She got the huge galvanized tub from its nail in the porch, and a special board about a foot wide, three feet long, and rounded on one side and flat on the other. As soon as Daddy dropped the pelt into the tub, Mommy went to work. She pulled the pelt up onto the rounded side of the board and retrieved her ulu (rounded knife for cleaning pelts) from its special place. Holding the T-shaped handle between her forefinger and her index finger and stabilizing it with her thumb, she placed the blade on the fatty side of the skin. Making smooth strokes with the curve of the ulu, she slithered the razor-sharp, half-moon-shaped blade down the skin, employing the full width of it and leaving the skin clean. After removing every inch of fat, she turned the pelt over and cleaned the fur from the other side. Once she was satisfied that it was clean enough, she handed it back to Daddy. In later years when she learned to make fancier mukluks, she left the fur on.
Daddy then prepared the sealskin for drying. To do this he lashed it into a wooden frame, stretching it tightly all the way around and nailing it outside on the cabin to dry. Once the sealskin was dry, which took several days, it was ready to make into boots. One full-grown seal yielded enough hide to produce two or three pairs of mukluks.
To make mukluks, Mommy laid the large skin on the floor. She used paper cut-outs as patterns to trace around as she cut out the tongues that covered the tops of the feet. The bottoms and leggings were then trimmed to size, depending on who would be wearing the boots. Once she had cut all the mukluks out, she gave the leftover hide to Daddy. He cut it into thin strips and tossed them into a pail of water. After a few days, the strips became slimy and stretchy and were used to string snowshoes.
Mommy couldn’t soak the boot parts because the hide would be too slippery to grip and she wouldn’t be able to sew them. However, she had to get the edges soft enough to poke the needle through. There was only one way to do that. We had to chew it. I’ll always remember the first time I had to chew sealskin! I was about nine years old.
“Jos, ya gotta chew da skins, cuz I gotta make new mukluks fer Sam,” Mommy said as I stripped off my coat one day.
I didn’t want to do that, but we had to do as we were told. So I took the pieces of sealskin and settled down to chew. It tasted awful and burned my tongue, but I kept chewing and grinding it with my teeth until she was satisfied.
Once the skin was soft enough, Mommy sewed the tongue to the front part of the leggings first. While she was sewing that, we had to chew all around the perimeter of the bottom section, then around the bottom of the leggings. She then sewed them together, using a very fine stitch. Pleating and pulling tightly on each stitch with immense concentration, she made the boots waterproof.
With all of us children to practise on, Mommy gradually learned to make fancier boots with different coloured fur. She cut out diamonds and sewed them onto the front of the leggings, making them both beautiful to look at and to wear. As years passed and she got better at her craft, she began sewing all manner of items for the Grenfell Mission’s Industrial Store across the harbour, where authentic crafts were sold to visitors from around the world.
The main meal of the day was always dinner. And if food was available, I enjoyed watching Mommy prepare it. Sundays were our special days. For Sunday breakfast we always had fish and brewis. For dinner on Sunday, Mommy cooked a big meal of wild game, with salt beef, vegetables, pudding, and duff (dumpling). For supper we had fried fish — cod, salmon, arctic char, trout, or smelt. In later years we even had canned fruit with jelly for dessert on Sunday nights. Monday we had leftovers from Sunday. Tuesday was bean soup day. Wednesday was fish or wild meat. If we didn’t have meat or fish, we had to settle for stewed potatoes or doughboys (boiled dumplings) and jam. On Thursday we had fish and brewis, and on Friday we had fish. Saturday was pea soup day.
Mommy’s main concern was not to run out of flour. Homemade bread was our staple food. We could almost always rely on bread and tea, which in earlier years was our mainstay. For the most part, meals were basic: no treats, no frills, no snacks between meals, except maybe a piece of molasses bread or a clump of hard tack. And many times there was nothing at all.
Cooking wild game is an art. Ducks and geese have to be steamed to pluck the feathers out. Partridges don’t have to be steamed. They can just be plucked, and my mother performed this job efficiently.
“Mommy, I wants de crop!” I cried as she was pulling the innards out of a partridge one day.
The crop was the stomach of the partridge, which always contained spruce twigs. She blew it up like a balloon and hung it near the stove to dry. Once dried, it made a hollow rattle like the sound of maracas. When we were little, we argued over who was going to get the next one. We ate everything except the guts of the bird. We consumed the heart, the gizzard, the liver, and the head, and usually fussed over who would get the wishbone for good luck.
Cooking wild meat took several hours. First, Mommy boosted the heat by adding a few pieces of dry wood to the fire. Then she fried up some fat, filling the cabin with smitch (smoke). Next she dropped the meat into the hot fat. The small room was filled with sharp smells and sizzling noises. Mommy waited for the meat to brown a bit, then added water, salt and pepper, and an onion, if we had any. Lastly, she added a sprinkle of flour. After that she gave the whole thing a gentle stir to fuse the flavours, then placed the lid on the big iron pot. Filling the stove to capacity with carefully selected wood, she proceeded to her next chore.
We were hungry and knew there was at least a two-hour wait before dinner. About three-quarters of the way through the cooking time, Mommy started to make the duff. Out came her favourite mixing bowl, flour, butter, baking powder, and a little water to bring it all together.
“Wass ya doin now, Mommy?” I asked as she flattened the dough onto the table.
“Watch me an ya’ll see,” she answered in her matter-of-fact way.
Once the dough was flattened, she made a big hole in the centre and placed it gently on top of the meat in the pot. It only took 10 minutes to cook. That was our cue to set the table. Sal and I lifted the table out from the wall, exposing the long bench placed there for us little ones. When the table was set, we had to make the tea. I poured a handful of loose tea into the pot and filled it with water from the huge kettle, which was always at boiling point on the back of the stove. The clang of the teapot lid and someone placing the teapot on the back of the stove to steep were sure signs that the meal was almost ready. The next thing was to cut the bread.
“Can I watch ya cut de bread, Mom?” I asked, tugging at her apron.
“Awright, but don’t get too close ta de knife.”
Mommy always wore an apron. Placing the bread in her lap and holding the loaf firmly in her left hand, she picked up her long, very sharp knife and positioned it ever so lightly into the corner of the bread. With one smooth stroke she pushed the knife about a third of the way through the bread. Her second and third strokes made a perfectly even slice, as if the bread had gone through a slicing machine. Every slice was uniformly cut as she piled the plate high and put it in the centre of the table.
Every Monday we had to fetch water from the well for washing. Mommy lifted the huge galvanized washtub and washboard off the nail in the porch. She stoked up the stove to heat buckets of water and then sorted out the clothes that covered the whole floor of our tiny cabin. It was backbreaking work. I felt sorry for her as she scrubbed each piece of clothing, wrung it out, shook each garment, and placed it in a pile ready for hanging. On extremely cold days the clothes froze even before they reached the line. Steam from the warm clothes billowed around Mommy in the cold air.
The washing remained on the line for a few days to dry, and if it didn’t dry because of the extremely cold temperatures, Mommy had to bring it back inside and spread it over the stove to finish drying. It smelled wonderful. As the family grew, Mommy couldn’t continue doing everything herself. We had to help as we got older. The blisters on my knuckles would peel and bleed, but it didn’t matter. We had to