Category Archives: 2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

European Savages

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, History, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

On our trip across eastern Canada I had many opportunities to consider Canadian history.

The Indigenous people encountered by Europeans were definitely not savages.  They were members of sophisticated societies that all too often the Europeans did not well understand. Many of the Europeans were blinded by prejudice thinking that they could bring civilization and God to the barbarians and heathens. This was nonsense that the Europeans believed and passed on to their descendants and was largely responsible for the creation of white male supremacy favoured by their clans, but clearly absurd.  The indigenous people were civilized people and had a lot to teach the European newcomers while they were prepared to learn a lot from them as well. That is a wise attitude isn’t it?

It certainly was not true, as many Europeans thought, that this new land was empty of people. England, for example adopted the concept of terra nullius, a Latin phrase meaning “nobody’s land,” to justify their bloody claims. According to this theory, terra nullius included territory without a European recognized sovereign, where no one who counted lived.  Again, this was nonsense.

Contrary to such barbaric unfounded prejudices there were people all over the entire western hemisphere when Europeans arrived and these people mattered just as much as the visitors. The Europeans had no monopoly on civilization. In fact, often they revealed a startling lack of civilization. As Barbara Huck said in her book,

“Parts of North and Central America were among the most densely populated places on Earth. Some anthropologists have estimated the total population of the continent 500 years ago, including Mexico and Central America, at between 112 and 140 million. Mexico, the spectacular Aztec capital, was one of the three largest cities in the world when the Spaniards first laid eyes on it.

Much of Canada and the United States was considerably less populated than that—estimates put the total population of both between nine and 12 million—but North America was not, as some have imagined it, terra nullius, a land without people. And many societies, such as the Iroquoians, were healthier, more prosperous and less class-bound than their European counterparts of the same period.”

 

If first contact was indeed a case of civilization meeting barbarity, it is likely that the Europeans were the barbarians!  

It is also noteworthy, the Indigenous people who first encountered these Europeans in many ways did not share European attitudes and values. As Huck said,

“…the Americas were literally a world apart and North American values and beliefs were very different –in some ways almost directly contrary to the perspectives of the strangers who began to arrive on their shores in the early 1500s, the beginning of the contact period.”

 

For example, I have pointed out elsewhere that indigenous people of North American had views that were by no means all the same. They had many diverse views, just like Europeans.  The spiritual beliefs of indigenous people, for example, were very different from the newcomers, and in my view often preferable. We are of course, each entitled to our own views on that and I intend to continue commenting on those differences.

 

They also had very different views about how societies should be organized and how they should be governed and how wealth should be produced and shared. I find the differences profoundly interesting.  Barbara Huck in her book also commented on them:

 

“Indeed, it’s hard to imagine two more conflicting world views. Whether farmers or hunters, the vast majority of the people of what are now Canada and the United States lived communally in groups of varying sizes. The territories they inhabited were not owned, as we recognize land ownership, but rather commonly acknowledged  to be theirs to use. They governed by consensus, valued generosity and self-reliance, and loathed acquisitiveness and coercion. Stinginess and miserly behavior were strongly condemned. Almost everywhere it was considered immoral to allow anyone to go hungry if food was available.”

 

Not a bad way to live. Maybe the Europeans were the savages.

 

North American Farmers: Not What you Think

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Speaking about the east coast and central regions of Canada which we visited on this wonderful trip we could try to answer Barbara Huck’s challenge to her challenge  to imagine a land where people just 500 years ago lived in towns and villages that were very different than we previously believed.  The people were not savages, as some of the Europeans erroneously believed. They were members of a thriving civilization.   As Huck explained,

“They tilled the soil and grew a remarkable array of crops—corn, squash, melons, beans, and tobacco. Not far away, the lakes and rivers were full of fish and the forests abounded with game. The women of this land did much of the fishing and farming; the men, for the most part, had other interests. While their wives and sisters and mothers planted and tilled the soil and cared for the children, the men travelled far from home, trading north and south, hunting, and as often as not, fighting. Theirs was a powerful nation, with many allies and intentions of expanding across a great river at the edge of their land.”

 

 

This all reminded me of what our guides taught us on our trip through the Africa;  often the women carry water and other vital goods on their heads, while the men sat around under trees and discussed important matters.

