Daniel discusses the chapel’s history with a tall, athletic-looking, redheaded man. The conversation turns to research being done on a shipwrecked merchant ship that hit the rocky coast during a big storm in the nineteenth century. It belonged to the French firm Révillon, bent on competing with the Hudson’s Bay Company in the fur trade. After the shipwreck, the sailors transferred the bundles of merchandise onto lifeboats and headed for an island. Soon after, the Cree came into contact with them. Most of the French sailors decided to return south in their flimsy boats. Only Martin Chevalier stayed behind on the island to watch over the merchandise.
He offset his solitude by taking a Cree wife, who gave him two children, a boy and a girl. His daughter died at a young age in a horrific accident. She succumbed to burns when a pail of scalding water fell onto her. It’s said that Chevalier nearly lost his mind and, to survive, left his family behind to push further west where he opened his trading posts for the Révillon company.
However, the son left behind with his mother lived such a long life that he produced numerous descendants. That is why there are still Cree today who bear the name Chevalier, some of whom work in retail.
We make for the Chez Pash snack bar for hamburgers and fries. Just this once. I speak to the waiter in Cree. He goes back behind the counter, tells the cook I don’t have an accent, and I hear them laughing. Afterward, they couldn’t have been nicer. As we take our seats, two Québécois walk into the restaurant. They head in our direction and ask to share our table. We nod.
They talk about contracts they’re working on, slowly, at the Cree pace. I expect to hear them pass judgment on the nonchalant work attitude, but they both appreciate the extra time it gives them to go fishing. We hit it off right then and there.
A little girl comes up and points at my piece of cake. She sits on my lap, determined to eat my dessert. I tease her, “Pschii … Nin’ nehe n’midjim!” She grimaces and crosses her arms.
Her mother calls her over and the little girl leaves with a smile. Transfixed, the two Québécois stare at me. My métissage suddenly sinks in. “Kinda thought so!” says the younger one.
We can’t go any farther; the road ends at Chisasibi. If we drive fast, we could make it back to Nemaska. Not wild about that idea, we backtrack aimlessly instead. Late that afternoon, we see a sign for a campground at Mirrabelli Lake by the road to Eastmain. For some reason, the Eastmain village is of no interest to us.
Onsite, we come across the family man and his pancake-loving children. They wave at us from a distance. A blustering wind makes pitching our tent a challenge. As usual, we anchor it in place with stones. Late that evening, the wind dies down and we’re able to light a campfire beneath the stars. Warm and cosy, wrapped in blankets, Daniel and I meditate by the flames. Above us, the dark sky autographed by shooting stars fills us with wonder. It’s the season for Perseid meteor showers. Lying on my back gazing into infinity, I thank Creation for such majesty.
The night carries me off again into the country of the invisible, of dreams. From a valley through which a quiet river runs, I look on a mountain. A red-antlered caribou steps out from between the rocks and trees, its eyes on me. I make my way to the river and suddenly hear the muffled sound of an entire herd’s hooves on the opposite shore. The red-antlered male stands at the head of his harem. A stranger walks over to me and says, “Go see Humbert.…” The stranger is so tall I have to crane my neck back to see him. “I have two territorial poles to carve first.” The man walks away.
The next day at breakfast, I tell David about my dream. The lack of clarity in dreams frustrates me. Why not put things simply? My husband’s humorous retort, “That’s exactly why, you’d think it was too simple.” Suddenly, my heartbeat speeds up. That name, Humbert, so strange, must have a tie to Uncle George—that’s what he’d called me in a recent dream. At the Waskaganish Inn!
10
DAISY
JULY 1962
WE’RE WALKING down the trail to the village. It’s a struggle for Maman to push the baby carriage over the stones. We’re off to visit our family back at their summer camp. Since Koukoum Louisa’s death, no one has lived in our old cabin, now overgrown with weeds. The spot where the tents are pitched advances onto the river. At Pointe-aux-Vents, we use a stand of tall birch trees as our perch. From there, we spy on the Mistikouji, whose houses are scattered along the opposite bank. There’s a sawmill whose resiny scent wafts our way. A memory lingers—my father jumping from one log to the next armed with a pole. Maman confirms that he did work for a few weeks as a log driver before finding his current job. I tell Maman she didn’t like to see Papa working on the logs. She looks at me in astonishment. “You’re right, it had me worried. How do you know that? You were barely three.”
