DAY 9 - Essipit and Les Escoumins - June 18, 2017

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.

Through The Porthole - Music!

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! 

Day 3 – Kahnawa:ke – Monday, June 12, 2017

One of the journey participants for Leg 2 was Kaniehtiio Horn-Batt, a Mohawk woman and a resident of the Kahnawa:ke Reserve just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. We spent the morning briefing on the ship talking to Tiio about her community. She told us about what it was like for her to grow up on the reserve with a Mohawk rights activist for a mother, and a white CSIS lawyer for a father. She gave us a brief history of the community, told us that the Mohawks are well known for being iron workers, especially right across the border in the US, and she told some incredible stories about her mother, Kahn-Tineta Horn, standing up for herself and her community. These aren’t my stories, so I won’t tell them here. Tiio says she is working on a podcast, to get her mum to share her stories with the world, and I hope she puts it out soon. A quick Google search for Tiio’s mum comes back with about a kajillion results, so you can learn all about her and her astonishing life, and I encourage you to do so.

Tiio spoke about the Oka Crisis of 1990, and how Kahnawa:ke stood in solidarity with the Mohawk people living at Kanesatake, AKA Oka when the protest occurred.

Just to give you a quick refresher: Kanesatake is a small native community west of Montreal, and like so many Native communities had (has) land-claim disputes. The owners of a 9-hole golf course on/near Kanesatake land wanted to expand the golf course from 9 holes to 18 holes. The expansion was to be built on a piece of disputed Mohawk land that included a burial ground. The Mohawks set up a barricade to halt construction. The police and then the army were brought in to shut down the protests. There was violence. I can’t possibly go in to all the details here, but you can get a much better refresher here, and there are lots of resources online.

After our briefing aboard ship, we all got on a bus and headed to Kahnawa:ke, to see the places Tiio spoke about. One of the great things about the C3 Expedition is the flexibility. Tiio suggested we start by taking a swim at the quarry, so that got added to the day’s agenda. In fact, it was our first stop. Apparently, this quarry was operational decades ago, until they hit a spring and it filled up with water. Now it’s the most tranquil swimming hole with crystal clear water. We would never have known the quarry was there if Tiio hadn’t been with us. It’s a hidden gem.

Our bus driver, Mitch, was also from Kahnawa:ke, and after the swim he and Tiio gave us a great tour of the community.

Mitch presented the C3 "Word Of The Day" that day. Photo by Martin Lipman.

They pointed out where the Mohawks from Kahnawa:ke set up their protest in solidarity with the people at Oka, and showed us where the army moved in and shot teargas at the protestors. Mitch has this massive scar on his forearm where the skin had burnt off when a teargas canister hit him. There is a hospital on the reserve, and a senior citizens complex adjacent to where the protest took place. The day the teargas was deployed the wind was blowing toward the hospital, and the hospital staff and patients were dosed with it. The people decided it was too dangerous to allow their elders to stay in the community, so they evacuated the seniors’ home and moved them out of town until it was safe for them to come back. Tiio and Mitch drove us down the evacuation route, a road lined with high-sided banks that goes under an overpass. White people stood on the banks and overpass and threw rocks at the old people as they were being evacuated... while the RCMP watched.

I know there are two sides to every story, but what kind of monsters throw rocks at old people? What kind of monsters deploy teargas on a hospital?  All this for a golf course? A GOLF COURSE?!?!? Seriously?  Think for a minute. What would happen if a developer came in built a golf course on your grandmothers’ grave? How would you feel? And to think the developer had the weight of the Canadian Armed Forces behind him. And public support not necessarily for the golf course, but against you. Think for a minute what that must be like.

One of my shipmates, James Raffan, wrote this really great piece about the visit to Kahnawa:ke, Tiio, and Oka. I would encourage you to stop reading this and go read that. He is far more eloquent than I can be on the subject. Plus, JR is a cool guy and you should get some exposure to him. 

There were some other great highlights on the informal bus tour of Kahnawa:ke, including stopping by Tiio’s mom’s place. After hearing the stories about her in the morning briefing, we practically begged Tiio to let us meet her. She boarded the bus to thunderous applause. What an honour to meet Mrs. Horn! Seriously, Google this woman. Her story is amazing!

