Northern Wildflower Page 2

  My parents were very young when they had me. They weren’t ready for a baby. My dad was a carpenter by trade, and he grew up in a large family. His dad, who was also a carpenter, died in a work accident when my dad was just a baby. My dad was left to help his mother look after the family and he worked hard his whole life, from a young age.

  My parents met at a bonfire party in northern Alberta. They were both there for the oil boom. My mom moved from her small hometown of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, as soon as she was old enough to get out on her own and move in with her older sister Clara. My mom said she saw my dad from across the fire and thought he was cute, so she got his attention by throwing rocks at him; that must be where I get my terrible flirting skills from.

  They only lasted a few years together after I came into the picture. One day, without any warning, my mom packed up what belongings we had in our little basement apartment and left my dad with nothing but a broken heart. I still remember the image of my dad the day we left and the broken look in his eyes when we said our goodbyes. When I look back now, I can see him sitting in our dark and empty basement suite crying with his head in his hands. I hugged him one last time while my mom waited for me at the top of the stairs, the same stairs where he taught me how to tie my shoes and figure out my left foot from my right, essential skills I needed to know for my first day of kindergarten.

  Catherine and her Dad playing cards (photo credit Norine Lafferty)

  I sometimes wonder where I would be today if we had stayed, but I can’t think that way because I can’t go back to that time and change it. Even if I could change the past, I’m not sure that I would. The journey I have travelled may have led me down dark paths a time or two, but I believe I am where I’m supposed to be. Life is an intricate, winding road that leads us through good times and bad. We never know what might happen from one minute to the next, but I believe that if we have faith our paths will eventually lead us to where we are supposed to be.

  I didn’t think I would ever see my dad again. We had completely lost contact. Our nightly routine of “I love you more than the whole wide world” and “I love you more than the universe” would never be spoken again, but those are the keepsakes that I store away in my memory of the father I knew once upon a time.

  ***

  MY MOM, HER NEW BOYFRIEND and I travelled across Canada in his beat-up camper van. Little did I know then that the stranger I just met would be in my life more than my own father.

  The highway was so foreign and magical to me. I enjoyed the scenery in between sleeping, gassing up at truck stops along the way and prying open red pistachios until my fingers were stained blood red.

  We set up camp in southern Alberta, which is where we would live for the next few years of our lives until my mother and stepdad would go their separate ways (only to reconcile a few years later).

  My memories of living in Calgary were pleasant, for the most part. I would bike up and down the hill behind my house that had a perfect view of the Saddledome. I was always out biking. I could bike with no hands, showing off to myself for hours. Sure, I crashed on my bike all the time and would come home bruised and scraped, but I loved it. Cruising down hills at full speed gave me a sense of invincibility and freedom. Freedom was something that ranked high on my priority list from an early age. I somehow knew that, without freedom, I would not be able to live — I wouldn’t be able to be me.

  I loved cruising on the smooth black pavement in the middle of the road with the wind in my hair and my hands stretched out as if I was hugging the air, not worrying about what was in front of me. I was fearless and naïve, a deadly combination.

  The worst crash I can remember was when I was biking home from the corner store with a plastic bag full of junk food hanging from my handle bars. It got caught in the spokes and I flew off the bike head first, doing a flip in the air. I had landed on the curb of the sidewalk and was giving myself some time to check my wounds when a man pulled up beside me in an old car. He rolled down the window and said, “Hi, do you need some help?”

  I quickly jumped back on my bike and said, “No thanks, I’m fine,” and kept my head down as I peddled home as fast as I could. “It’s okay, I know your mom, I know where you live,” he said as he stepped on the gas to keep up with my momentum. All I could imagine was him throwing me in the trunk of his car and speeding away, leaving only my bike as a small clue as to what happened if I went missing. When I got home he was at my house and it turns out he was, in fact, a friend of my mom’s. I could tell she was pleased with me, though, that I knew better than to get into a car with a total stranger by the look she gave me out of the corner of her eye.

  We weren’t in Calgary long enough for me to make any lasting friends. I invited some of the girls in my class to my birthday party and only one friend showed up. I tried to act like I didn’t care, but deep down I felt like no one liked me. I desperately wanted to make friends and not feel like an outsider, but I wasn’t in one place long enough to feel like I had a place I could call home. My sense of home was where we set up camp until we migrated again. Since I had been a baby I had been shuffled around and, eventually, certain places had less and less significance for me. Home became wherever I lay my head to rest.

  Chapter 2

  MY MOM AND I FOUND OURSELVES back in her northern hometown of Yellowknife and living temporarily in my grandmother’s one-bedroom apartment after she broke things off with my stepdad. She would often leave me with my grandma to frequent the infamous Gold Range bar.

  The Gold Range is a renowned hotel and bar smack dab in the centre of downtown Yellowknife. It’s a rowdy, loud, gritty bar with an old tavern atmosphere. Built in the golden age, it’s one of the oldest buildings still standing in Yellowknife. When you walk into the “Strange Range” you feel like you are transported back in time. Regulars line up along the walls and at the bar staring at all the newcomers walking in. There’s always an unmistakably strong scent of rancid beer and whisky in the air and an old band that plays the honkytonk blues enticing patrons to get up and dance to show off their two step.