We enter the space opening onto wind and water. Our cousins greet us warmly. A surprise awaits our mother. Allaisy announces that Daisy, Uncle George’s eldest daughter, is sharing her tent. Right away, Maman wants to see this cousin for whom she has a soft spot. With an embarrassed laugh, Allaisy gestures to the point along the river. She says, “She’s fishing for critters.…”
My cousins motion for me to run with them to join Daisy. From the point, I see a young woman, her legs exposed to mid-thigh. With her skirt tied in a big knot in front, she carries a pail and is wading slowly through the water, staring into the depths. She stays motionless for a good while, then plunges her bare arm into the water to grab hold of something. A singular spectacle. Cree women are invariably modest in public and her daring astonishes me. My cousins make fun of my astonishment. Daisy is fishing for freshwater mussels. Another singularity. No Cree eats those disgusting, slobbering things! My friends shout, “Daisy, there’s someone here to see you!”
She turns to us and, from a distance, I see her broad smile opening over white teeth. She calls, “Tititech’! Nash weskit shash ti wapmin’din’!” Little Little One! I haven’t seen you for so long! She adds, “You’ve gotten so big!”
I have no memory of her.
Slowly she makes her way back to shore, feeling her way over the riverbed slippery with rocks. She hugs me to her. I feel a bit uncomfortable. I’m no longer used to gestures of affection, I’m too big now. When she sees my mother, she cries overjoyed, “Frances! Oh! Frances, my cousin, my beautiful cousin!”
Without a doubt, this cousin of Maman’s is unlike all the others. She says what she thinks, doesn’t hold back. I don’t often hear compliments being voiced by other Cree, they generally come from my father and his people. Then she begins to speak. Without pause, without taking time to think. I listen, dumbfounded. She tells my mother how much she appreciated the residential school where she lived for years. The nuns who ran it, so kind and cultured, who taught her so much! Such a shame that Maman didn’t have the same opportunity! But then she wouldn’t have had such beautiful children, which is easily worth as much as an education, a love story crowned with marvelous angels.… She makes my head spin.
But I’ve finally met the cousin Maman envies for her ability to speak, read, and write in English. Koukoum Louisa wouldn’t let my mother leave her side no matter how much she wanted to go to school. As a widow, my grandmother had to look after her young son Charley, and Maman helped her with the family’s work. When Koukoum remarried, it was too late for Maman to start school. Which has remained a constant source of frustration for Maman. Today she seems so happy to see Daisy that I banish those thoughts from my mind.
Behind my mother, good-looking Basile Gull eyes Daisy greedily. He’s accompanied his aging parents, here for the summer for a religious ceremony celebrated by a Pentecostal preacher. Daisy says she works for the nuns now, that’s why she doesn’t come back to see the family. I can tell Basile has other plans for her that would mean she wouldn’t return to Sault Ste. Marie. Marriages are often entered into when different clans camp together.
I’d already been the subject of dealings between Cree and Algonquin mothers lo
oking for a future spouse for their sons, themselves barely older than me. I blushed at the women’s efforts to size me up. Maman pointed out that since my father didn’t follow the same customs, he wouldn’t look favourably on such proposals. I could breathe again. And silently thank Papa for being my father!
Daisy did board that train going back south.
Two years later, Maman received a letter from Sault Ste. Marie written in English. Papa translated it.
Daisy announced that she’d stop in at the village during the time of the family reunion at the Pointe-aux-Vents camp. She asked if we could pick her up at the train station. Maman was delighted, thinking her cousin would spend some time with us at the house.
We are all at the station that morning: Jos, Allaisy, their children, Koukoum Ka Wapka Oot, the Roberts, cousin Emily and us. In those days, the train travelled by night. We’re expecting to see a tired Daisy. Finally, the locomotive pulls in at the station. Travellers disembark, most looking exhausted. We search for Daisy among them. After the last passenger steps off, we see three nuns standing there facing us, immobile on the running board. Someone says, “Great Spirit alive, what on earth has she gone and done?”