But who were these farmers Huck described in her book?  They were not Europeans as we might have thought. They were wholly indigenous. This is how she described them:

“The farmers were Iroquoian—the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk—who by 1500 occupied a large territory south of the St. Lawrence River and would soon unite to become the Five Nations Iroquois. To the north were Innu and their Algonquian speaking allies, from the Mi’Kmaq of the Atlantic Shores to eh Anishinabe of the Upper Great Lakes.

These cultures differed from one another as much as Scots differ from Spaniards today, or Finns from French. Some North American societies were settled and agrarian, others were seasonably mobile; some turned to the sea for their livelihood, others lived off the bounty of the inland plains.

As in Europe today, the societies of 15th century and 16th century North America spoke dozens of different languages. And like their modern counterparts most of these languages could be traced to a handful of common language groups.”

These Iroquois nations got together and created a democratic system of government that the framers of the American constitution were inspired by when they created what is often called the world’s first constitutional democracy. These Indigenous People y were certainly not savages.

History is Important

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Critical thinking, Death of Truth, History, Indigenous People After Contact, Truth Seeking

 

 

I believe there is a lot to be learned from history.   And much history can be learned from travel. History teaches us the truth about the past. At least it always tries to find the truth. Sometimes that truth lies underneath decades or even centuries of obfuscations or outright propagandist lies. Those lies were designed to obscure uncomfortable truths.  I want to face those truths; not escape from them.

Barbara Huck’s book has helped to do that and it has enriched our journey.  Huck made some very interesting comments about our Canadian history. As she explained,

Today, on the cusp of a new millennium, North Americans have more tools than ever before for travelling through time. Thanks to new technologies and new perspectives, we are well equipped to imagine life five thousand or five million years ago. We can contemplate doing blood tests on the body of  an ancient trader found high on an Alpine pass or cloning a woolly mammoth in China. Yet for the most part, an appreciation of life here just 500 years ago eludes us.

 

I did not want to elude that story. I wanted to approach that history on this journey.  I think it is important.

History is important because the truth is important. Nowadays a lot of people don’t want old monuments to be taken down.  Some say that is erasing history. I disagree. Paying homage to old statues, or refusing to critique history is to erase history. Many people don’t want to look at our past history because it might make them uncomfortable.  They prefer self-satisfying illusions.  Personally, I would rather be disturbed in my comfortable pew than sit there in ignorance ignoring the truth. If the truth is not challenging its probably not the truth.

 

 

A Fundamental Misunderstanding

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, civilization, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

When Europeans arrived in what they called, wrongly, “The New World,” they quickly encountered the people who already lived here. In fact, they had lived here for thousands of years and had done rather well at that.

The  indigenous people were shocked at how these newcomers from Europe were not as healthy as the people who lived here. The Europeans were shorter than the North Americans and much less healthy lives.  Added to that, the Indigenous People were shocked at the great inequality between the different newcomers. There were classes of people that did extremely  poorly while the elite lived extravagantly well.  The Indigenous people did not understand this. They thought this meant the newcomers were not really civilized. I think they were right.

The Indigenous People realized the newcomers had some good ideas. They had amazing technologies.  Guns, big ships, and horses to name a few. But the Europeans also had a lot to learn from the inhabitants.  They were not able to survive here without help from the native North Americans. At first, they learned quickly and well. In time the Europeans forgot how they needed help.

The indigenous people of North America knew how to live well in North America. Even though the continent had incredibly variable environments and circumstances, from freezing northern terrains, to lush forests, great plains, amazing deserts, and everything in between, the inhabitants new how to thrive. Not just survive. But thrive!

Barbara Huck in her wonderful book, Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, which I have been reading on this trip described it this way:

“Europeans adopted a number of North American technologies such as snowshoes…toboggans, birchbark canoes, and pemmican, but largely misunderstood the continent’s cultures.”

 

And that misunderstanding has made all the difference. It has wreaked havoc. It has destroyed lives, including the lives of many young and vulnerable children. But, in my view at least, it is not too late to do better. We can do better. We must do better.

Indigenous People are talking a lot about land-based education. I like that idea. The land can teach us a lot. But only if we listen and learn. We must pay attention.

