A ways north of Moodie’s backyard.

The book Roughing It In The Bush details firsthand the English-born author Susanna Moodie’s experience as an emigrant to Canada in the 1830s. During this time, newcomers to Canada faced incredible hardships, from starvation and sickness on the Atlantic crossing to extreme winter conditions and lack of basic necessities once established on land. Perhaps most striking to Moodie, though, was the difference between the established social structure of England, from where she emigrated, and the looser, less defined, and considerably more individualistic organization present in the Canadian backwoods. Moodie perceives Canada and her role there partly through the lens of her English societal background, but also through the lens of Christianity. In fact, the complexity of her impressions of Canada and new Canadians comes from the contradictions between her religious certainty of purpose and values in settling a “wild land” (Moodie np) and her many observations of those who stray from it. Consider her Introduction to Roughing It for a moment: she contrasts the promises made by the earthly messengers of Canada’s many virtues, “its salubrious climate, its fertile soil, commercial advantages, great water privileges, its proximity to the mother country, and last, not least, its almost total exemption from taxation” (Moodie np) with the harsh reality of settler life that only the “souls and bodies of men… [for whom] wholesome labour from infancy has made strong, the nerves which have become iron by patient endurance, by exposure to weather, coarse fare, and rude shelter” (Moodie np) can really handle. She also emphasizes the need for honesty, care, and genuine piety for successful society-building in the new country. These are the individuals whom, to Moodie, measure up to her moral and physical standards for successful Canadian settlers.

Given that Moodie brings up two main qualifications of a good Canadian almost immediately in the introductory passage of her Canadian story, one might wonder how she feels the original First Nations inhabitants measure up to these standards of strength and piety. Well, the suspense is kept up until much later in the book on this front. Not until Chapter 15 are we introduced to the First Nations friends and trading partners of Moodie and her family. Speaking of the local Mississauga First Nation, Moodie writes

“A dry cedar-swamp, not far from the house, by the lake shore, had been their usual place of encampment for many years. The whole block of land was almost entirely covered with maple trees, and had originally been an Indian sugar-bush. Although the favourite spot had now passed into the hands of strangers, they still frequented the place, to make canoes and baskets, to fish and shoot, and occasionally to follow their old occupation.”

The way Moodie discusses her First Nations neighbours here as well as later in the chapter suggests that she considered them part of the majestic Canadian landscape, rather than an active force in the political and civil discourse of the time. To her, First Nations as a collective are not considered agents in the shaping of Canada, although they do serve as role models for truthful and upright conduct, as when she extolls their respectful use of language, observance of local manners, avoidance of trickery, and care for their elders in various summary paragraphs describing the characteristics of the “genuine” Indian (Moodie np). From an outside perspective, some of her interactions with First Nations people seem to show that they themselves are not completely content to remain part of a landscape viewed by an ever-increasing flow of new emigrants. Their interest in Mr. Moodie’s map of the area borders on feverish, for example, as they utter “strange, uncouth exclamations of surprise” (Moodie np) and recognize its immense power in the hands of the emigrants. The fact it is so valuable to the Moodies themselves that they cannot relinquish it for any price must have only added to its power. Moodie’s First Nations friend John also has an interest in gaining literacy in his native language, although frustrated by “the difficulty he found in understanding the books written in Indian for [First Nations people’s own] use” (Moodie np). The tension between Moodie’s varied, multifaceted lived experiences with First Nations people and her rather conventional and flat summary statements of their attitudes and behaviour is fascinating and underscores the way our internal stories shape our worldview.

Works Cited

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. Project Gutenburg, 18 January 2004. Web. 14 February 2014.

“Smoke Signal: Mississauga First Nation News”. Mississauga First Nation. Web. 14 February 2014.

Describing first contact between European visitors and the indigenous peoples of North America, John Sutton Lutz goes into much detail on the topics of translation and means of communication of such events. For him, these events are rich, and “elaborately staged” (Lutz 7), reverberating with aftershocks from the “collision of fundamentally different systems of thought” (Lutz 2). There are special people, known as translators, who perform delicate work at the edges of such a cataclysm. They are “Coyote- [and] … Raven-work[ers]” (Lutz 10), transforming and muddling the facts of the collision into their own unique narratives. But after the translators are done their job, we are left with their epics to keep and pass down the generations essentially without revision.

Wendy Wickwire offers us another perspective on translation. Her good friend and storyteller Harry Robinson is a translator; his stories come from the Okanagan language, nsyilxcən, and he adapted them into English to accommodate his “growing number of listeners” (Wickwire 29). But my understanding of Wickwire’s explanation gives me the impression that any storyteller is a translator, if not through language, then through time and place. This is the Coyote work: making sense of the stories we hear, and then making them accessible or meaningful or hilarious to those we share them with. Just as the only thing we can expect from Coyote is that he will never behave according to our expectations, so too do storytellers turn us on edge when they reveal information and perspective that we never saw coming. Take Robinson’s ethnographically unmanageable story of Coyote and the king of England, for example. Coyote is the tricked party in this story, as the agreement so earnestly negotiated between the two during their meeting is never brought to action in Canada. Robinson negotiates themes of dishonesty and selfishness with an eye both to European historical narratives and the omnipresent Coyote.

