They were the original settlers of the land, the indigenous peoples who migrated to North America from their origins in Asia, and who occupied North America for presumably thousands of years before the entrance of the "white man", European explorers in search of fabled India with its spice trade promising culinary and preserving-curing resources at a time when food was vulnerable to decay and people were ill-nourished.  Finding North America in the belief that India had been reached, the native inhabitants were named "Indians".



Now, they are known as First Nations Peoples, as aboriginals, as native peoples.

They hunted and foraged, became agrarian, some tribes were nomadic moving every season to take advantage of natural resources.  They lived off the land as best they could.  They were primitive to a degree.  Some tribes were warlike and others were not.  Tribal raids were common and some were dreaded by other tribes as fiercely aggressive and acquisitive of territory and resources.

When European explorers and then European settlers came to the land some wrote of their experiences with the native peoples.  There are many accounts of how desperately vulnerable native peoples were to stark winters in Canada when food availability became scarce and hunting compromised with the result that people starved to death.

Treaties were signed as nation-to-nation recognition of land ownership, between the British Crown and various native tribes which still have not been resolved to the present day between Canada, which remains an integral part of the British Commonwealth and those tribes' descendants.  And those treaties still unresolved remain a thorn in the side of Canadians, their government and First Nations peoples of Canada.

The reserve system which originated as a way to convince aboriginals that they could preserve their heritage and their traditional way of life without interference from governments at any level, and with the federal government paying out yearly compensation to the reserves has never been a successful solution to aboriginals' refusal to join mainstream society, preferring to live as their ancestors did.  They do not, and cannot live as their ancestors did; a constant struggle against nature and the elements.

But living separately and apart from mainstream society also means that they cannot fully take advantage of health, education and employment opportunities present in urban aggregations.  The funding handed to tribal-reserve councils meant to sustain and maintain the traditional way of life where native communities live in government-subsidized housing with no individual ownership, no pride, no wish to help themselves, no employment to keep themselves busy and fulfilled has led to generations of alcoholism and drug dependency where the needs of children are neglected, and aggression and sexual abuse is rampant.

People are fixated on watching television, on driving snowmobiles, neglecting the nutritional and nurturing needs of the young.  Glue-sniffing is rampant among young aboriginal children, and the suicide rate among children is appalling.  Their educational opportunities are constrained, and their family lives are miserable; children taken into the hands of child welfare are disproportionate by a wide margin between the aboriginal community and other Canadians.

Solutions are seemingly impossible to find.  The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the First Nations leadership are continually at odds; the Assembly of First Nations has been incapable of producing positive solutions let alone working recommendations beyond the status quo and more funding,  and an adversarial situation has long been the norm between a puzzled government and an inept Assembly.  On reserves many chiefs and their band councils are corrupt mis-managers.

Which is precisely what Theresa Spence, Chief of the northern Ontario reserve of Attawapiskat represents; a failed leader incapable of meeting the needs of her people despite the geological treasures present on lands the tribe owns and for which they have garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in service contracts and millions in payment for allowing an international diamond mining company to operate there.

Each time gross mismanagement has led to a crisis on her reserve Chief Spence has declared an emergency and called upon the federal government to solve it.  No amount of money appears to be able to solve her reserve's problem of dysfunction.  She has latterly set herself up as a major figure in the long simmering battle between the federal government (the people of Canada) and the aboriginal community, threatening to die from a self-imposed hunger strike if the Prime Minister of Canada does not come to heel at her behest.

She, and the "Idle No More" social protest movement refuse to engage in serious introspection to determine what they can and should do to help themselves.  It is simply that much easier to blame government than to judge themselves and make an effort to improve themselves through the effort it would take to become responsible for themselves. 

Instead, threats and intimidation, illegal blockades, violent confrontations become the order of the day in confronting not their own limited sense of responsibility but their ever present grievance against history and fortune.

Perhaps not all mothers regret profoundly their children leaving home - even while appreciating that their children, when of age, must make their own way in the world, aided by the nurturing they received in a loving home, imbued with the values that they inherit witnessing their father and their mother making decisions, interacting with each other - but this one most certainly did.

All parents wish for the best for their children's futures.  And that best really means they hope their children will find satisfaction in their lives, and if they're fortunate enough, a lifetime partner with whom they may share the experiences of life.

We have been fortunate in having children whose intelligence and curiosity, determination and strength of character have resulted in individuals whose life- and career-paths have surprised and gratified us. 

We were saddened that only one of our children found a lifetime partner. They two share a marriage bond and a much deeper and more profound bond of mutual respect and care for one another.  Each of them is accomplished in their own areas of interest and professionalism, some of which intersects.

For the remaining two, lasting interpersonal bonds have simply not occurred.  And because their father and I know how important it is for people to have love and the comfort of care, both given and received in their lives on an ongoing, intimate basis, we are saddened.

