Looking back at those days now, I find it difficult to believe that I, a layman with no medical background other than a few courses in first aid, was in charge of a medical facility, however simple, some five hundred kilometres from the nearest doctor or hospital. Of course, when there was a very serious illness, I could always try to send a radio message out and have a plane come in. But this involved some lapse of time. If there was very bad weather—and sometimes there were periods of two or even three weeks when no float plane could get anywhere near us—we simply had to do our best.
I always found it moving to see the incredible ability of these people to bear pain and suffering with stoical courage and calm. Garrett, the missionary, was often away on canoe trips visiting his far-flung flock, but when he was home he would pull teeth in his living room for those whose toothache had become unbearable. There was no anaesthetic, and yet the “patient” would not utter a sound during the extraction. They even continued to smile in spite of the blood and pain. Once, a Cree hunter came to the dispensary with one barb of a huge triple-pronged fish hook deeply embedded in the palm of his hand. He had been trolling for lake trout far from the post when the accident occurred. Since he was alone and had to paddle back, the hook had worked its way in to the point where it curved around a tendon. There was no recourse but to cut off the other two prongs with wire cutters and then, without any kind of painkiller, work the hook completely through and out at another place. All through this, the man never so much as flinched or changed his overall expression of dignified endurance.
I observed this characteristic repeatedly, but one case stands out above the rest. A man had sliced his knee open with a razor-sharp axe while making the keel for a canoe. When I was called to his cabin, he was lying on some dried moss that was quickly becoming soaked with blood as it spurted up out of the gaping wound. I had to apply a tourniquet to get the bleeding stopped, and then dress and bind the knee as best I could. He too never winced or moaned and, weak though he was, thanked me with a smile as I turned to leave. The good news is that he made a full recovery, though he walked with a slight limp.
The church services at Big Trout Lake held a special interest for me as a future clergyman. The church, which seated about 150, was crammed to capacity at every service. The men and boys sat on one side, the women and girls on the other. The aisles were filled and the children sat on the floor. Often a mother would be nursing one child while its toddler brother or sister would be tethered to the nearest pew by a short “rope” made from rags to prevent straying. The noise level inside the frame building once everyone had assembled was deafening, but inevitably matters got worse once the service began. Any huskies not securely tied up at home would follow their families up the hill to the church. They would then inspect each other, find out how much they disliked one another, and launch into a furious fight. As the din mounted, one of the older parishioners would invariably get up, take a stick and wade into the melee, striking at any animal within reach. The pack would then take off in all directions with blood-curdling howls loud enough to wake the dead.
The services themselves lasted anywhere from two to three hours. The extreme length was partly due to the extraordinarily protracted sermons, whether preached by Garrett or one of the many lay catechists, and partly to the fact that hymns were sung at such a slow pace that they would last for about fifteen minutes each. The Cree loved singing, and since times were quiet and they had nowhere else to go, they got full value at the Trout Lake Mission. Because I had attended church every Sunday throughout the winter in Toronto, I felt no strong obligation to be at every service myself. Instead, while out on the lake fishing, I would hear the resonant Cree voices joined in “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” come drifting over the waters while in the distance loons made the islands echo with their haunting cries.
Looking back, I know I learned a lot from the Natives of Big Trout Lake, much more than I was ever able to teach their young. The following are a couple of my lasting impressions from that time.
The three-summer experience showed me in the most eloquent fashion how non-Natives have, since the first contact, treated the First Nations peoples as little children and not as mature persons, with all that would have entailed. The Church did not consult with them, for example, about who should teach their children in the summer sessions, nor was there any discussion with elders or parents about what subjects were to be taught. At Big Trout every white person was known as the “boss” or owgamow of whatever aspect of the community’s life he or she was in charge of. So Rev. Leslie Garrett was the church owgamow, I was the school owgamow, and the Hudson’s Bay Company post manager was the boss of all bosses, the owgamow over all. His clerk was the owgamow’s little boss, or owgamasis. Garrett was kind to his flock but clearly defined as their superior in every way. He wasn’t called Father as in the Catholic missions, but he played that role to the hilt in most details of the people’s lives apart from their dealings with the HBC owg-amow and their livelihood as trappers. Garrett held the “keys” to their souls, training those chosen to be lay readers and catechists, administering the sacraments, explaining the faith, baptizing the babies, marrying couples and burying the dead. There would be a line of adult men at the rectory door each evening waiting to seek his advice or guidance.
But it wasn’t just the Anglican Church that treated the band members as juveniles. The federal government, through its various officials (and in particular the Indian agent, who was ultimately responsible for the welfare of all the bands in the northwest of Ontario and who lived a good three hours by bush plane to the south), treated them in exactly the same manner. There was an abundance of poverty. Most of the residents slept on the ground or floor, had no plumbing or electricity, and thought that the annual five dollars paid to them by the Indian agent was government largesse.
All major decisions were taken off the reserve and directives simply “came down as though from on high,” whether it was a matter of whose children should be sent out to the residential school at Pelican Narrows, Sioux Lookout, or how many beaver pelts a specific hunter and his family would be allowed to sell at the post in any given year. In later years, as the plight of both the Indians and the Inuit came much more to the fore of public concerns in the country, Canadians came to see the tragic results of all the many years of such paternalism.
The other issue that shouted aloud to me then was the perverse way in which Aboriginal spirituality was ignored or despised. This problem still resonates with me today whenever I read yet more shocking news stories about the high rate of suicide among young people on the reserves in the Big Trout region and in the various Native communities all around the shores of James Bay and Hudson Bay. Overall, Native spirituality from the earliest days of first contact was deliberately looked down upon, and wherever it dared any open expression it was instantly and crudely stifled. We now know the havoc wrought by the residential schools as tools of this campaign.
Instead of trying to discover and understand the spiritual traditions and rituals of the conquered first inhabitants of Canada, the government, the missionaries and non-Natives in general immediately assumed they were the vestiges of a savage past that needed to be eradicated as swiftly and as thoroughly as possible. One of the most shocking, even appalling, aspects of this situation is the fact that for over a hundred years it was Canada’s official policy to “take the Indian out of the Indian.” That is an exact quote from Sir Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Indian Affairs department, as he defined his mandate early in the last century. The results have been a national scandal for years. It does not require a team of experts or a Royal Commission to discover that if you destroy the spiritual beliefs and practices of a people and discourage the use of their languages, you cut off the very wellspring of their being. You rob them of the source of that strength and meaning which made it possible for them to live full, happy and productive lives in one of the harshest environments on the face of the earth. We taught them to earn their living