Islets in the Stream

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

Ernest Hemingway loved Islands in the Stream. So do I.  He wrote a book with that name, but it was a modest little book. He actually did not want to publish it and it was published after he died.

But I also love islets in the stream. Those are the little islands in lakes and rivers of the Canadian shield.

Just past Kenora and highway 71 that runs south towards Sioux Narrows we saw our first of many little islet. Many lakes have them including of course n Lake of the Woods and Lake Superior.  This one was on Dixie Lake. This is quintessential North Woods scenery that we are frankly fortunate to see. It is a real blessing. Such scenes of small rocky islands exude the Canadian Shield like sacred breath, providing the myst to our souls. Sadly, some of the best little islets escaped the reach of my camera. It is often difficult to stop beside the road with its narrow shoulders. I vow to return to those I missed.  Next time I pledge. Sadly, the next time I usually miss them. But I am grateful for those whose images I could capture with my camera.

This was a fine little islet, though a bit on the scraggly side. I didn’t mind that. After all, less is more. I really was not able coax it to yield a great photo. The  light was too dull this afternoon.  Or perhaps more likely, I was too dull or in too much of a hurry. But, as I frequently say, ‘You gotta dance with the girl you brung.’

Later I realized I should have walked east rather than west from the rest area. There was a much better islet there, but sadly, as I saw as I was speeding past it, I felt it was time to move on. Next time. This is an emotion I felt often on the trip. Should I stop and go back and grab a photo or persist in moving on. I consider myself a meanderer so should always be able to stop. Sometimes it is best to continue. But sometimes it is best to go back for a second look. Meandering is always good. The only way to travel.

I love islets. To me they speak the modest language of Canada. They seem to arise from the depths of the lake and I never get enough of them.

Inukshuk

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Affinity, art, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

At Dixie Lake, not far past Kenora I stopped the car at a rest stop and strolled in the south side of the highway about a ¼ km along the highway shoulder. I noticed a proudly installed Inukshuk on the north side of the highway at the top of a granite wall created by blasting the top part to of the Canadian Shield.  For generations young boys and other miscreants have been painting information no one is interested in, onto the rocks beside the road. Things like their initials and the initials of their current girlfriends. They used to mar the countryside. Lately, government employees diligently try to paint over these markings as soon as possible. And they do a pretty good job.  Frankly, I consider the messages a desecration. Rarely do we see the graffiti anymore.

 

Building an Inukshut is an entirely other matter. I appreciate everyone of them I see. These I think honour the history of Canada and the places in which they are found. They are respectful. They don’t mar the countryside like painted initials.

But I like them for another reason. A more philosophical reason.

The word “inukshuk” means “in the likeness of a human.” For generations, Inuit have been creating these impressive stone markers on the immense Arctic and sub-Arctic landscapes of Canada to show others where they have been and sometimes to let others know where emergency food can be found. Inukshuks really serve more than one function. They are used to guide fellow travellers sort of like a modern GPS is used. Some warn strangers of dangers. Some help assisting hunters and other to mark sacred places.

Sometimes they show how the people are part of the land and the land is part of the people. Even rocks. After all, as Carl Sagan said, “we are all stardust.”

Humans were created out of the dust of ancient stars. Whenever I think of life that way I am in awe. Imagine that each one of us is created by dust sent into the atmosphere by the big bang billions of years ago.

Inukshuts are really just piles of rocks. Nothing more. But they are places where people show reverence to nature.   They show us how we are all connected. I consider them holy messages. The opposite of desecrations. They are spiritual manifestations created by artists to suggest those connections that are the essence of religion.

A hodgepodge

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Indigenous--Reconciliation

This is a badly burned hotel that has been abandoned it would seem along side the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario.  I must admit, sometimes I think of Canada this way. Not always, thank goodness., but too often. Is this what Canada is like?  I will come back to this photo later.

I love travelling, and an essential part of travel, for me, is learning. I want to learn new things about new places from new people. Or, learn more about places I already know to some extent.

One of the things I wanted to learn about was Canada.  I lived in Canada my entire life except for the last 10 years where we lived in Arizona for 3 months and Canada 9 months each . Give or take.