Photo by Martin Lipman

As the bus tour continued, we drove past a small building with a few people standing outside and Tiio said, “Everyone look to the right! Look at those people!” She then explained that the small building, about the size of shed, is the local poutinerie. You walk up to the window and order your poutine, and then you hang out on the porch and eat it. In the Maritimes we have fish-and-chip stands, but Quebec? They do it up right! Anyway, the locals all call this poutine stand “The Porch Of Shame”, and apparently if you’re willing to eat at The Porch Of Shame (and who wouldn’t?) it is the right of anyone driving by to gawk at you. HAHAHA!!! I wish I had gotten a picture, but we drove by too fast and I was doing my part by having a good gawk! True confession: I wish we had stopped there instead of going to the quarry. If I had known there was a Porch Of Shame that served poutine I would have foregone the swim and walked there!

Next up, we visited the Karihwanoron Immersion School. Karihwanoron means "precious words", and the children who go there do all their studies in Mohawk. The children started the tour with the Mohawk Prayer of Thanksgiving or the "words that come before all else", in Mohawk of course. They begin and end every day with the prayer, which they recited based on a series of brightly coloured pictures around the classroom.

This, of course, was very useful to the largely non-Mohawk speaking group of listeners they were showing around. The things they were thankful for? The sky, the water, the plants, the animals, the people, etc. Such a simple and beautiful concept. Why don’t we settler-people do that in our schools? 

Next we made a visit to the Kahnawa:ke Environment Protection Office (KEPO) where we learned about the St. Lawrence Seaway and what a shitty deal it was for the community. Opened in 1959, the Seaway is a man-made channel that runs alongside the sections of the St. Lawrence that are too shallow for large ships to traverse. The Seaway cut a path through Kahnawa:ke, effectively cutting off the community (whose name means, ironically now, "place of the rapids") from the river.

Many homes and land were expropriated to build the Seaway, many of them given over unwillingly by the residents. Tiio’s great-grandfather had to be physically removed from his house the day the bulldozers showed up.  Try to imagine you have a gorgeous waterfront property. You can swim, you can fish, you can just set and look if you want to. And then to be told it is being taken away because industry giants need it more than you. Devastating. We have similar stories here in Nova Scotia (Shout out to Africville! Shout out to the fisherman who lost their livelihoods when the Canso Causeway was built!) and it is no less outrages than what we heard at Kahnawa:ke. Ah, the 1950s. What a time to be alive! The river was once a huge part of the community's recreation and culture, and the Kahnawa:ke Environment Protection Office is looking at ways to restore that connection to the water. There is a small bay that comes in to Kahnawa:ke from the St. Lawrence River, and the Environment Protection Office has put together a plan to make the bay useful to the community. As the water from the river enters the bay, its velocity slows dramatically causing any sediment being carried to settle out. This in turn causes the bay to be choked by vegetation, rendering it useless to the community as a recreational water body. No fishing, no swimming, no boating. The community is working with a consultant (AECOM) and has developed the first phase of a remediation program. Now for the hard part: the band needs to come up with several million dollars to implement the program. Being a field tech, I found the presentation and site visit fascinating, but I wasn't sure what my fellow C3ers were thinking. Turns out, they were all fired up too! In fact, there were brainstorming discussions for days afterward aboard ship about how KEPO might find the funds to get the ball rolling.  If anyone has ideas after reading this and might be able to help, contact me and I will put you in touch with the folks at KEPO.

We headed back to the ship after that, and had a wonderful dinner. Finally, around 6pm, after three incredible days in montreal, we pulled away from the dock!  We were underway, bound for Trois-Rivieres!

That evening, as we sailed down the St. Lawrence, we had our evening briefing in the open hanger, watching the river slip away behind the ship.

There was so much to talk about, after the day we had full of beauty and pain. So many of us were so shocked at the things we had learned about the systematic mistreatment of indigenous people in Canada. Hearts and minds opened, some for the first time. Andrea Menard, the wonderful and talented Metis singer and actor, was one of our journey participants for the leg, and made an excellent point that broke the whole thing open for me:

White people don’t know about the history of the First Nations, but the indigenous people think that we know and we just don’t care.  

