The latest Students on Ice expedition got underway this week. This time they're exploring the coastline of mainland Nova Scotia and the south coast of New Brunswick on their first ever Ocean Conservation Expedition. I'm so excited to have been invited to take part in the final leg of this expedition! I'll join the ship on the south shore on September 25 and will sail with her until the expedition wraps in Mulgrave on September 29. I'm planning on blogging about this trip, and you can find it HERE.
Polar Prince was docked at the Halifax waterfront earlier today for One Port City Day celebrations. I dropped by for a quick visit.
I'm loving the new livery. Classic "coast guard red" was great, but the blue suits her, don't you think? According to her owners, Miawpukek Horizon, she's sporting a graphene based marine coating that improves fuel efficiency and biodiversity impacts. Snazzy!
It has been a year-and-a-half since the Expedition ended, and since that time there have been
numerous projects and collaborations between participants of C3. Instantly
coming to mind is the beautiful co-written song between Leg 2 musicians Alex
Cuba and Heather Rankin. Living on opposite ends of the country couldn’t stop
them from recording the lullaby, DarkEyes, released on Heather’s 2017 Christmas album Imagine.
Another
remarkable collaboration is between Leg 2 alumni Jimmy Vigneaux and Dr. Lyne
Morissette. The two have teamed up to create Mission 100 Tonnes,
a grassroots movement, global in reach, that seeks to limit plastic consumption and to remove it
from our oceans. The work these two are doing is a bit like a juggernaut.
Unstoppable! Visit their website and join the Mission.
There are many, many more collabortions and creative partnerships born of the Canada C3 Expedition, and I suspect many have yet to emerge. One of my favourite projects to come out of the Expedition thus far is the book Connecting Canadians, Coast to Coast to
Coast. It is a beautiful volume, commemorating the Expedition through the
voices of the participants. You can get your own
copy here.
It was the
C3 book that was the catalyst for my own “collaboration” project. There is a
painting by Inuit artist Monika Rumboldt on page 105. “Loon on the Lake”, is gorgeous. It
inspired me to hook a rug. Here is Monika’s painting:
And here is
my tribute:
When I
started the rug, I was unsure how it would turn out so I kept it to myself. (What if it sucked?) But as
the colours revealed themselves, stitch by stitch, I grew confident in the piece. I wanted to get in touch with the artist to share it with her. I messaged C3
Wrangler Extraordinaire, Tara Mascarenhas, and she put us in touch via email. Monika was one of the Youth Ambassadors on Leg
5. I was aboard during Leg 2. She and I have not (yet) met in person.
I was
worried Monika would hate the rug. She could easily have told me to “cease and
desist” – I was, after all, ripping off her artwork. Instead, the response I
received was thoughtful, honest, generous, and encouraging. She shared with me the things that compel her
to make art, and the inspiration behind this particular piece. She wrote: "Being the daughter of a survivor (of domestic abuse), and a survivor myself, I began looking to art as a healing of sorts. I choose to do a more indigenous style of art because people had a better way of connecting to the stories it told. The bright colours used also help combat depression and anxiety. Given we live in a very cold climate, the long winters tend to be lifeless and bitter. I also work with the inquiry of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. They currently have a piece I donated up in an exhibit in Ottawa. The piece that you chose to represent is called "Loon on the Lake". It was inspired by an overnight trip my husband and I had out on the land. We had just finished hunting a black bear (traditional food for both our tribes/councils). As we were cleaning the meat near the water's edge, a Loon called out in the evening air. The sun was setting and the sky lit up with these beautiful pink and purple hues. The water was so calm, the only thing was a ripple from the Loon swimming. It was very inspiring." What a remarkable young woman.
I'm hoping to display the rug in an exhibition at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg this summer. It would be a fitting venue for my version of Loon on the Lake. The museum is just a few wharves down from where I first met Polar Prince as the crew readied her for the epic journey that would join together so many Canadians in solidarity, dialogue, and friendship from Coast to Coast to Coast.
I had the foresight to write down my thoughts a few days after I got home. Here they are, raw and mostly unedited.
Photo by Mike Sudoma
Leg 2 ended on Tuesday. It is now Saturday. I still haven't processed it all. Maybe I never will.
What I experienced, what I participated in, was much, much bigger than anything I could have imagined. Bigger than the group who made it happen, bigger than the ship.
