The Fishing Weirs of the K’omoks First Nation

This Christmas as we took a family stroll along the Courtenay Riverway Heritage Walk I was enamored by my sister-in-law’s mother’s account of the strange posts jutting out of the water of the Salish Sea Comox Inlet. It wasn’t until I returned this Easter that I was able to take a closer look. Fortunately it was low tide so I mimicked the locals and jaunted upon the ebbed sea floor.  As the story goes, the town of Courtenay, B.C. has submitted a proposal to the World Heritage Fund to have the fishing weirs designated as an official world heritage site. Why you ask? Because this sophisticated construction, built by the K’omoks First Nation, is carbon dated to be over 1200 years old!  The application is pending but our fingers are crossed.

I asked myself as I was jumping across tide pools, how can widely dispersed tree trunks possibly contain fish? Upon further research I stumbled upon Nancy Greene’s work, which answered my questions. Nancy Greene is a local Archeologist who spent a year studying these weirs. Time and water wore the majority of the posts away so in its prime, the K’omoks fishing weir looked something like this:

The evidence of the weirs’ structures shows that whoever engineered their design knew that their complexity would not only catch enormous numbers of fish but also stand the test of a significant amount of time.

 

 

 

Summary of the School Year Wordle

Summary of the School Year Wordle

Week Fifteen: For the Love of Blog

As a result of the feedback I received on my last posting this writer feels the needs to clarify a few misinterpretations.

Due to the fact that the Slave Lake fire hits a personal chord for some of the greatwhite’s readership, I have to apologize for some of the content of my last posting that may have come across as being insensitive to those who lost their homes and those who were affected by the aftermath of the fire. Naively, this writer was unaware that she had readership in the location she is writing about. Fortunately, there are readers.

Allow me to explain: In the last posting I wrote something to the effect that I was not aware of God’s presence in these parts and was surprised by the wording of the Canyon Creek sign ‘God Bless Us We Will Rebuild’. Naturally, I received criticism about this as it came across as an insinuation that I thought Slave Lake was a region of godless people. I did not mean to assume that God isn’t present here. I meant that I had not heard a lot of mentioning of religious or spiritual deities in the conversations I’ve had while living here. It seems obvious to me now, in hindsight, that dogma and spirituality are oftentimes rejuvenated in the wake of crisis situations. And I am certainly not one with the right to judge the magnitude of anyone’s religiosity at any time.

As if one insensitive comment in one week’s blog wasn’t enough, the latter section of the same posting was also received with objection. I had mentioned that although the Slave Lake fire was a tragedy and that it was irritating to have to replace fridges, it could not be on par with the global tragedies such as civil wars or relentless poverty. And, while globally that may be true, to people who lost their homes and their sentimental possessions such as photo albums and cherished heirlooms, I realize that this may have seemed insensitive. Because, who am I to comment when I, fortunate as I am, did not lose my home or possessions? So readers, I thank you for your feedback as it had shown me that, even though it’s just my blog, my perspective may affect the lives of others.

After all, it’s important for writers to ask themselves am I writing this to inform, to share, or to be provocative?

Week Fourteen

After five days of camping the roads to Slave Lake and Canyon Creek opened up again. I actually stayed one more night at the camp site because I was enjoying sleeping in the crisp May air. I hadn’t seen any evidence of fire yet since Kinuso and surrounding area weren’t threatened. So when I drove over Prichuk hill and saw rust-coloured trees and smoldering underbrush, the denial was over. My friend Barbara, whose apartment burnt down in town, told me that her denial is finally over too (she had barely packed anything because so many people had under estimated the fire). The sign at the Canyon Creek entrance read “God Bless You We Will Rebuild”. I had had no idea we were in God’s country because of all the “Jesus Christs” that people around here throw around. But for some reason I had to swallow hard to get that lump in my throat down driving past that sign.

Apparently the neighbours were renegade during the evacuation and refused to abandon their houses. Instead, whenever the authorities came to make sure the houses were empty, the neighbours scattered into the woods. When the police had gone, the men got into their Hagglunds and put out fires threatening their neighbour’s houses. There are good Samaritans amongst us. As a result, my landlord’s house was saved. Because of gusting winds and sporadic fire balls some structures burned while ones beside them remain in tact. Indeed a cruel reality for those who lost their homes.

