Sisters in Spirit vigil

A Sisters in Spirit vigil was held in Thunder Bay this Sunday at noon, in Paterson Park, downtown Fort William. Each year, cities and towns across Canada hold public vigils honouring missing and murdered Aboriginal women, whose disappearances and deaths are an ongoing problem in our country. “There is no such thing as an isolated act of violence against Aboriginal women,” says Ellen Gabriel, President of the Quebec Native Women’s Association. “Every attack takes place in a context of a long history of prejudice, discrimination and marginalization that has denied Aboriginal women full equality in Canadian society.”

Each person present at the vigil in our city was given 4 tokens to share with 4 friends to help bring attention to the hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, in order to help spread awareness and to work towards the human rights of Aboriginal women and stopping the violence that they suffer disproportinately. So, I am sending these cards out to you, my readers.

The vigil was put on by the local Ontario Native Women's Association. It was an overcast chilly day, but at the very end the sun peeked out for a bit. There was an opening prayer and a smudge, and some words by a female elder, who also closed the vigil.

The Women's Drum Group performed a number of songs and a number of speakers spoke about structural violence, racism, sexism, colonialism (too bad PM Harper failed to attend because he might have learned something), and personal stories of lost and murdered sisters, daughters, mothers, and other female family members. In the photo above, Tasha Shields, the health policy analyst for ONWA, is speaking about the violence that Aboriginal women suffer because they are Aboriginal and women. They suffer violence at a rate 5x higher than non-native women in Canada.

There was 2 minutes of silence and then balloons were released into the sky, with the names of missing and murdered women on them.

Each person present was given a bit of tobacco to place into a large bowl while the names of missing and murdered Aboriginal women from the region were read aloud. It was a long list of names, quite sobering. When I went up to the bowl and dropped in my tobacco, the name that was read was Deanna Daw from Fort Frances. The tobacco was later released into the Neebing River.

Sunken Gardens on a Sunday afternoon

In the summer of '63, our family, who consisted then of our Isa, Aiti, older sister, Katja, younger sister, Della, and me, the middle sister (our brother wasn't born until '66), went to Hillcrest Park to the Sunken Gardens to take a family photo. As we are in our Sunday best, I believe the photo's purpose was to send it back home to the relatives in Finland and Sweden. We probably went for a Sunday drive first, because that's what families with cars did in the 60s--or at least immigrant families like ours who were striving to become part of the american culture. Getting a car was ....making it, man. Katja is taking the photo with our father's camera, and she's still taking photos! That's our mom, Ritva, on the left, with her summer purse beside her on the bench. In those days women had only 2 or 3 purses: a summer purse and a winter purse, and maybe an "evening bag" which was a small bag of some shiny material for dress-up evening parties or weddings. On the ground beside her is our dog, Bullet, whose name we pronounced Pulet-ti. Our dad had given Katja the honour of naming her when she was a new puppy, and as we were big fans of the tv show Roy Rogers, our new pomeranian mutt was named after Roy Roger's german shepherd. Never mind that our Puletti's looks did not match her namesake's. Lucky we didn't name her Trigger or Flipper, another tv show we loved to watch. I'm sitting beside my mother on the bench, wearing knee socks and my polished cotton dress...or was it a jumper?... of polkadots of various shades of brown. The fabric was soft and a bit shiny, making the dress very comfy to wear. Next to me is our baby sister, Della, who was called Baby Sister way past her babyhood. "Della on pei-pi" my mom would say, excusing her from all manners of chores. "Della's a baby" we heard over and over again, and hence treated her like that...way past her babyhood. Our father is on the other end of the bench. He's dead now; all the Maki boys have passed away, only Vellamo, the oldest sister, is still alive. She's 96 and a half now and the only Maki sibling left, as our uncle, Erkki, just died, may he rest in peace.

