Shelagh Rogers

I just spent twenty-four hours in Fort Albany, Ontario. Where? Get a map of Canada and go about halfway up the west side of James Bay. And there’s Fort Albany, a First Nations community of about 500 people.

The idea of my going there began with an email from the writer Joseph Boyden: could I come to the community’s Great Moon Gathering? It’s a conference of educators, featuring workshops on the Cree language, restorative justice, food security, and many other subjects related to contemporary aboriginal life. And oh, there’d be a concert with local musicians and the Tragically Hip. Could I cover the Gathering? Could I do a documentary about it for the CBC? (No, the national broadcaster would sit this one out. But Joseph Boyden asking me to do anything is hard to resist. I still wanted to go.) “We want to show this community some guerrilla love,” he wrote.

Three days later, having travelled from the Gulf Island where I live in BC, I found myself in the Thunder Air lounge in Timmins, Ontario. A young Cree man with the build of Ichabod Crane and I sat alone, the only passengers waiting for a Caribou cargo plane to carry us on. We introduced ourselves over coffee. His last name is my mother’s maiden name; we joked that we may be related. He told me he was on his way to Moosonee to try for a job with De Beers at the diamond mine.

We were up and away in no time. The trees below us shrank the higher and farther we flew. Thunder Air Flight 500 is a frozen milk run: first Moosonee, then Fort Albany, Kashechewan, and finally Attawapiskat, where a housing crisis made national news last fall. The first leg was a quiet, uneventful hour, with little conversation over the drumming of the engine. I talked to the pilot, Dave, for a moment after we landed. When I turned to my fellow traveller, I saw that he was being handcuffed by the RCMP. It happens, Dave said. Welcome to the north. (more…)

Tags: Brent Edwards, cree, first nations, Fort Albany, Great Moon Gathering, Janet Wilson, Joseph Boyden, Phoebe Sutherland, Stan Louttit, The Tragically Hip, Treaty
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