First of all, the bonding was almost immediate. We felt like a cohesive unit by Day 2, and by Day 3 those bonds were so strong they'll never be broken. We are a juggernaut. The offshoots that will come out of this will be sprouting for years to come. We will change Canada.
The question hanging over me is: What will I do with this? I am not the same. I am stronger and more fragile, ready to accept and to make ripples. To be a disruptor, and to be wide open. During the trip I was surprised at how easily I cried. I allowed myself to feel it all - the joy, the suffering, the loss, the victories of people present and past. Physically and psychically I feel changed. My body is tired. My mind is unsettled. When I sleep my dreams are strange, and when I wake I don't know where I am. It feels like I have witnessed a traumatic incident, but I haven't. I have witnessed magic in its most potent forms: love and beauty.
We spent our last day of Leg 2 at Baie-Comeau, docked alongside a huge industrial wharf. It was nice being able to walk off the ship, but it was bittersweet knowing that we were almost done our adventure, and there would be no more splashy rides in the Zodiacs. Our morning was spent at a conference nearby, within walking distance. The conference was the CCUNESCO Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association AGM, hosted in Baie-Comeau, part of the Manicouagan Uapishka Biosphere Reserve. The conference is hosted in one of Canada's 18 Biosphere Reserves every year (or second year? I'm not sure), and the timing and location lined up perfectly with the arrival of C3 ship. The sessions that we were able to attend were really interesting, as the focus of the conference this year was Reconciliation in Sustainable Development. There are three Biosphere Reserves in Nova Scotia, and wouldn't you know it? I ran into someone I know. My friend Katy Hopkins was there!
In our requisite conference credentials, drinking our requisite conference-catered beverages. Photo credit to an unknown conference attendee!
It felt weird and good to see a familiar face after 10 days of being a stranger in a strange land. Seeing her was very comforting (even though I didn't need comforting in any way!), like a nice cup of tea on a cold day. Because our ship was docked and not anchored, Katy was able to come aboard for a tour later that day. She was excited to see the ship, but she was more excited to meet Alex Cuba :)
After lunch we headed up to the nearby Le Jardin des Glaciers. The Garden of the Glaciers is an interactive multi-media attraction inside a re-purposed cathedral, and it allows visitors to explore the geologic history of the region, and how it was formed by glaciers. I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it more if it had been air-conditioned. Honestly, making us watch a movie about ice while it was 30 degrees in the building was a lot to take! However, we got through it, and I have to say it was pretty cool (pardon the pun).
After that we headed back to the ship to pack and clean our cabins for the participants of Leg 3, and to finish up odds and ends like signing the drum in the Legacy Room and put the finishing touches on the Leg 2 mural panel in the hangar that was spearheaded by Sandra.
A journal was placed in each cabin with the intent that there would be a unique thread throughout the journey within each cabin. Lyne and I were scrambling to complete our journal entries for the next people who would take over our bunks. I finished up my part, and Lyne was still working on the journal in the van to the airport later that afternoon! She got her part done and sent the journal back to the ship with the van-driver. Phew!
We changed sheets, made up the bunks, cleaned out our cupboards, and swept and vacuumed the floors, making everything as clean and welcoming as our welcome had been. Then there was nothing left to do but say goodbye. Final hugs were shared. Final pictures were taken, including this one, one of my favourites. That's me with Al, one of the members of the totally awesome Polar Prince crew. Oh, and Kevin.
To quote Al re. Kevin: "He certainly knows how to turn on the Manson lamps, doesn't he?" Hahaha!
I held it together pretty good, hugging everyone with promises of staying in touch (we have, by the way). Then I turned to Dardia, darling Dardia, and we cried all over each other!
Fortunately, there wasn't a ton of time to spend crying because about a fifteen of us had to get to the airport; we were all on the same flight back to Montreal, and from there we splintered all over the country. The airport in Baie-Comeau is pretty small, with just a few flights everyday. The plane we were about to board was the same plane that the Leg 3 people flew in on. As the Leg 3-ers walked in to the airport (which is pretty small) we formed up an impromptu choir behind the security windows and sang River of Nations to them. (I wrote about the writing of this song here.) What a welcome for them, and what a way for us to say goodbye!
