Sometimes there are glorious things to see in Canada that you just don’t expect to see. They come as a very pleasant surprise. On the way back to Summerside, P.E.I. after circling the island for lighthouses, we saw a very impressive sight of a true Canadian icon: A McCallum Septic Service truck with a sign that read: A Royal Flush is Better than a Full House.
In all my the years of my misspent youth, I never got a royal flush. Until this day.
East Point Lighthouse in P.E.I., which was built in 1867, is known as Canada’s Confederation Lighthouse and is located at the most eastern tip of PEI and stands an impressive 64′ high with five flights (67 steps) of winding stairs.
From here you can see what are called “colliding tides” – The Atlantic Ocean, Northumberland Strait, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Very impressive.
The Souris East Lighthouse at Knight Point P.E.I. overlooks the town of Souris Visitors are allowed to climb to the lantern room, walk out to the balcony, and discover the panoramic seascape views of the harbour and town of Souris. With hindsight I recall we did none of that. Why were we so negligent? Perhaps I was beginning to worry we might not get home before dark. That is my excuse and no one will take it away from me.
Mi’kmaq first settled the area around the river followed by French Acadians, who were expelled by the British in 1758. While the Acadians were living along the river in 1724, they were inflicted by a plague of mice, or souris in French, and this incident led to the naming of the settlements on the flanks of the river Souris East and Souris West.
We also saw a cormorant swimming in the small cove near the dock where we photographed the lighthouse. I could not resist photographing it.
I liked the name of one of the boats we saw in harbour: “Crabbin Fever.” I am also a sucker for harbours. Never met a harbour I didn’t like.
A Beautiful Manitoba car at Rick’s Fish’ Chips P.E.I.
We also stopped at Rick’s Fish’n chips at the small town of St. Peters. This was a real Maritime Fish’n chip shack. It was so good I may never eat Fish’n chips again in Manitoba.
Another exciting moment was when we drove by an autobody shop that advertised, “We sell body parts.”
Sometimes life is grand.
There were surprisingly many lighthouses on Prince Edward Island. Paradise for. a lover of lighthouses. And who doesn’t love lighthouses?
Today I saw a guy wearing a black shirt with the following inscribed on it: “Tuna Assassin.” He was wearing a bit of sheepish grin. Appropriate, I thought.
When I arrived for the first camera shot there was a lovely reflection of the lighthouse in the water that disappeared because of rising wind by the time I stopped the car and pulled out my camera. That sucked. But at least we saw it.
Although we nearly missed it, we stopped at the St. Peters Harbour Lighthouse. This was a hidden unadvertised gem of a lighthouse near a long-abandoned harbour. We would not have found it had I not been hungry for an ice cream and a chatty woman operating the shop. When we first arrived, the store was unattended because the young woman had to go to drop off her child at the nearby school. When she returned, I asked her if there were any lighthouses in the area and she knew of this one. And she gave us directions on how to find it.
The moving sand here made the harbour impractical. Thanks goodness they did not destroy the lighthouse! All we could see were remnants of the old pier.
This was another lighthouse threatened by rising sea levels and the sand that often accompanies that. There were remnants of an old pier nearby more or less buried under the sand.
I couldn’t get enough of this lighthouse.
As we travelled in eastern Canada we drove through many territories of various First Nations. I enjoyed that. It was part of my learning experience on our drive through eastern Canada.
The Webanaki people, another First Nation in Eastern Canada, originally occupied a territory from land south of what is now Boston all the way to the St. Lawrence River. This was a vast territory. Christiane and I travelled through part of that territory on our trip to Eastern Canada in 2024. Specifically, we drove along the southern shore of the St. Lawrence after we crossed from the north shore near Quebec City and then through a large part of New Brunswick before we arrived in Prince Edward Island. The part we drove through is extremely well settled. In fact, as I said when we were driving, often it seemed like one very long town. While the north shore from Montreal to Quebec is more densely populated, there were a lot of people here too.
Historically, the Webanaki occupied all the land along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River from Levis to Rimouski and south to Maine. That was a huge territory. Currently the Webanaki occupy a mere 6 sq. kilometres in what they call Odanak. It is a tiny community hemmed in by Quebecois on all sides. It is very close to the Wolastokuk. As Matthieu O’Bomsawin, who is Abenaki from Odanak said, “this makes it very difficult for us to access our traditional hunting grounds, which are almost non-existent. 98% of our territory has been privatized.”