  With my grandma, I felt safe. My grandparents lived a quiet life. My grandparents never lived together; they lived in the same apartment building but had separate units. My grandma lived on the fourth floor and my papa lived directly under her three floors down. She could only put up with my papa for so long until she got annoyed. This went on to the point that they wouldn’t talk for weeks, sometimes months, until eventually they would start again right back where they left off. Living under different roofs must have been what made it work for them.

  Before she moved to Yellowknife, my grandma grew up on an island off the North Shore of the Great Slave Lake, where the winters were unforgiving. She lived solely off the land with no running water or electricity. Her father was a trapper. As far as I know, her great grandfather came to the North from Europe with his three brothers and they spread the family tree far and wide throughout the North. Although written records weren’t readily kept back then, my ancestors passed down this information orally and, to this day, when I introduce myself to the Elders I tell them who my grandparents are so they will know which family line I come from.

  One thing I do know is that I have a lot of cousins. I don’t even know most of them. I invited a few of my cousins over for Christmas dinner one year and my house turned into a surprise family reunion. An important law in our culture is to share what we have, so when we have a get together we usually have a large feast and invite everyone we know. We also never turn down an offering especially when it comes to food.

  Word got around the community that I was having people over and about thirty hungry relatives showed up to my tiny trailer. I had an assembly line set up in my kitchen that led all the way to the back of the house. My mom had to get on my daughter’s karaoke machine to shout, “Dinner’s ready!” over all the noise. I had to open the door in minus forty to let out some
heat out because the place was steaming up and the turkey was burning. My mom and I didn’t know half of our cousin’s names and we felt guilty because we should have; after all, we were one big family.

  There were little runny-nosed kids with juice stains around their mouths snooping around my bedroom and going through my things. I didn’t mind because I was once a juice-stained, runny-nosed kid too. Looking at my childhood photos, there is not one picture of me that does not have a ring of pink or yellow juice stained across the top of my mouth. My grandma always made sure there was plenty of juice in the fridge for me.

  My grandma’s grandmother was full Slavey but she was registered as a Dogrib. I used to think that the Dogrib people travelled North by dog team thousands of years ago, and the people got so cold they ended up having to eat their own dogs to survive, which is why they were named Dog Ribs. But the word Dogrib comes from the word “Tłi¸cho¸.” The legend has it that the Tłi¸cho¸ descended from a dog-like human, a shape-shifter.

  There are many stories of shape-shifters in the North and most of them are unpleasant. They are what we call the bushman or the Nàhga. There have been accounts of people seeing the Nàhga in the North, usually along the highways between the smaller northern communities. The one that scares me the most is the story of a woman that is dressed in old clothes from the 1950s and hitchhiking on the side of the road. When people look at her closely, they can see that she is half woman and half caribou because she has hooves for feet. Most Elders will tell you not to talk about these things if they don’t concern you — they are considered unmentionable.

  Shape-shifters or not, you have got to be tough to survive the harsh cold winters in the North, especially in the days before running water and electricity, so I pride myself on the strong ancestral bloodline that I come from. The winters in the North can be deadly. When the temperature drops to minus fifty and metal is so cold that it turns hot, that’s when you know to stay indoors. I can’t help but wonder if the cold preserves me or if it just ages me quicker when I’m overexposed to it, which I often am because I don’t tend to dress for the weather.

  The tourists love the cold, though, and embrace it like children as they bundle up and make snow angels on the ice road. I wonder what they think, flying over the lake and seeing a vast territory of ice and rock in the middle of nowhere. It’s a land that is seen by outsiders as the Great White North, the last frontier. What they don’t see is a land that is full and rich with a brilliant history of ancient legends, endless trap lines, hunting grounds and sacred sites.

  I try to see my home from a fresh perspective every time I come back to it from somewhere else and look at it through a new lens, from a tourist’s eyes. Wondering if it’s as spectacular as everyone says it is after all. Maybe I have just not seen it from that viewpoint because I often feel isolated in it. I love my home, though. It is the only place that I feel like I belong, and I miss it when I am gone for too long. It’s the water, the wind, the sky, my family and friends. It’s all of it intertwined, and it always calls me home.

  My ancestors trapped, fished and hunted because they had to. Sadly, many of my relatives today wouldn’t know how to live off the land. Most of us have lost our ability to practise our traditions because efforts of assimilation have urbanized many of us.

  I will be the first to tell you that if I were ever lost in the bush I would probably not survive in the elements alone. I can’t chop wood to start a fire to keep me warm or build a shelter. This is not something I’m proud of. However, I am actively introducing myself and my children to our Dene cultural practices, and together we are learning how to live on the land by reclaiming a piece of our territory and building a home for ourselves. We are starting by simply putting up a canvas tent with a wood stove and a spruce-bough floor to keep us warm. I am fortunate to be able to pass on my Dene teachings to my children through other avenues as well. I do this through my commitment to my community and through my ability to nurture and guide my children to be good people. As a mother, I try to embody the practice of my Dene traditions through the love and care of my children, and I try to live up to the Dene laws by teaching them through my actions. But things weren’t always this way.