Each leg of the Expedition has some very special Canadians along as journey participants: Olympians! Leg 2 was exceptional in that we had two, Guylaine Bernier (1976, rowing, also unanimously elected as the Mayor of Leg 2) and Jennifer Jones (2014, Gold-Medallist, curling). Jennifer and I hit it off, and ended up being bus-buddies; we often wound up sitting together when we took a bus to an event or museum. Imagine our delight when, completely by chance (fate?) we ended up sitting together on the plane! It certainly made for a pleasant flight home.
We all got off the plane in Montreal, and more hugs were exchanged as we headed for our different gates and hotels. It was bittersweet. Sad that our time on the C3 Expedition was truly over, but so intensely grateful for the experiences and opportunities we had been given.
We arrived ashore via Zodiacs to a wonderful welcome: an elementary school (we would visit later that day) stood on the shores waving posters and banners and cheering our arrival. It was so cute!
The building is beautiful, with an airy courtyard in the middle.
We had a whirlwind tour of the facility, including Coast Guard rescue operations, the marine animal research facility, and hydrographic services. We spent less than two hours there; I could easily have spent the whole day.
Holding tanks full of turbot are studied at various stages of life.
SHRIMP!
The little white piece of equipment in front is used for remote-controlled survey.
This is a self-righting vessel, meaning that if it capsizes and flips completely upside-down it will roll itself over so that it is right-side-up again. Now who wants to go for a boat ride?
This skeleton of a grey seal is on display in the corridor.
This is the skeleton of a beluga.
Before we left, we were all gifted a beautiful poster detailing the "Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain". It's gorgeous and, in light of recent revelations about my Acadian heritage, I especially love that it connects Atlantic Canada with Quebec.
Next up was a visit to the Pointe au Pere Maritime Historic Site where we visited the Empress of Ireland pavilion. The museum is full of artifacts from the wreck, thoughtfully displayed, and our costumed interpretive guide was excellent. But, far-and-away the best part of the museum is the short film they show in a small movie theatre off the main gallery. The intro to the movie is a 30-second time-delayed live shot of the theatre audience filing in and taking seats. When we realized we were the previews, all manner of subdued silliness ensued while we waited for the feature attraction. The movie tells the story of a few passengers boarding the ship, and then the collision that caused her to sink. Images are displayed on the screen and front, but also on the side-walls of the theatre, plus they use flashing lights, fog machines, and fans to make it total sensory experience. It is very effective story telling, emotional and terrifying in all the right ways.
After lunch we were went to the Ecole Bleue, the elementary school whose pupils had greeted us upon our arrival at the wharf that morning! The school uses emergent-learning to teach the students, with an emphasis on their connection to the environment and the ocean. We were there for an open-house, where the children presented projects they had been working on all year, like a science fair that included biology, ecology, and social history. The displays and presentations were fantastic!
After touring around and looking at the student projects, the C3 team spread out the giant floor map for a presentation to the kids.
After that, we had some time to wander around the school and take it all in. The school has been decorated by professional artists who worked with the children to paint murals all over the walls and lockers. They did an amazing job adding hundreds of species of the St. Lawrence River in very life-like and accurate portrayals. The upper floors are decorated to reflect the surface and middle-parts of the water column. The bottom floor is scheduled to be painted next, depicting the sea-floor.
Imagine our surprise and delight to find that they had included our ship, Polar Prince, in their mural. What an honour!
C3ers were stoked to discover this part of the mural!
We had a wonderful day in Rimouski, our last full day of the expedition before the Leg 3 participants took over the next day. We spent the evening aboard ship, hanging out and saying good-bye over a special hangar-dinner prepared by Chef Matt.
The crew joined us for dinner, and for speeches and special presentations, including this one:
JR and Joanne present the Plunger d'Or.
This was a very special award, called the Plunger d'Or. I'm proud to say Leg 2 was the recipient of this award, for not having caused any of the toilets to back up during the entire leg... something Leg 1 couldn't attain, and for which the crew was especially thankful for.
The sunset was particularly beautiful that evening, and I couldn't resist the urge to take the mic and lead the Nova Scotians in a rousing version of Farewell To Nova Scotia.
The sun was setting in the west...
When I was done singing, the bosun, Kevin "Canso" Newell, told me something strange happened to his eyes while he was listening ("They got all wet."), and Captain Guy hugged me and thanked me and told me it gave him goosebumps. That meant so much to me. I was glad to share a beautiful song in a beautiful place.