A few days ago, before the early morning frosts suddenly hit town to wipe out any delicate flowers, leaves, or tomatoes, I snapped this photo on my way back from my run. I had looped up the Bay St. stairs and cut across the Sunken Gardens, which are named so because they are a few steps down from street level. The zinnias in the garden were spectacular this year, a riot of rich colour. This is the same spot in the Sunken Gardens as that in the photo above. What's different today? Well, the bench is different; today's is just wood, no concrete on the ends. Is that the same house in the background? or is this bench slightly north of the earlier bench? A birch tree that has grown since '63 obscures the view. A different car, a more recent model, is driving by, heading down the hill on Dufferin Street. The zinnias splash colour, missing in the photo from '63. And, of course, no one is on the bench!

a trip to Kresges

S.S. Kresges was a five and dime store, which no longer exist, as shopping has changed. Kresges were the beginning of giving local businesses a hard time, just like the box chain stores today. But what did I care or know of capitalist competition when I was in grade school? All I knew was the thrill of going downtown to "just look" at Kresges, Woolworths or Zellers.

To get a sense of the what a five and dime store was like, here is an anecdote of a memory from iamkaym, who writes up a history of five and dimes like Kresges, Woolworths and the predecessor of chain stores, The Great Atlantic & Pacific Company, or A&P (which has recently changed its name to Metro...I guess it is leaving behind its colonial sounding name for something more urban):

"I personally always felt that dime stores were made with children in mind. The one I knew had a comic book rack just inside the door and nobody seemed to mind when kids spent an hour "just looking". At right angles to this was the candy section with solid squares of fudge in glass cases, ready to be weighed and sold by the pound, jawbreakers, jellybeans, licorice whips and other goodies.

There was a department in the back with goldfish, canaries, and white mice, together with assorted collars for the dog I hoped to have one day. Another area carried marbles, 20 to a mesh bag, with the larger "shooters" sold individually. There were pocket knives and cheap jewelry, racks of picture postcards, lurid masks just before Halloween, valentines in February, and a fairyland at Christmas."

Shabaqua Corners

There is a restaurant, a liquor store, a motel, a gift shop, and a convenience store at the spot where Highway 11 and Highway 17 diverge, when you are travelling westward from Thunder Bay. Here is where you take Highway 11 to head out towards Atikokan (which means 'caribou bones' I once read) and Fort Frances (a colonial town which was re-named after Frances, the young 19 year old female cousin of George Simpson, the big cheese of the Hudson's Bay Co. and governor of Rupert's Land, ie. part of what became Canada, who brought her to Canada to marry after dumping his 'country wife). Now, in the dominant narrative Sir George Simpson is a respectable proto-capitalist who was responsible for helping establish a market economly in Canada. However. There are multiple histories inside every story, and I will tell you some more about Mr. Simpson later.

At Shabaqua Corners there is an old wooden house, too. Is this Shabaqua's house? An old store? What is the history of this place? All I know is that it is infamous as a place of many terrible accidents, especially with transports. Many deaths occur by the highway intersection here.
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The day that I was driving down to Fort Frances, when I was leaving the convenience store area where this photo was snapped, when I pulled out onto the highway a transport/trailer carrying a large yacht (pronounced 'yawt'...what sort of word is that, anyway?) barreled so fast behind me that I hurriedly pulled over to the shoulder of the road. Where did he come from? I didn't even see the transport/trailer carrying this boat on the highway when I pulled out, that's how fast he was driving.

Canada's moral compass definitely broken

Canada's moral compass (see last post) definitely is broken, and shows signs of severe malfuntion. Is it even reliable? I don't think so, as it fails to register histories outside of the dominant national narrative. Only yesterday, our PM, Stephen Harper, told the world (reported by Reuters) that Canada has no history of colonialism:

"We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them," he said."

Hmmm. So, if that is indeed true, how do we explain the Residential schools dreamt up for First Peoples?

Why are First Peoples living on Reserves? Why would reserves and treaties even be necessary if there had been no colonialism?

How was the nation state of Canada created and established if not by colonial settlement? the imposition of colonial laws and policies? the institutionalization of colonial ways of being, thinking, doing? We even have roads that spell it out:

...and btw, this road still exists ... I drove down it yesterday!

How is it possible that our PM denies the history of colonialism in Canada...a history that continues to this day? A history that is literally mapped on this land? How is it possible that he has not engaged in decolonizing his psyche? Has he been reading

the wrong books?

Talk about silencing the multiple stories that indeed make up the land of what is now called Canada. Talk about wiping out histories and stories. Talk about making invisible contemporary racism and injustices against First Nations people.

Why recognize and settle land claims when there was no colonialism?