I wanted to post photos of Kakabeka Falls in Ontario, but sadly I have left home on my way to Arizona and left those photos behind. I will have to do that when I get back in the spring.

The road from Thunder Bay to Fort Frances was an absolute delight.  There was very little traffic and I could stop to photograph the countryside as often as I wanted.

There used to be 7 Anishinaabe First Nation communities along the Rainy River. In the early 1900s, after the Metis resistance, the province of Ontario forced the amalgamation of some of them to form Manitou Rapids First Nation. According to the Ryan McMahon of the Couchiching First Nation in north-west Ontario, this was an illegal amalgamation. By the province of Ontario because they wanted the land for settlers and they gave them our land for free.”

Here was an ad produced by the Canadian government:

“By order of Parliament: Land Grants are to be given for the purpose of settlement in Somerville Township.”

The governments (federal and provincial) spread such posters far and wide in many countries. They offered irrigated land with lots of nearby lumber with lots of potential farm land with access to markets and roads.  They did not tell too many people about the winters in Canada. But people did get land with documents on plans that showed road allowances. The Ontario government in 1853 invited “Capitalists, Tenant farmers, agricultural labourers, mechanics, Day labourers, and all parties desirous of improving their circumstances to immigrate to a new country.” Earlier people had been given parcels of land in the middle of nowhere. They had road allowances but often no road. So, the governments started a road system to attract settlers and facilitate enterprise.

Of course, the governments that did this never asked their partners—those nations that entered into treaties with the federal government—what they thought about what they were doing. The first nations never thought they were ceding the land to the European newcomers. They thought they made deals to share the land with the newcomers. But that is not how it worked out. The newcomers took over—everything.

Pam Palmater, an indigenous Canadian lawyer and professor of law,  had an entirely different view of these enterprises. As she said,

“To me these roads, railways, they’re like an infection. Not just metaphorically, but actually. It was a way of invading our territories, without legal authority, without consent. And what are roads used for now? They literally bleed our territories dry of people, of resources, of everything that matters and they pose a hazard.”

The Canadian government saw these roads as a way to open up the west. The indigenous people saw them as the imposition of colonialism without their consent. Who was right?