We spent the morning of our ninth day at the small First Nations reserve, Innue Essipit. Having been educated in a system that I'm beginning to realize places very little emphasis on Canadian history and even less so on Indigenous history, I didn't know that Innu and Inuit are not the same thing. I know the difference between Austria and Australia, so how is it that I don't know the difference between Innu and Inuit? Whoever said "Ignorance is bliss" is full of shit. Chances are you don't know the difference between Innu and Inuit either, so let me fill you in a bit.
"Like many other Aboriginal peoples, until recently the Innu were known by what was, for them, foreign labels, rather than by the name they used for themselves. The early missionaries, encountering Innu who came to the St. Lawrence River French settlements from the nearby hills, called them 'Montagnais', meaning 'mountain people'. In Labrador this term was sometimes changed to 'Mountaineer.' By contrast, those Innu living in the tundra region of northern Labrador and Québec, who became known to Europeans later, were called 'Naskapi.' This word is of uncertain origin, but for the missionaries it meant a pagan and 'less civilized' group than the Montagnais. In the 20th century, anthropologists recognized that these two groups had, for the most part, a single common culture, and so coined the term 'Montagnais-Naskapi'.
In the 1980s the Innu themselves made it known that they preferred to be called 'Innu', a word meaning 'people' in their own language. They also began to publicly use their own name, Ntisinan, for their traditional territory. Despite the apparent similarity between 'Innu' and 'Inuit', the two words are not related.
In terms of culture and language, the Innu are the easternmost group of a very widespread people commonly known as the Cree, another term probably of European origin. Except for the Plains Cree, whose culture has much in common with that of the other horse-mounted buffalo hunters of the northern prairies, Cree groups (including the Innu) all inhabit the boreal forest and share a broadly similar cultural tradition." (Innu Culture)
We had a wonderful welcome at the community centre with singing and dancing, and they fed us some traditional Innu foods: banock with caribou fat, fir jelly, cedar jelly, and cranberry jelly, and a piping hot cup of Labrador tea to wash it down.
Having just had one of Paul-the-Cook's giant ham and bologne and eggs and hashbrowns and fruit and toast breakfasts aboard ship, I wasn't hungry at all. However, the food was delicious, and since I am a pig (and an opportunistic one at that) I had seconds of the delicate little snacks we were provided. When is the next time I'm going to have the chance to eat caribou? Or homemade jellies made from trees? It could be years, or it could be never. I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by. The food was really tasty. The caribou fat had a mild taste, and the jellies were woodsy, savory, and fairly delicate tasting.
The Labrador tea is brewed from a plant that grows wild in the area, and had been pointed out to me the day before by the Parks Canada guide who I hiked up the fjord with. We stopped and picked some, and he told me that tea could be made with it. Little did I know I would be drinking it the very next day, and quite enjoying it. Now I wish I had asked more specific and pointed questions about it, so I could forage for it here at home.
After our welcome at the Essipit community centre, we boarded the bus for a tour of their very small community. The reserve is less than one square kilometre, so the tour was quite brief! Our guides were community leaders who took great pride in their community, as they should; there is zero unemployment on the reserve. ZERO. I feel like the significance of this amazing fact may have been lost on the Westerners in our group, but to an East-Coaster this is a totally foreign concept. I asked the guide to repeat and clarify what they meant. About 40 years ago there was a change in leadership and mindset on the reserve, and one of the goals was that everybody should have a job. Maybe its because I'm a Maritimer, but I didn't realize that 0% unemployment was like, an actual possible thing. What an accomplishment!
Next up we headed off the reserve to the Coast Guard Marine Communications & Traffic Services facility at Les Escoumins. This is a hub of communication for all marine traffic on the St. Lawrence River. The building overlooks the river, and there are about three dozen computer monitors tracking all the traffic in real time. We were able to spot Polar Prince at anchor on one of the monitors.
There were so many tankers and cargo ships on the monitors; the importance of the St. Lawrence River for trade and industry in Canada cannot be overstated.
