Electricity in Ontario,
costlier than ever.
Some must choose
between hydro
and buying food, paying rent.
On the other hand,
Canada has more oil
than it can ever sell.
In Ottawa,
crews install structural steel, pour concrete
for the new electric light rail system
that will replace
our diesel powered buses.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Ask oldtimers what pre-industrial life was like in Yukon and Northwest Territories and they recall the sound of sled dogs galloping through the snow, the blue gleam of moonlight in winter and smell of fresh caribou steaks drying on spruce boughs.
Anthropologist Leslie McCartney asked twenty-three Gwich’in elders as old as 99. Their stories are chronicled in Our Whole Gwich’in Way Of Life Has Changed, a big, beautiful volume, 848 pages. It is warm and human.
There is a blank space in all history books dotted here and there with guesswork and anecdotes. Missing are accounts of daily working lives prior to the 18th century. There are no written descriptions by workaday Norwegian sailors or Hessian miners or Mongolian herders since ordinary people had no means of writing it down.
It took mammoth investments in public education and inexpensive pulp paper before people kept diaries and family scrapbooks. They relied instead on storytelling, what researchers call oral history. So did the Gwich’in. “Oral history stories are not so much about getting the facts correct as they are about ways of talking about the past and hearing voices that would have been, to date, marginalized,” write authors.
Readers learn adoption of orphaned children was commonplace, as were arranged marriages. The Gwich’in believed in prophecy, prized self-reliance and thrived on an all-meat diet.
“Meat was what we lived on most,” one elder recalled: rabbit and boiled porcupine, whitefish and blueberries in season, but mainly caribou. Annie Benoit, 88, remembers her family followed the caribou herds. “Lots of good places to stay in the bush,” said Benoit. “When they hear about lots of caribou, they move to the mountains and after that they work hard on their meat, caribou meat.”
Children from the youngest age were taught to find food. “Every day they repeated the same thing to us, teaching us our survival skills,” said Joan Nazon, 87. “They told us and taught us every day. They always said, ‘We don’t tell you this for now but for your future, so you will be self-sufficient.’”
“No one is going to live like they live today in the future,” said Nazon. “There is going to be starvation. People are going to suffer and there will not be enough food.”
Our Whole Gwich’in Way Of Life Has Changed is a memorial assembled by the Gwich’in Tribal Council. “Most of the elders interviewed are members of the last generation to fluently speak Dinjii Zhu’ Ginjik, the Gwich’in language, as their mother tongue,” the authors write.
“Language determines how we perceive, understand and communicate our world views and deep beliefs. Language is not simply communication; it also serves as a link, connecting people with their past.”
If working lives of Gwich’in people were hard, elders mainly recall those years with fondness. Alfred Semple, 70, looked south to the cities and saw no obvious signs of superiority. “There are many, many people down south,” he said. “Many are poor and homeless and do not have much to eat.”
“Today they just work for money,” he said. “Money, that’s all that is in their head. We never grew up that way.”
By Holly Doan
Our Whole Gwich’in Way of Life Has Changed: Stories from People of the Land, by Leslie McCartney & Gwich’in Tribal Council; University of Alberta Press; 848 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-4828; $99
New Democrat Party headquarters yesterday would not comment over its refusal to answer a B’nai Brith campaign questionnaire on public disorder. It was the only Party that would not comment when asked, “If elected, what steps will your government take to ban hate rallies?”
Crime data analysis suggest a spike in church fires coincided with First Nations claims of hidden graves at Indian Residential Schools, an Ottawa think tank said yesterday. “Few Canadians understood the full scope and scale of these attacks,” said a report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute: ‘This must have an explanation.’
Electric car mandates set to take effect in 2026 will be repealed if Conservatives are elected, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. Car buyers must not be compelled to drive vehicles they do not want or cannot afford, he said: “This is not a ‘tomorrow’ problem, this is a ‘now’ problem.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday depicted Justin Trudeau as an unserious figure who invited ridicule. Relations with the United States are not a photo op or “a visit to Mar-a-Lago,” said Carney.
Cabinet has declared a New Brunswick island the nation’s only tariff-free zone. Campobello Island was a special case since residents have to buy their groceries in Maine, said the Department of Finance: “Residents have no practical choice.”
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers is asking a federal judge to censure Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon for imposing a six-month ban on lawful strike action. The unilateral order breached the Charter Of Rights, Union lawyers told the Federal Court: “Right to strike is an indispensable component of a meaningful collective bargaining process.”
Voters should read for themselves a “jaw-dropping” federal report warning of social and economic collapse, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. The Liberal Party has not commented on the report: “It’s not surprising Liberals would want to shut out discussion on that.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday dismissed a Conservative proposal to clear public lands of tent cities as “a typical American-style approach.” Carney’s own housing minister has complained of public disorder caused by homeless people tenting in parks and on sidewalks: “Typical American.”
Canadians’ shame over Indian Residential Schools must result in “real closure and healing,” New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh said yesterday. Speaking by videoconference with the Assembly of First Nations, Singh made no mention of a New Democrat bill to criminalize Residential School “denialism.”
New figures from Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault show a wide variance in the number of voters in federal ridings, a difference of 90,000 or more in some cases. The latest revisions under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act were to ensure each vote carried the same weight with exceptions in extraordinary cases: “It matters.”
Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday said he was staggered by a newly-disclosed Privy Council report predicting Canadians in 15 years will resort to poaching wildlife for food and crowding into gated communities as protection against civil disorder. “That’s not my words, that’s the government’s words,” said Poilievre as he recited whole passages from the document: “What they are anticipating on the current trajectory is a total meltdown, a societal breakdown in Canada.”
New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday appealed to British Columbians to “hold the line” on election day to prevent a Liberal majority. British Columbia in the last election gave New Democrats more than 660,000 votes and most of their seats in Parliament: “It will be British Columbians who decide if Mark Carney gets a super majority.”
Voter turnout at Easter weekend advance polls was 25 percent higher than the last national campaign, Elections Canada said yesterday. Returning officers reported Canadians cast ballots by the millions: “Some polls may not have yet reported.”