I thought I knew Canada. But did I really know it?  Of course, not. I had a lot to learn. One of the things I have been trying to learn more about for at least a decade and even more, is the relationship between indigenous people and the descendants of the European settlers as well as an amazing array of immigrants and their descendants who came to live in Canada a country that was already clearly occupied. They have all made for an incredibly interesting place here in Canada. Not a melting pot. Rather, a hodgepodge.

What is a hodgepodge? According to Vocablulary.com

“A hodgepodge is a random assortment of things. A dorm room might be furnished with a hodgepodge of milk crates, antique mirrors, and a poster of a kitten hanging on a branch with one paw. Hodgepodge is a funny-sounding word for a somewhat funny occurrence — a grouping of things or people that don’t fit together.”

 

They don’t fit together. Yet they do. Somehow, inexplicably, they do. They make it work.  The phrase is partly French and partly English.  Pretty appropriate to Canada. We have been trying to put the French and English together for hundreds of years. Lately, we have come to realize there is another very important group of people we neglected for too long. These of course are the indigenous people who were here all along. Yet painfully, awkwardly, and wrongly forgotten or neglected. Again, according to Vocablulary.com,

“In the case of hodgepodge and hotchpotch, the rhyme is not an accident. These words came to English from early French in the form hochepot. The spelling was changed to make the second half of the word rhyme with the first. In French hochepot was a stew of many foods cooked together in a pot.”

 

I love stews. Through ingredients into a pot heat them up and enjoy. Great in theory. But does it work? We must admit it has not worked very well in the past. But we can do better. I think we want to do better. First, we must be willing to learn and willing to change. We must in humility admit our mistakes of the past and honestly try to do better. That is what reconciliation is all about.

How can we do that? I wanted to think about that and how we got into this hodgepodge in the first place. As Chief Justice Murray Sinclair, the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada often said, “You can’t understand where you are unless you understand how you got there.”

I wanted to consider that on this journey through the eastern part of Canada. How did we get into this hodgepodge? Is there a way out?

 

The Not So Glorious Winnipeg River

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

 

For this trip we did something highly unusual. We woke and packed the car in a reasonable amount of time. I remember one year we were embarking on a trip to Arizona it took us so long to get going, it appeared that we might not get past St. Pierre Manitoba. That day we had a late lunch at Mitchell Manitoba about 6 miles from Steinbach. Not a great start. This year was much better. Far from perfect, but much better.

Our packing this year was suspiciously efficient. Christiane and I are not famous for being efficient. Something must be wrong. This time both of my two bags and Christiane’s 2 bags were not full!  Moreover, the car was not full either. Have we missed some urgent items?  Are they large ones? Any other explanation seems highly unlikely. Even the bulky walker we packed for Chris does not eat up all available space.

As we drove down the Trans-Canada highway we marvelled at the Canadian scenery.  The beauty of Canada is stunning. Some friends have actually said to us that there is nothing to see between here (Steinbach) and the east coast.  This is also insane. It is not Canada that is boring. People who think that are boring. They are boring.

We saw rocks and trees and lakes in endless combinations of beauty are that are never repeated and are boring only to the boring.

The golden phragmites beside the Trans-Canada highway in some places were a gorgeous unique white gold. The leaves of trees were just starting to turn colour. That is what we were hoping for. We expect to be about 6 weeks on this trip, going right through the leaf season and we want to soak it all in.

One thing I found frustrating about this trip and I noticed it within about 2 hours of the trip.  That was that it is very difficult along the Trans-Canada Highway to stop and take photographs.  I had purchased a new camera recently, since I had accidentally smashed it earlier in the year in Arizona. I wanted to take a lot of photographs.  I was still learning how to use the camera. But there is very little room to stop and take photographs on the highway. It is basically illegal in most places. More importantly, Chris gets easily annoyed with me and my frequent stops. So I did my best not to make too many stops along the way.

 

As a result I have no photographs of the historic Winnipeg River.

 

I had taken a book along as sort of a guidebook. An unusual guidebook. It was Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, by Barbara Huck and had many interesting illustrations and photographs. Some of the photographs were taken by my friend, and great photographer,  Dennis Fast. The cover of the book invited us to “Discover the Highways that Opened a Continent.”  That is what I wanted to do.