This facility is also responsible for all marine rescue coordination for the province of Quebec. They coordinate all manner of rescue efforts; anything from pleasure craft vessels running out of gas on tiny tributaries, to full-on ship wrecks and groundings in the St. Lawrence, and everything in between. Luckily it was a busy day on the river, but everything was running smoothly while we were there. The C3-ers thanked the Coast Guard staff for the nice visit and hoped we wouldn't have to talk to them again :)
There are huge sections of the St. Lawrence River where a designated pilot is required for all vessels of a certain tonnage and class to pass safely. A short distance from the Coast Guard Marine Communications & Traffic Services building is the Pilot Boat station, and that's where we headed next. When a ship enters this part of the river, a pilot is ferried out to the ship on a pilot boat, where he boards and takes control of the vessel in order to navigate it safely through the shipping channel. The pilots have extensive knowledge of the river and its terrain, conditions, and navigation rules.
One of the pilot boats, docked at the station.
Guylaine Bernier is an Olympic Rower. Here we see her moonlighting as a pilot boat captain.
From the pilotage building we watched one of the pilot boats leave the station and head out to meet an approaching cargo ship. The cargo ship maintained its speed and course as the pilot boat came alongside. As the two vessels coordinated speed and position with exceptional precision, the pilot jumped from the pilot boat onto a ladder on the cargo ship and boarded her. This is an incredibly dangerous part of the job, and I can't imagine having to do it everyday.
By the time we wrapped up our tour of the Pilot Boat Station and the Coast Guard it was lunch time. The mayor and council of Les Escoumins graciously hosted us for lunch, and a brief presentation and reception at the community centre before ushering us off to one of the town's points of pride: whale watching at the Parks Canada Marine Environment Discovery Centre.
Staff at the Marine Discovery Centre gave us a brief intro about the whales that inhabit the waters of the St. Lawrence, then had us watch a 10-minute movie about marine life in the area. I guess the long days and short sleeps were starting to catch up, because (with the exception of Carole) the lot of us fell asleep. Another first for me courtesy of Canada C3: I don't think I've ever fallen asleep in public before! The movie was just so soothing, and the theatre so dim and cozy...
The nine-and-a-half minute nap did me wonders, and after we left the theatre we headed outside to wander around the shoreline of the Marine Discovery Centre, or to explore the river by getting in.
A group of C3-ers get suited up for a diving adventure in the St. Lawrence.
While a few people opted to go snorkelling/diving, most of us went and sat on the rocky outcrop between the Marine Discovery Centre and the river to enjoy the beautiful sunshine-y day, and to watch the whales feeding mere metres from where we sat.
That little black bump just past the rocks is a minke whale.
We saw dozens of whales, mostly minkes and a few belugas too. Even though we had been seeing whales for two days, it never got boring and every sighting was exciting. I managed to capture a video of one of the minkes coming up to the surface and then diving.
My voice in this video illustrates the typical reaction I had every time I saw a whale. First you hear me trying to contain my excitement so as not to frighten the whale, as if me yelling "wow" would scare it off. That's Dennis saying "Boy, that's close." and Parks Canada staff saying "There's a dive." Minkes tend to break the surface once or twice (presumably to breath) before they dive down swallowing up prey as they go. Off camera you can't see me, Heather, and Andrea exchanging gleeful looks of amazement with each other... but you can hear me giggling with delight and awe. This was our reaction to every whale we spotted, despite this video being quite possibly and literally our 100th sighting. I mean, it just never got old. Andrea, in particular, found being in the presence of the whales, especially the belugas, to be very spiritual and profoundly emotional. There is something deeply soothing about seeing them, and Andrea was able to put it into words in ways that I can't quite capture. I'm glad she was there to talk to me about it that afternoon.
We went back to Polar Prince for a quick dinner, then back into the Zodiacs and put ashore at the Marine Discovery Centre for a public event, the C3 "Ship T'Shore Sharing Show". Andrea, Heather, and Alex all gave spirited performances, and Dardia performed her graduation slam poem as well. You can watch part of the Facebook live broadcast of the show here. Another awesome day was done, and it was back to the ship for a quiet evening underway.
We had three wonderful musicians with us for Leg 2, and they somehow found the time to write a song, translate it into four different languages, and record it while aboard Canada C3. Good job, Alex Cuba, Andrea Menard, and Heather Rankin! Special mention to Kaniehtiio Horn (singing the Mohawk verse) and Dardia Joseph (singing the French verse). And a big shout out to the C3 Comms team for putting this music video together!