  I am one of the many Dene of my age who has been deprived of being able to immerse myself in my culture. A large part of our identity has been lost because it was once stolen, but we are slowly trying to gain it back through occupying ourselves with the teachings of the Elders and through drawing forth our genetic memories to bring our traditions out from our sleeping senses.

  One of the teachings I learned from my grandma early on was to never take advantage of the land. My grandma instilled a fear in me to never be too confident when out on the water, and because of this I never fully embark on an adventure without some hesitancy. She was right to scare me, because there have been many times when I wished I had listened to her but learned the hard way instead when I found myself in dangerous situations. This is the reason I am overly cautious when I travel, and everywhere I go I try to remember to drop a coin on the ground, throw some tobacco in the water, carry a piece of rat root medicine with me to ward off evil spirits and give thanks for my safe travels, like I was taught.

  A long list of beliefs passed down to me includes never leaving a drawer open for worry that it is an invite for unexpected guests, from both this world and the spirit world. I was also taught that if you party too much in your home, you will be visited by all sorts of spirits. These spirits can wreak havoc on your home if they are negative, and they most often are when alcohol is abused. They can cause your pipes to freeze up, your furnace to give out and your appliances to malfunction, similar to a poltergeist.

  Catherine, her Kookum, her Grandma and mother — 4 Generations

  I hope to live as long as my great grandma did. My Kookum lived until she was over one hundred years old, but no one knows for sure how old she was because, somewhere along the way, she stopped counting. I call her my Kookum instead of my Ehtsi because of the Cree in me from my papa’s side.

  Kookum

  I only have a faint memory of my Kookum, but I cherish it greatly. It is one of my first memories. The simple act of helping her lift her teacup to her mouth is ingrained in my mind. Her tea was spilling over because of her trembling hands, so I held it steady for her and she held my hand in hers, thanking me with her eyes. Her hands were so wrinkly and bony but as soft as silk where they were once tough and strong from a life of hard work out on the land. I can still see the fine details of the flowers on the teacup and the deep lines in her skin, which represented her wisdom. Her eyes were full of familiarity and held so much knowledge; they told a story of their own. I hope I never lose that memory of her and the timeless moment we shared.

  Some say my Kookum was a medicine woman. My Kookum is the one who passed her beliefs down to my grandma. In her day, there was powerful medicine. My Kookum would not let anyone near her hair and, at the end of her life, she had a large ball of it tucked away so that no one could use bad medicine on her or use it for bad medicine on others.

  ***

  MY GRANDMA AND PAPA WERE never married, which was very progressive at the time. Together, they had six children. Three boys and three girls. My grandma was as tough as a buffalo; she had a steadfast heart. One minute she would be chasing me and my friends down the hallway with a straw broom, and the next minute she would serve me up some hotcakes and chocolate milk.

  Papa & Grandma

  You could never catch my grandma wearing pants, or slacks as she would call them. She only wore pleated skirts and flower-print dresses. If she was going out on the town, she would don a silk flower-print scarf on her head to keep the wind out of her ears when she went outside. It’s a fashion that most of the Dene Elders wear in the North. In fact, most Dene grandmas dress the same. They all wear colourful printed scarfs over their ears, purple or blue windbreaker jackets, dark tights, white socks and black ankle bo
ots lined with fur at the top. Whenever I would go down south, my grandma would ask me to look through thrift stores for pleated skirts and queen-sized, spice-coloured tights, and to this day I still keep an eye out for her fashions.

  Old Fort Rae, view of the lake (photo credit Catherine Lafferty)

  My grandma’s father spoke French and her mother only spoke in her native tongue, yet they had sixteen children together. My grandma was a twin, but her twin sister died of sickness as a baby. They were born on the island of Old Fort Rae in the fall of 1925. Old Fort Rae is on the North Arm of the Great Slave Lake and is about an hour and a half boat ride from Behchoko and another hour drive to Yellowknife. It is where my grandma would spend her childhood, and she never left the island until she was a teenager.

  Old Fort Rae, rhubarb patch (photo credit Catherine Lafferty)

  Old Fort Rae is a perfectly round island when viewed from above, and archeological studies have shown that it is an odd land formation. Now a historical site, it is where one of the first trading posts was established in the North. When I was a teenager I used to visit Old Fort Rae by boat for our large family gatherings in the summer. The boat ride over was always frightening. The waves would be so high that when the boat crashed down on them, I thought it would snap in half.

  There are fields of fresh rhubarb, onions and berries that now grow wild in Old Fort Rae, planted there during the fur trade. My cousins and I would four-wheel our way through the tall bushes in the hot summer sun, most likely trampling over historical artifacts but not knowing that we were being so reckless.

  Old Fort Rae, gazebo and cross (photo credit Catherine Lafferty)

  My grandma would tell me not to run in the fields at night because that is when the spirits roam, and I could swear I seen one of them one night, dressed in white and slowly walking behind one of the canvas tents.