Probably the most bizarre consequence of the wildfire was that because the wildfire put out the electricity, 4000 fridges and freezers had to be thrown out! I never knew, naive as I am, that cooling appliances cannot be salvaged when having sat idle with food rotting in it. Apparently the smell of rancid meat cannot be bleached out of fridge plastic. So the M.D. came by a few days after people were allowed back in their homes and picked up your duck-taped fridge. A company from Calgary was hired to take all the freon out of the appliances and ship them down south to be recycled.

I feel lucky to have a home to go back to and a school to work in. Others weren’t so lucky. But I also think that the branding of tragedy and disaster are slightly overzealous. Countries torn by tsunamis and earthquakes without the luxury of house insurance are in a different category. Sloughs of donations flooded Slave Lake days after the fire and they actually had to be stopped there was so much generosity. I can only be grateful to live in an affluent country where the most of our worries are replacing a fridge.

 

Week Thirteen

Since the great diaspora from the Slave Lake Wild Fire, much of the inhabitants of Slave Lake are heading back to what’s left of their town today. Us Canyon Creekers are also allowed back home. After my week sejour in Edmonton, I packed my Wanderer2 tent and Coleman stove in my car and called the under rated  Spruce Point Park Camp Ground home for this work week.  Aside from the displacement, being an evacuee does come with it’s advantantes. I was expecting quite the brigade of refugees at Spruce Park since they were offering free camping to evacuees on a large field. I was anticipating Slave Lake’s equivalent of Woodstock-style camping complete with makeshift lean-tos and mud pits. To my relief, however, there were no tie-dye-clad-mud-wrestlers in fact, there was barely anyone. The camp director took pity on my solo status and offered me a lake-side spot free of charge.  He asked me how long I was staying because the campground was totally booked for the July long weekend, and I told him I was hoping I wouldn’t be there that long! Fortunately I was not alone as my host parents and their fifth wheel were also there awaiting the roads to Canyon Creek to open.

One can never go wrong with crocs.

I heard wind of an evacuee fund and thus drove to High Prairie the following day to inquire at the Evacuation Centre. While driving past Faust I saw a black bear mowzy out of the woods, ignore the traffic, and cross the highway. I was fortunate to get this shot.  If I come across a cougar then I will really have seen it all up here.

High Prairie was rife with evacuees the prior weekend, but my tardiness proved efficient as there were no queues to wait in that Tuesday evening. I almost felt guilty qualifying for evacuee funding because I wasn’t as affected by the fire as some other people were. I have been feeling so grateful and fortunate lately that I have experienced so much here and have met so many amazing people that I sometimes wonder what life will be like after the Great White North.

I’m tenting for one more night tonight at my picturesque camp site. The nights no longer get dark but dim by the sun set. Tomorrow I’ll see from the saved house that I live in how devastatingly charred the surroundings are.

 

GreatHotNorth

Why did I mention last week that I was beginning to feel as if I had nothing to blog about?

As I’m writing this, the winds continue to blow and the fires persists around Slave Lake and I can’t help but feel unsettled about the devastation that caused so many to lose everything they know. I feel a sense of shame around having salvaged my meager possessions as my colleagues and new acquaintances mourn their burned down homes, and for some, their life long community.

During Jade’s birthday party on Saturday night we heard wind of a fire brewing south of Canyon Creek. One of the party invitees suggested we take her Ranger, which is really a glorified three-seater quad, to the top of a nearby hill to see if we could see the fire. From our new vantage point the fire seemed districts away but I decided to pack my belongings anyway before going to sleep.

Our sentiments on Sunday morning were an extension of our lackadaisical attitudes from the night before so we weren’t prepared when the ultimate warning of half an hour for evacuation came. In a matter of minutes I helped Jade pack year’s-worth of accumulation into boxes and cloth bags. Cat in carrier and children into car seats. Canyon Creek residents were to evacuate to Slave Lake where the forest fire was thought to no longer be a threat.

Once in Slave Lake, Jade et. al. went to stay with acquaintances and other evacuees registered at the Northern Lakes College.  I hit up Barbara’s pad where I comfortably ate a falafal wrap. Out of Barbara’s window we could see the smoke from the east marry the smoke from the south west.