Read that sentence again. It’s important. When we all understand that statement, reconciliation will begin. 

Day 2 - Montreal, Quebec - Sunday, June 11, 2017

Day 2, like Day 1 was jam packed. We started the day with a guided walking tour of the The Village, the LGBTQ2 neighborhood of Montreal. Being as it was Sunday morning, the streets were busy but not packed. Our guide spoke about safe spaces the community has created for at-risk LGBTQ2 youth, and the history and evolution of the neighborhood. The main drag (pardon the pun) is decorated with ball-streamers all summer. Very festive, and in a rainbow motif!

  

One stop on our walk was this small public park, called the "Parc de l'Espoir" (Park of Hope) memorializing members of the community who have died of AIDS.

The monuments were designed for people to sit on, and also to look like coffins. The space currently contains a public piano, open to anyone to sit down and tickle the ivories. These pianos are all over Montreal, and we saw them in other towns and cities we visited as well. As we approached this park, there was an older man playing. He was shirtless, had a deep tan, and was pretty rough looking; he almost certainly lived on the street. He was playing Bach, one of the Goldberg variations, and it was really beautiful. When he was done, he got up and left to a smattering of applause, and another person immediately sat down and started playing a pop-jazz number. 

I'm pretty sure this isn't the take-away our tour guide had in mind, but the stand out thing for me in some sections of this district were the drug addicts, wandering around like zombies. We saw heroin being bought and sold, right out in the open. There was a police presence, but they were kind of just co-existing with the addicts and the dealers. Being from a small city that is very conservative, it's jarring to see that kind of drug abuse up close and personal. I know heroin and hard drugs exist in Halifax (and let's face it, everywhere), it's just that it's not nearly so open and acceptable in the small towns as it is in big cities.

After lunch we went to the Redpath Museum on the campus of McGill University. The museum is pretty old school (even for a museum) and has some incredible fossils and taxidermy, and some actual Egyptian mummies.

C3 was invited to do a presentation at the museum, Leg 2's first "Ship-To-Shore" event, Our Chief Scientist for Leg 2, Dr. Lyne Morisette, spoke in the museum auditorium about the various science programs happening on C3, and how they will serve to broaden our understanding of the ecosystem from coast to coast to coast. After the talk, we all went outdoors to the courtyard beside the museum to have an informal chat about the expedition to anyone who happened by and was interested. C3 staff rolled out these giant floor maps of Canada, showing the route of the expedition. Next thing you know, kids and adults are pointing out where they are from, places they've visited, etc. It was really fun, and luckily for me the language barrier was minimal in Montreal.

During the map presentation, some of us broke off from the main group and walked a short distance to another area on campus where we got a brief presentation on the historical presence of indigenous people in and around the Montreal area from Kakwirano:ron Cook. (I assume he's a professor, but don't quote me on that!)

The inscription reads, "Near here was the fortified town of Hochelaga visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, abandoned before 1500. It contained 50 large houses, each lodging several large families who subsisted by cultivation and fishing."   Woah, woah, woah... cultivation? I legit did not know that First Nations were farmers. How could I not know this? I assumed all indigenous people in Canada were hunter/gatherers. It's such a basic fact about a whole population, and I had no idea. I wish I could go back in time to that afternoon and ask a lot more questions. I wish we learned this stuff in school!
The discussion around this monument centered around two things: 1) whether the area was actually abandoned as the settler explorers said it was, and 2) how long it took for this monument to be moved from a corner of the park to near a walkway. Apparently the monument had been sitting for years, facing a fence, and few people knew of its existence. It took eight years for Mr. Cook and other university staffers to have it moved, as it was seen as being controversial to acknowledge the presence of indigenous people on the land currently occupied by McGill. Eight years... now there's some bureaucracy at work. Yikes. There is a movement afoot to have the plaque updated, but don't hold your breath! 

We were back on the ship for dinner, and then we had a very special treat. The Association Latino-Américaine de Montréal came aboard ship for a showcase concert on the quarterdeck. They performed traditional songs in traditional garb and it was a really great time. The Leg 2 musicians (Heather Rankin, Andrea Menard, and Alex Cuba) each got up and performed as well. The weather was perfect and it was a really beautiful evening.