As one member of the First Nation said, “When the Europeans arrived we occupied 100% of the territory. Today reserves [in Quebec] occupy only 0.06% of the entire Quebec territory.” Another member said, “constantly having to look at walls destroyed us.” This is understandable, as they were mainly a nomadic people. Another member said, “I saw the end of the nomadic life. I like living in a house, but the land is where my heart is.”
On our way to Prince Edward Island, Christiane and I traveled through the territory of another first nation. This was the territory of the Wolastokuk or Wolastoqiyik who had ranged over much of Quebec and New Brunswick in around the neighbourhood of Rimouski where we had been in September and October of 2024. Their territory was huge. Yet the reservations they were “given” under the authority of the Indian Act were puny in comparison.
On the CBC show Telling Our Stories, which I had watched, one of them said it was equivalent to “my backyard.” According to Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Wolastoqew Wahssipekuk, the band council that was created under the scheme imposed by the Indian Act was not surrounded by a community that could stimulate the culture of her people. As she said, “the flag is there but we don’t have a community.”
One of them told the story of how members of her family each fall would gather into groups to disperse across their territory to hunt and when they returned they found the government had sold their land to European farmers. As one of them said, “They sold our land without our consent.” Is that not what theft is all about? This is not that uncommon. The same thing happened in Manitoba with indigenous people around Petersfield. In exchange they were given much poorer land. White farmers yearned for their land and persuaded the government to do their bidding.
This “Indian problem” is found on many all First Nations. It is not limited to Wolastokuk or Webanaki. It is part of Canadian history which lately Canadians have been celebrating. This one is not so easy to celebrate.
Chief Donnacona was the Iroquois Chief of the village of Stadacona when Jacques Cartier arrived on his second trip to Canada as it is now called. It was located at the site of what became Quebec City, which Christiane and I passed by on our way to the east coast of Canada on our own personal voyage of discovery in 2024.
In 1536 Cartier arrived a little deeper into Canada. He arrived with a ship and landed in Île d’ Orléans, an island in what we now call Quebec. 11 of his men were very sick. They were basically dying of scurvy.
While Cartier and his men were in Canada, Chief Donnacona and his people prepared tea for the Frenchmen who had landed on their shores from the leaves of 2 conifers that were rich in vitamins. That cured the men and they survived.
As so often happened in Canadian history, the First Nations of North America helped these Europeans survive in the Western hemisphere. They helped because that is what they did. They did not ask for payments. But they did expect that if they were in need some day the newcomers would help them out if they could. Reciprocity was an important value among the First Nations of North America. This is how civilized people act.
Cartier, on the other hand, concluded that second voyage by kidnapping Donnacona along with 9 other Iroquois captives, and brought them all the way to France as curiosities for the people of France to see. That act showed the true meaning of European arrival in the so-called “New World.” That is not how civilized people act.
In the CBC story Telling our Stories, Edna Manitowabi an Anishinabe woman from Wiikwemkoong said, “We helped them. We were kind to them. We were generous and yes we agreed to share. We will share but we didn’t give up. We agreed to share.”
Those words tell us a lot about Indigenous philosophy. It was a profound way of thinking. The actions of Cartier tell us a lot about European philosophy. Their philosophy embodied “taking” rather than sharing.
According to the doctrine of discovery, initiated by the Roman Catholic Popes, anyone who was not a Christian was a savage. And savages had few rights. And their land could be taken from them.
But I ask, “Who were the savages? And who was civilized?’
However, this fundamental misunderstanding between Indigenous people and the new arrivals from Europe proved very costly. As a result of that misunderstanding, Canada has suffered through decades of discontent by their partners who resented being treated as people who had sold off their inheritance to Canada. While indigenous people remained unable to successfully assert their rights the newcomers enjoyed nearly a century of apparent quiet possession of Canada, but this fundamental misunderstanding still meant the “root of title” to use a concept of the common law of England which became part of the common law of Canada after Confederation was in doubt. In time, the Supreme Court of Canada has turned back Canada’s easy assumptions that all of Canada had been ceded to Canada by Indigenous people.