After walking about town and experiencing the 100 km/hr winds and the dust-pelting that went along with it, Barbara and I decided to offer our volunteerism at the college refugee camp. It was on our drive to the college that we realized the traffic lights were not longer working and that the Lakefm frequency was no longer available. A dark cloud grew overhead and ash began to fall from the sky. My cellphone rang and Jade hysterically announced that Slave Lake was evacuating .

I wish I could say I was the proud owner of cool collectedness, but I when the gridlock of crisis hit Main Street, I panicked. I parked in the Zero Frills parking lot as Barbara ran to pack a bag. She saved her lap top and a bag of summer clothes.

When we finally made it out of Slave Lake, thanks to the attempts of the authorities to guide traffic out of town, Highway 2 was open to the west. We followed a caravan of vehicles in a slow procession back towards Canyon Creek. After a while we started to notice cars turn around and head back to Slave Lake and we eventually heard that the fire up ahead had jumped the highway and that route was now closed too. There was no going east and no going west and the thousands of cars that were on that 20 km stretch of highway had two choices; to go to the Evilmart parking lot or to find a nearby beach.

To the south, east, and west were gray sheets of smoke and to the north lay the auspicious presence of the lake. At this point Barbara and I began to scheme raft designs and under water communication gestures. We kept our eyes peeled for promising dirt roads that could lead us to our cool, wet haven in case the surrounding poplars were engulfed by flames.

After 45 minutes of a forest fire’s equivalent to water cooler conversations with our fellow evacuees, Highway 2 east was reopened and Barbara wasted no time merging the Ford Focus back into the evacuation queue. We progressed eastward slowly as thousands of people drove towards Athabasca and Westlock, detouring fires all along the way. It took us 6.5 hours to get to Edmonton but I felt, and continue to feel, grateful for having escaped mother nature’s ferocity.

~More to come.

Week Nine II

When my brother George and I were teens we visited our uncle Al in Phoenix, Arizona. On a stop over in Minneapolis we bumped into Benjamin Salisbury who played Brighton in the ninety’s sitcom The Nanny. He was pretty much the only “celebrity” I had met up until I moved to Kinuso. Last week the Kinuso Health Centre put on a morning  STI workshop for the students in the community. The lure for the students wasn’t learning about gonoherpasyphilaids , no it was that celebs Rudy Youngblood and Joe McGrath were invited to speak for the afternoon. Rudy Youngblood played Jaguar Paw in the 2006 blockbuster Apocalypto. Because of his Cree and Comanche heritage, Rudy travels to First Nations communities in North America to speak to the youth about following your dreams and persevering to get to where you want to be in life. Rudy’s story is a quintessential rags-to-riches one. He was orphaned at six and helped raise himself and his sisters from that day on. His success, he told, can only be attributed to his fighting attitude. He boxed and grass danced in high school. After high school Rudy toured with his aboriginal dance troupe and was approached by a Julliard scout to come and teach movement at the revered Music-Dance-Drama school. Rudy’s successes came out of a persistence for perfection, a respect for his fellow human, and a refusal to accept hand-outs. It was truly inspiring to listen to his life story. 

Joe McGrath’s motto is, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. The BC Lions footballer is a 300 pound teddy bear with a charismatic flare that would make any unmotivated teen do their homework. McGrath’s story wasn’t as leitmotifed as Rudy’s but was dually as provocative. He always wanted to play football and his confidence in himself in junior high stiffled his academic output. As he was told that he wouldn’t amount to much without a high school diploma, Joe put mind over matter and achieved high grades in high school. He was offered a handful of Canadian football scholarships and, similarly, a handful of American ones, but Joe turned them down awaiting the slight chance of a scholarship from a university in Miami. Joe did, unexpectedly, get offered a $250 000 scholarship from that university where he studied for 5 years. The dolla billz y’all were twinkiling in the student’s eyes.McGrath’s ultimate message was one of stay in school, listen to your teachers because they genuinely care, and, stereotypically yet poignantly, follow your dreams.

Thus passed another riveting day in Kinuso

Week Nine

The Peace Country’s landscape has come a long way from snow covered highways and frost bitten ears. The poplars are beginning to bud and Barbara and I saw two cranes along the highway last week and we took them as harbingers of spring. The fawns stipple the side of the road so driving the 250 kms to and from Edmonton has changed from fearing for one’s life because of black ice to fearing for one’s life because of wildlife. There truly is never a dull moment.

