and then all four stepped back, looking into my eyes.
In my arms lay a tiny baby, soaked to the skin, with blue lips, struggling to breathe.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. My heart raced as I realized there was no medical help available. And with the lake raging, there was no hope of a plane or boat getting in.
Philip looked at his wife and then at me, “But you are the bay manager, there must be something you can do . . .” Philip’s voice trailed off as he looked at the panic in my face. The baby was by now quite blue, and although I was trained in CPR, there was no getting any air into her lungs. She obviously had pneumonia, and all of her tiny air passages were blocked.
“I’ll try the radio,” I shouted as I passed Mequin back to Philip. With pounding heart I sprinted to the post, knowing there was slim chance of making contact. The weather was bad, my batteries almost exhausted, and it took at least twenty minutes for the tubes in the old radio to warm up.
The tubes were still quite dim when I impatiently began sending my distress call, but there was only silence. After repeating the distress call several more times, in desperation I flipped the switch and tried Thunder Bay and then watched helplessly as the radio died. With no radio, there would be no calling for help.
I raced back to the beach to find that Andy had built a small fire and the family was seated in a circle, their faces calm, their voices soft. “No radio,” I almost choked on the words. Philip quietly motioned to me to join their circle, then each of us took a turn holding Mequin, rocking her, her family saying a silent prayer.
As I held Mequin close to my face, I felt a soft warm breath on my cheek, almost a sigh, and then she was gone. It was the most beautiful and peaceful journey I had ever witnessed. All the parts of my soul that hurt me softened and were released. All the p
ain and despair I had pushed down deep inside of me long ago left me. All that had happened in my life before this moment became pure and clear.
In that gentle moment, my life was saved. Sitting in that circle of love under the cloudy sky, warmed by the fire, this small family and a tiny girl had created a circle of peace—and there was room for me in it. The family sang several traditional songs, which I did not understand but could feel. When we stood and walked back to the boat, we found the lake had calmed. Philip’s family quietly boarded, and I leaned into the bow to help push them off. As Philip leaped into the boat, he turned and called out, “Ogemah, thank-you.”
The breath caught in my throat at his words as the boat moved away and they took Mequin home. I walked around the shoreline of the island until dark, seeing it all for the first time, my heart bursting.
I stopped and sat by the dying embers of Mequin’s fire and watched the sun dip behind Kejick Bay. I put my hand to my face, where Mequin had touched me with her last breath. I closed my eyes, and it was there I waited for the sun to return. I wanted to be sure, that without Mequin, there would be another day. But I knew that there would be; I was Ogemah.
John J. Seagrave
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
The McRae Lake Shrine
My people’s memory reaches into the beginning of all things.
Chief Dan George
On the edge of beautiful Georgian Bay lies an exquisitely private and majestically wild lake. As old as the rocks that surround it, the lake has witnessed and reflected the birth of our nation and the human struggle that accompanied it. Particularly special because it is pinched off at both ends and accessible only by canoe or a good hike, McRae Lake has held its secrets fiercely, beneath its cool, deep waters. Back in the 1960s, it was my good fortune to enter McRae Lake by canoe from the Georgian Bay side. As I looked up, I noticed a dash of unusual colour on the southern cliff face as I paddled by.