All three of our children appear to have inherited - or imbibed through intimate exposure - their father's penchant and aesthetic capabilities in design and drawing.  We are both omnivorous readers and passed that inestimable value on to our children.  And through her exposure to our habits and priorities throughout her formative years from infancy to the pre-teen years when we were her day-time caregivers, our granddaughter too became a lover of literature.

She however, like me, has no artistic capabilities whatever, let alone pretensions to any; we both shy away from attempting to cultivate an ability to draw even the crudest of objects whereas the others in the family do so with confidence and ease.  The boys (now both in their fifties) call upon their ability to produce drawings to embellish their scholarly papers, and our daughter expresses her artistic ability in a multitude of ways.

It was, one supposes, a natural that we would end up playing a board game that uses quick drawings as clues to correct answers compelled to proceed on a board toward a finishing line.  When the children were young we introduced them to board games as well as old standbys like checkers and chess, and often played family games of Monopoly together.  When our granddaughter was ready we played Monopoly along with other board games with her as well.

And now that we're beyond the stage of introducing anyone to board games our youngest son, looking for something a little different, struck upon the relatively newer game of Pictionary which, as it turned out, our granddaughter detested.  We, however, just he and I, since his father also declined to participate, play it as regularly as his visits allow us to of an evening's entertainment and distraction.

His precise and clear drawings allow me to make accurate guessing decisions often enough and my own distinctly awkward drawings seem sufficient to draw from him fairly accurate guesses for the game to proceed with much hilarity.
 

Although it has been piercingly cold the last week and the ravine has been heavily coated with snow as a result of the 60 centimeteres we've had over the past several weeks, yesterday's wind was modest-to-absent, depending upon where we were throughout our hour-and-a-half ramble through the woods.  We were dressed for the weather and meant to make the most of our outdoor time.

A few days earlier my husband had gone out to a local pet shop that stocks quality products, unlike the products crowding the shelves of the larger box-type stores with cheap junk at inflated prices,  and brought back a set of Muttlucks, Canadian-designed and manufactured.

Our little dogs always wore in the iciest weather little boots I had designed and made myself, with fleecy, sock-like legs and leather bottoms which kept them warm and stayed on for the most part thanks to a succession of designs some with drawstrings, others with velcro tabs, but we were never completely satisfied with them. 

The Muttlucks used suede bottoms instead of leather, making them less likely to slide, allowing traction.  And their stretchy tops ensured they stayed on.  There is nothing more discomfitting than seeing the boots work their way off those little legs and having to be restored, bare hands and fingers freezing in the process.

And he also brought home for our little toy poodle a new winter coat, this one sewn with high-tech fabric resistant to moisture and lined with a layer of fleece, warmer than the other little coats in his winter wardrobe.  For a change little Riley was able to trudge through the snow and ice on his own rather than having to be picked up whenever his pads became too encrusted with snow, too frozen from the prevailing icy conditions on really cold days.

Norwegian theatrical release poster

Our son walked over to the local library branch, taking along his father's library membership card.  Although we haven't had a working television set in the house since the changeover to digital transmission a year and a half ago, we do use an old television set to view films for entertainment, once a week.  Our son is a movie buff, he is interested in repertoire-type films, and those are, for the most part, European, not American films.

He's primarily interested in human interaction, not violent action which mostly characterizes American films with their penchant for unrealistic and nihilistic violence, conspiracy-secret-agent-apocalyptic-types, close-up sexual encounters and viewer titillation, not explication.  The explicitly mindless is not attractive to the thinking mind.

In any event, we viewed the Norwegian film A Somewhat Gentle Man in its understated mordant humour and contextual gentle undertones with interest.  The transition from imprisonment as state punishment for cold-blooded murder, to becoming once again a free man illustrated through this screenplay the manner in which people are vulnerable to thinking they are free, despite malevolent and often happenstance manipulation by others and by events proving them to be anything but free.

Despite which people do have free will and do have the capacity to challenge the various pressures brought upon them to behave in a manner that others expect them to.  The main figure in this piece had a decided mind of his own and his brutality was leavened by his obvious empathy for others.  The risible comedy of a succession of women playing the sexual aggressor, roles generally reserved for the male gender, while amusing, was also disturbing in its own casual brutality of both reality and romanticism.

Strand Releasing

Jannike Kruse and Stellan Skarsgard in “A Somewhat Gentle Man.” 

It was, as billed, a dark comedy built upon an authentic enough dilemma of human need, emotional dependence and the vicissitudes of fate and fortune.

The visual aspect of filming in a northern advanced society displays, to North American sensibilities, an urban landscape whose industrialized technology encapsulates and describes even its grim architecture.  Elsewhere northern landscapes are portrayed with the softening effects of an urban genteel feel, complete with domestic architecture of some charm.  Absent here, in the spare, sparse functionality of Norwegian society.