 

At Kenora we crossed the historic Winnipeg River. Huck’s book had some interesting information on this river I had crossed many times:

 

Dropping from Lake of the Woods in the Canadian Shield into Lake Winnipeg at the edge of the Manitoba Lowlands, the voyageurs knew was a wild, beautiful waterway that traversed Earth’s most ancient mountains.  Eric Morse, historian and discriminating canoeist, called it “unquestionably the grandest and most beautiful river the Montreal Northmen saw on their whole journey from Lake Superior to Lake Athabasca.

 

This meant this was a fantastic river to cross in the first couple of hours of our journey.  What a great start. We were ready for adventures.

 

The book went on though in its description of this grand and beautiful river as she called it:

 

“Over its 225 kilometres length it drops 100 metres and was once a river of spectacular falls and rapids. Today, though tamed by eight dams along its length, parts of the waterway still invite even challenge, paddlers.”

 

What a pity. I love waterfalls and photographed many of them on this trip, but not the Winnipeg River. There were none to see from the highway. All gone in the dubious name of progress.  I have photographed the river on other occasions in many places, but not on this trip.

This also sums up our trip. The best of times the worst of times. We saw the good, the bad, and the ugly of Canada. We saw places of splendid beauty. We saw places of desolation.  we saw Canada rising and we saw Canada in sad decline.

Thinking about a Trip

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada

 

I always consider such little islets in the Canadian shield to be the essence of Canada. I am not sure why.

 

After the trip was over, I thought Charles Dickens summed it up well in the first sentence of his book A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of credulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going the other way…”

 

That really summed up this crazy trip. This wonderful trip. I had been thinking about it for a long time. I should have thought about longer.

The idea for the trip arose when I retired from the practice of law. That process took a while.

I was slow to jump into retirement. 2013 I  reached the age of 65 years and decided to retire.  I gave formal notice to my partners in the firm, about 6 months before my 65th birthday as I needed the time to finish my files and the partners needed to figure out what to do with all my clients.

I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. /When I returned from a 2 week holiday and returned to the file just to complete my file turnover, the firm offered me a position I had never considered—counsel to the firm. I had no idea what that meant. Neither did they. The idea was that I would stay in the firm, not retire and work mainly with helping other younger lawyers in the firm. To some degree I could work as much or as little as I wanted.

Frankly, it was a pretty good gig. I could work as much or as little (more or less) as I wanted. We agreed the firm could fire me at any time and I could quit without notice at any time.  Yet I was still working. After nearly 10 years of this I decided it was time to quite entirely. That is what I did at the beginning of 2023. I retired completely. I did not renew my license to practice law and was done with law. I had finished what I considered a great career, but it was time to turn to new adventures.

Now, in 2024, I had the time to do the things I always enjoyed doing.  Travelling was one of them. In the first year, 2023 Chris and I continued what we had been doing for about 9 years, namely spending 3 months in Arizona and a lot of time at our cottage at the lake.

This year we wanted to do something different. We decided to travel by car across the country! What a magnificent dream! What a dumb idea! Before we left my brother-in-law said we were too old for such a trip. He was probably right.

 

Starting out in Steinbach, approximately in the middle of the country, makes this tricky.  We decided to break up the trip into legs. First, we would travel to the east coast and back again. Really the distance of the country, in 6 weeks. We did not want to travel all the time. We rented rooms or homes  each for about a week, in 3 places in Nova Scotia—our favorite province.

Then, sadly,  my cousin Ernie Neufeld who had lived in the Ottawa area for most of his adult life, died suddenly. He was the cousin I had always been closest to. But we had grown apart on account of the vast distances between our residences. I wanted to go to his celebration of life in his last home town, Brockville, Ontario. It was right on the way. So it was a no-brainer, but it meant adding nearly a week to the trip. No problem, we thought. So we struck out on the road—a grand adventure. From the middle of the country to the east coast and back.  The second leg to be made from the centre of Canada to the far west coast back, would be done after Christmas. So, we hoped.

It turned out the plan was mad.  We returned home utterly exhausted.  We were forced to reconsider our plans. At least in part.