Eventually, the Canadian courts kiboshed this idea. That does not mean the Canadian courts have accepted everything that Indigenous people argued, but it confirmed that Indigenous people had a lot more rights than Canada had believed. The extent of those aboriginal rights which have not been ceded is still being worked out by Canada’s courts and this has made law in Canada such an interesting thing. It is one of the reasons that an old teacher of real estate law in Canada—me—has had so much enjoyment out of practicing law.
What was once certain has become shaky.
The relationship between Indigenous people of Canada and the European powers who occupied parts of it has been checkered with misunderstandings.
The doctrine of discovery is the basis of a fundamental and long-lasting misunderstanding. Jacques Cartier from France arrived in Gaspe in 1534. Many Canadians see that date as the beginning of Canada. Not many indigenous people see it quite that way. Canada—the land of Canada and its native people—were of course around long before then.
Some Europeans had this notion that they had “discovered the New World” and this gave them the right to do whatever they wanted here. They owned it because they discovered it. Frankly, this is a very peculiar idea. No Europeans would have accepted it if the Indigenous people of the western hemisphere had imposed such a doctrine on them. It was absurd. But sometimes Europeans were absurd.
The inhabitants of Canada had a very different view of nature and land than the incoming Europeans had. As Quenton Condo, a young Mi’Kmaq man, from the Gaspe Peninsula, said on the CBC series Telling Our Story, on Gem, “We understood that land was not something that we owned. Land was something that we shared and occupied.”
In eastern Canada the St. Lawrence River where Cartier landed in Gaspe, and which Christiane and I had just driven through, was a major river used by many different First Nations. Many of them wanted to reach the fishing resources beyond the mouth of the river. Europeans when they “discovered” them realized how stunning they were. Some of the Europeans said you could fish by dropping a basket into the water and pulling out fish. Lots of fish. That may be legend, but has at least an element of truth, as legends often do. It was a bountiful resource. As Condo said, “It was a resource shared among many different nations.”
When Cartier landed and installed a large cross, the Iroquois Chief Donnacona quickly understand what Cartier was doing with that cross. He made it clear to Cartier and his sons that this was not acceptable. This land was not Cartier’s for the taking. It wasn’t anyone’s land for the taking. Of course, to make matters even worse, Cartier showed him what Europeans were really like. Cartier and his 2 sons kidnapped him and took him to France as a captive souvenir. That was not very nice.
Cartier was not even the first European to arrive. Basque fishermen had been fishing in the area for year already, and centuries earlier Vikings visited. Cartier did not discover anything at all.
As Condo said,
“When Cartier arrived, he did not discover anything. We discovered a bunch of people on a boat starving and lost. We saved them, because that’s who we are. We are not savages. We saw other humans who were in a bad position. We took them in and fed them.”
This happened over and over again in Canada in many encounters between Indigenous People and different First Nations. The newcomers had amazing technologies but they had a very poor understanding of what was needed to survive in Canada. First Nations, over and over again, rescued the newcomers from impending starvation. Added to that the newcomers failed to understand that the Indigenous people expected reciprocity. That was part of their spiritual lives, That was how they did things and it was what they expected of the people they helped. They helped others and in turn expected to be helped when needed. Really, that w as not an unreasonable expectation. Who thinks otherwise?
Yet repeatedly the newcomers proved ungrateful and failed to reciprocate. Instead, they tried to take over. I have heard this described like this: what would you think if a stranger appeared at your door in a winter storm and asked to sleep in your house for the night to save his life and then, after the storm was over, refused to leave. And not only that, the stranger then assumed control of your house and started to tell you what you had to do? The answer is obvious. We would not tolerate that. We would certainly not consider the other civilized!
I have created a new category for my blog: Fat Opinions. This is the first of them. Officially the first. Everyone who reads the blog knows there have been many of them already. This one is about the end of western civilization, which is nigh.
In the evening in Summerside P.E.I. we rested after many days of travelling. So we thought we would watch some TV. We thought wrong. Our TV offers 5,818 channels. This is true. How absurd can you get? There were so many channels that even when we used the suggested IPRO App we found it impossible to find anything we wanted to watch. How is that possible? We were literally drowned in effervescent junk TV. This is what the world has come down to. Western civilization run amok!