Amidst the exam preparation milieu at school we have been beading vamps for our moccasins. Sorry tweens, these vamps don’t resemble Edward Cullen. In fact, these vamps are tanned elk hide used for the top of our moccasins.

Whenever we have company at school, my colleague Lynn ensures there is fried bannock and steeped tea. Lynn unveiled her bannock-making recipe to me the other week. Her unconventional measuring techniques (eye ball as you go) is as follows:

Bannock

• Pour oil (canola or otherwise) generously into a cast-iron skillet as to cover the bottom (about an inch deep)
• Turn oil to high heat until warm and then to medium heat when ready to fry
• As the oil heats up, mix approx. 5 cups of flour with 1 tsp of salt, and 3 heaping tbsps of baking powder, stir
• Add warm water until dough is of bread dough consistency
• Do not kneed (otherwise bannock will get too hard)
• Push dough flat onto floured counter top (1 inch thick)
• Cut dough as you’re about to fry them into palm-size pieces

Frying

• At this point the oil should be hot enough to fry. Turn down to medium
• Put about three pieces into the frying pan
• Fry each side approximately 5 minutes per side (or until brown)
• Cool on paper towel until warm

                  ~Enjoy!

Week Eight

Land Ho

I was moved to take a new route on one of my daily runs. While listening to Jian’s velvety voice on the Q podcast, I jogged past a yard which had, to my first impression, a big ‘ol rusty world war one fighter jet on it. Upon second look, I realized that the enormous lawn adornment was some sort of ship and I vowed to myself to find out why it was there by the week’s end. With pad and camera in hand, I was better prepared to document the boat the following day. Two wild-haired kids cycled into the yard with the curious-looking vehicle so I shouted hello and asked if they knew who the boat belonged to. This is how I met Gordon Wolters, the children’s father and proud owner of the vessel. Encircled by Gordon’s handsome brood of children, he proudly informed me of the boat’s history. It is a unique design by ship builder Bruce Roberts, who is stationed in The Netherlands (coincidence?). Wolters purchased the 39-foot sailboat off of ebay from a Russian boat enthusiast who put thousands of dollars into making the boat sailable.  Wolters bought the steel boat off of the Russian for, “the price people around here pay for an ATV”.  Seeing as I had no idea how much people around there pay for an ATV, Wolters enlightened me that this was around eight thousand dollars. I asked Gordon what his intentions were with this boat and he told me that he was slowly fixing it up to make it an eco-friendly charter sail boat. He has coined the project The Northern Alberta Net Zero Sailboat Project (as seen on facebook) and Wolters hopes the boat might be a catalyst for more sailing to happen on Slave Lake as the lake has winds and space ideal for sailing. In the meantime the Wolters family has purchased a leisure sailboat which they can take out to train their sea legs and their nautical skills. We’re all eagerly anticipating the ice to melt so that I can tag along on one of the Wolters’ family excursions. ~Ay Ay.

Week Seven

I Saw The Sign <- yes, you can click this link to listen to the stylistics of Ace of Base

After taking a small hiatus from the greatwhite for spring break, the north has morphed from great white to great mud. Ski and snow footwear have been replaced by gum boots whose factory rubber smell brings me back to sliding in my mother’s vegetable garden many a moon ago. I initially thought I would be able to make it through spring up here without having to buy rubbers, but I was verbally ridiculed on numerous occasions for such naivety. The fishing shacks have been removed off the lake and the ice is beginning to give in to its inevitable transformation. I have retired my skiis for runners and mud flaps (yet the fear of being pounced on by a cougar doesn’t dissolve along with the snow melt).

Week five seemed to transform my move to the north from novel to habitual and thus inspirations for writing became less obvious. Fortunately, on one voyage out to the Boreal Nature Centre, I was titillated by a sign that I thought was hilariously indicative to our setting. There are, happily, a few places around Slave Lake where snowmobiling, quading, (is that dirtbiking?), are not permitted and I am intuitively drawn to these sanctuaries. 9 Mile Creek Recreation Area is another one of these diamonds in the rough. Another point for Parks Canada. Spotting this signage did spark my curiosity to finding more unconventional guideposts. Thus began the photo scavenger hunt.

No quading or dirt biking allowed in this conservation park

According to my car pool, if you see a moose on the road, hit the gas so that the animal will land on your roof and not go through your windshield...??

In case you were thinking of ATVing faster