Among the women, behind the brown and white veil encircling her forehead, each of us recognizes Daisy. I look at Maman. Her eyes mist over with a great sadness.
11
HUMBERT
AUGUST 2004
DANIEL AGREES to double back to Waskaganish. Feeling sick, in part over the missed encounter with Great-Aunt Carolynn, I’ve also started to worry about the business around Uncle George’s story. What if I’ve got it wrong? I can feel my parents arguing inside my head. Papa’s voice calls it all superstitious nonsense, but my mother’s urges me on. Daniel’s is somewhere between the two. After all, it was his choice to follow me on this journey to my origins.
At Waskaganish, I ask my husband to stop at the craft store for the caribou moccasins I hope to find. An old man with wrinkled features sits in a chair outside the store. He’s wearing tinted glasses and his hands lean on a cane carved from a curved piece of wood. I open the door only to meet the gaze of my cousin Stanley, as surprised to see me as I him. Leaning on the counter, he’s busy talking to the salesclerk. He’s happy to introduce me to the young woman, “Shirley, my wife.…”
“What a coincidence!”
Those are Daniel’s words as he too steps inside and catches sight of Stanley. My cousin laughs. Daniel takes in Shirley’s beauty, admiring her auburn locks inherited from a Scottish grandmother. Her features—although freckled—and the colour of her skin are still typically Cree.
I ask Stanley if he’d have an hour to talk to me about his grandfather and if he could take me to the museum. He agrees. As we step outside, he touches the shoulder of the patriarch sitting by the door. Stanley wishes him a good day. We realize the man is blind. My cousin climbs into our car and we set out for the museum. The Elder turns his face in our direction.
I don’t know how to explain my problem to Stanley. After all, he barely knows me. I decide to start at the beginning, telling him how our trapping grounds were divided among my parents, my grandparents, and his grandfather. And about the fleeting contact I’d had with the latter for a few years only during my childhood. Then I tell him about the dreams I’ve been having since my first visit to Waskaganish. Fascinated, Stanley says nothing. Trying not to let it show, he’s still moved by the dream of a wolf attacking his grandfather. I’m reassured. He doesn’t think I sound ridiculous. His emotion draws me closer to him.
Uncomfortable, Daniel hides behind a big book. Stanley locks his dark, intense gaze on me. “You have the gift,” he says, “like a few other Nede ni yu min, now departed, although I’ve never seen a woman with it.…”
To lighten the atmosphere, I tell him I may have inherited it from our great-grandfather Mathew, the unfit father who couldn’t be kept behind bars, a traitor who kept his word.… Like every other Domind, Stanley knows our ancestor’s story. It makes him laugh.
Following the thread of my dreams, I ask if he might know of someone whose first or last name is Humbert. As my words take me back to the land of dreams and the images linked to the name, Stanley just about topples over. “That man in tinted glasses sitting in front of my wife’s store? His name is Johnny Humbert Mistanapeo!”
The shock has him speaking in Cree. I translate for Daniel, a lump in my throat. Silence descends. The dream has just penetrated reality. Mistanapeo means “The Great Man.” Then my own voice pulls me from the dream, “Last night, the messenger spirit told me to find Humbert.…”
Before we return to the shop, I want to ask my second cousin about a detail that slipped my mind during our previous visit. I’d like to see on a map the exact location of George’s old trapping and hunting grounds, and find out the name of the person who inherited them. From a large white metal filing cabinet, Stanley pulls out a map of north-western Quebec. He points at one spot with the tip of his pencil—Rupert River. He’s ahead of me. “Cousin,” he says, “if you go there, I want to come along!”
I don’t know what’s in store, but feel lucky knowing he’ll be with me should I travel to his grandfather’s territory. “We’ll go if needed, Stanley, now that I think about it my most vivid dreams took place when we were camping between the Rupert and Eastmain rivers. Strange.… That’s not that far from his grounds.”
He adds, “We’ve got no time to lose, that land’s soon to be flooded by Hydro-Québec’s dams. The Rupert River is to be rerouted. Afterward, it may be too hard to navigate.”