There is a bleakness in the overall portrayal of general society there, which may or may not entirely reflect what does pertain.  But there is no element of charm within it whatever; it seems grim and forbidding.  

Aside from which the film was an excellent production of its appealing genre.  Excellent acting on all counts, and the portrait of a conflicted, complex mind engagingly and convincingly (slyly and professionally) portrayed by its principle actor, Stellan Skarsgard.

When we first moved to this area over forty years ago, and our children were young, we made our second home in Gatineau Park, acquainting ourselves with its lakes and forests, its substantial hills and valleys and the diversity of its wildlife which we were privileged over a long period of time to view and to embrace as a portion of our heritage. 

From hummingbirds to Indigo buntings, chickadees to vultures, ravens to nuthatches and Pileated woodpeckers, we became familiar with the birds and the many fawns we would see in pairs or accompanied by their does in the spring; majestically horned bucks in the winter when the snow was piled high.

From spring to fall we would hike the remote forested semi-wilderness trails and canoe the wonderful lakes.  We picked berries in season, from wild raspberries on to blueberries, raspberries and blackberries and even once rose haws, to make jam with.  Occasionally coming across bear scat, our rivals for the berries.  And we did come across black bears as well, brief encounters during which neither the bear nor we were invested in deepening our acquaintanceship.

In remote areas of that wonderful wilderness, we came across beaver kits disporting themselves in the shallow lake of a beaver pond, calling out in pure animal joy to one another with shrill little yelps as they seemed to dive off a floating log into the pond; unaware of our presence quietly hidden a behind nearby copse of trees.

In the winter we would float on fresh powdery snow, thickly laid and ephemeral beyond beauty that can be described in a wonderland of crisp white, the sun glinting off the crystals, as we literally walked on air descending a height from which we had encountered a sturdy horned buck surprised at our incursion into his domain, angrily confronting us, repeatedly pawing the ground before him until his hoofs had displaced enough snow to spark off the rocks beneath.

We saw a great snowy owl sitting high in the bare branches of a tree one particularly icy, windy winter day, marvelling at its sheer size and disinterest in our gawping presence.  We came across a descending-order family of raccoons covering the outstretched bough of trees more than once, and once, while canoeing, a family of tiny muscovy ducklings that had completely covered a rock in Lac la Peche dissolved into a dive as we approached in our canoe.  We heard loons and their lunatic cry, dipping and diving in the lakes as we proceeded, and watched great blue herons descend to the periphery of the lake.

We saw salamanders, toads frogs and snakes which our son would gently grasp and bring to us to examine at close range, handing us a snake with precise instructions how best to hold it and feel its steely musculature.  We did get lost a few times on trails that hadn't been used or blazed in generations, but found our way back eventually.

Our familiarity with the place was our comfort, our escape, our haven in nature, and we loved it, even marvelling at the scene of a deer skeleton picked clean on a bank of Meach Lake.  We watched as deer reared up on hind legs to reach apples hanging low on a wild apple tree.  We once picked garlic on an island that had obviously once hosted a settler's home.  We even came across an asparagus plant at the side of a remote trail.  And the wild shallots which are protected by law were occasionally fair game when we wanted to taste their fresh appealing spring taste, popping up on the forest floor around tree trunks.

We never did get lost, however, to the extent that two people did this past week-end, setting off on snowshoes and finally being rescued by two men who embarked on a search for them after being informed at 9:30 in the evening by another pair who had set out with the lost ones, that their friends appeared to have become lost somewhere along the Wolf Lake trail.  They were eventually evacuated, suffering from a degree of hypothermia, exhaustion and in the case of the man, an injured leg.

Gatineau Park was always far more kind to us in our countless forays into its fabulous natural depths.

Yesterday, the snow was cleared away.  The snow pack that remained, the result of two 30-cm snowfalls a week apart, provided a challenge to negotiate as best we could.  We hadn't been able to venture out the day of the storm, into the ravine for our usual walk, although our son did get out and managed our usual circuit.  I'd never have been able to endure the physical stress, without the trails having first been tamped down by others braving the elements.

I am now, officially, chronologically, 76 years of age, and what I was able to accomplish at age 40, 50 or even 60 is not what I can now manage to do; the spirit is willing but the physical resources become strained beyond capacity.  When we did venture out yesterday, it was difficult enough because as many people who had been out hadn't succeeded in doing much other than shifting the burden of snow about.  So we forged our way through the ravine on our usual route, shifting ourselves through the snow, fumbling downhill kicking up loose snow as we went, and trudging uphill, quite exhausting my physical resources in the process, slowing me down considerably.

It was cold, the high of minus-8 complicated by a stiff wind.  But the beauty of our surroundings was incomparable; the trees heavily laden with puffs of snow, and since the sun was out, looking in that direction one saw sparkles of light glinting, gleaming off the branches limned with ice.

The tapestry of winter at its most magnificent.