“When?” The question comes from Daniel.
“In November.”
Part of my resolve collapses.
12
CLARENCE AND ANGÉLIQUE
MAY 1963
A KNOCK SOUNDS at the door. Because of the rain, we’re stuck inside the walls of our home on this Saturday morning. Sprawled on our parents’ bed, the boys look at pictures in a comic book. I’m doodling in a notebook on the kitchen table. Maman’s making bannock. We all look up at the same time to see who’s come calling. A beaming Billy Ottereyes makes a wry face behind the window, already anticipating the ribbing he’ll give me about boys.
Of course, Billy too is one of Maman’s second cousins. He’s funny but teases me too much for my liking. His hatchet-carved features are surprising in their comical homeliness. Billy hasn’t come alone this time.
My eyes light up in wonder and surprise at the sight of the young man standing behind our cousin’s tall lanky frame. My mother’s squeals of excitement barely register, nor does the coarse laughter coming from Billy, who’s pleased at the surprise he’s sprung on us. Holding my breath, all I hear is a name—Clarence.… Beauty personified. Light. Clarence. In the ensuing confusion, I manage to take another breath and regain some self-control. The boys surround the two men, bombarding them with questions. Billy always brings us mints during his annual visits. An impertinent Philou asks Clarence, “Where are you from? Are you Billy’s son?”
“Yes and no,” Clarence replies with a half-smile. He takes great pleasure in confounding Philou.
“That can’t be!” my brother retorts. “Billy can’t be your dad and not be your dad!”
The adults laugh and I just think my brother’s a fool. I’m jealous of his ability to forge a bond with Clarence, who shoots me curious, interested glances. At twelve, I’ve begun to look like the teenager I’ll soon be. Men’s eyes disarming me of childhood innocence are proof of my nascent curves. I find it all quite angst-filled. Yet I’ve already blossomed in the silence of time’s passing.
Clarence explains that Billy married his mother, who was widowed when he was two. He lives in Waswanipi and is seventeen. I do some quick mental math. Clarence is only a year older than Jimmy. More importantly, he’s not a blood relative! As if reading my mind, Billy hits the bull’s-eye with his question, “So, Ishkwesh, how do you like my Cl
arence?”
My face crimson, I’m prey to a distressing jumble of emotions. My mother comes to my rescue and tells Billy that’s enough teasing. He stops when he sees my eyes fill with tears. He pats my hand, embarrassed at my reaction. Shame washes over me at the thought that Clarence has witnessed my confusion. My admission.
From then on, Clarence comes back to visit us on his own. He likes my mother’s company and her sense of humour. I think he likes me, too. Alas, I already know this first love is hopeless. Maman warns Clarence how possessive my father is, watching me like a dog protecting its bone. She says, “Josep will never let an Eenou man marry his daughter.”
This time, I wish my father was different. It feels like Maman uses Papa as a wall around me. She’s constantly having to weave her way between the Cree culture and her husband’s.…
That summer, Koukoum Ka Wapka Oot tents with the family and the Algonquins at Pointe-Aux-Vents. She includes Clarence, her nephew Billy’s adopted son. One Algonquin family is camping for the first time, the Wabanakis. There Clarence meets Angélique, a fetching young girl with burning wolf eyes. Despite his seductive good looks, Clarence is intimidated by young women. All he can think of is to run to my mother to confide his feelings. I learn all about the unconscious cruelty of which a young lovestruck man is capable.
“Will she follow me to Waswanipi?”
Such is his dilemma. Maman warns him against the girl. “She has fits and falls to the ground drooling.” Maman says she thinks the girl is crazy and scary.
I don’t know if love alleviates Angélique’s fits, but the fact is she doesn’t have any that summer. Her parents feel she’s too young at sixteen to wed, but perhaps the following year. They want to buy time to get used to the idea that she’ll leave for another community, become part of another culture.
Since the spring, Papa’s been digging out back of the house. Making a nuclear shelter. He works for the National Defence Department and knows that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America are cooking up a cold war. He fears a bomb launched from northern Russian. We’re all anxious, but try not to think about the possibility of a war of the titans that could annihilate us all like a swarm of mosquitoes.
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