Wickwire asserts that Robinson is no “myth-teller— the bearer of the single, communal accounts rooted in the deep past” (29). By this she means his stories transcend the expectations scholars, historians, and ethnographers place on them, namely that they be faithful, timeless reproductions of narratives from the earliest possible translators. But this is not what Coyote does. He is “right there” and alive (Wickwire 1) anytime we open a door to his world. And in with Coyote come refreshed perspectives and new, personalized approaches to old narratives.

Robinson’s story of the two twins, Coyote and the younger white one, challenge the perception of first contact as a uniquely cataclysmic encounter when he describes the preordained nature of the invasion of North America by the younger twin’s relatives, the Europeans. We can see the potential for disaster in the return of the Europeans in this story, but its translation from a typical myth of first contact puts that event in its place along with other significant events, for instance the creation story of the two siblings and the role of each in the present. We also see the inseparability of each side in the encounter— we are twins, after all!

Coyote urges us to reconsider everything, especially the stories we tell, because this is how we as individuals identify and claim a place in the world. He reminds us that completely static, pre-translated stories can deny us part of our basic human need to involve ourselves in our own stories, whether we create them ourselves or shape them from the ones we picked up from our translators.

Works Cited

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1 – 15. Print.

“About Our Language.” FirstVoices nsyilxcən Welcome Page, 2013. Web. 07 February 2014.

“Wendy Wickwire.” University of Victoria, n.d. Web. 07 February 2014.

Wickwire, Wendy. “Introduction.” Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory, by Harry Robinson. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 1 – 30. Print.

Our stories of home all have multiple dimensions and unique flavours. Below are a few of the common threads I gathered from reading posts from the rest of the class:

Family: that which we create around us as well as that which we come from

Travel: how it allows us to reflect on home, given a good distance to view it from, or even challenges our notions of home when we discover it in a faraway land

Comfort: a feeling that comes on “wings of warmth” (Donnelly)

Language: native languages, a grandparent’s language, a combination of languages

Stories: family histories, loon stories, lived experiences

Arrivals and departures

Natural and constructed surroundings

Love

Works Cited:

Donnelly, Lauren. “Home was a Feeling”. Cypress & Rain, 31 January 2014. Web. 2 February 2014.

MacGillivray, Duncan. “2.1 Home is a crackling hearth.” fabulas, 28 January 2014. Web. 2 February 2014.

I am an ocean creature. Two summers ago, you could find me every week tossing up and down in the choppy waters of Kits Beach, clad in a wetsuit and pink cap like some sort of bald, neoprene seal, although I’m convinced a seal feels less panic every time a wave hits her in the face. As a human, I spluttered and struggled through the waves with an ever-decreasing fear but ever-growing numbness in my extremities, until I completed my long lap (2 minutes faster than last week!). Transitioning from sea to land is an awkward process at best, involving uncooperative legs and feet and certain choice curse words when a sopping, sticky wetsuit refuses to part ways with your ankles.

Let me paddle backwards a ways: my love of the ocean began with my mother. We are cold-water addicts, the sort of people who feel that the New Year hasn’t really begun until we are salty and frozen from ocean water. Really frozen sometimes, like the year we swam in the ocean at Victoria’s Gonzales Bay, then went skating on a farmer’s icy field some hours later. And trust us to never pass by our favourite lake in the summer months (months loosely defined as April – September, occasionally reaching into October depending on the weather) without stopping for a dip. We even keep a set of bathing suits and towels in the car for such occasions. We do live in Canada, by the way— Victoria has a temperate climate year-round, but its waters are hardly tropical even in the blistering 25°C breezes of midsummer.

My mom and I spend some quality time at Mystic Beach, Vancouver Island, BC.

This hypothermic habit is not shared by very many of my friends here in Vancouver. A few of us have enjoyed the occasional midnight dip at Wreck Beach, however. When we hit the beach on sunnier occasions, I think my friends see my compulsion to swim long distances from shore in frigid ocean water as unnecessarily hazardous. They are right; it is not a particularly safe activity, especially alone. But this is something that makes me joyous. Time is suspended and I focus completely on playing with the surf, or in the absence of waves maybe investigating the water’s biological contents. I rely on my friends to recognize the warning signs of impending hypothermia and to lure me out of the waves, usually with some sort of food reward. My latest ocean adventure was on a cycle tour in California over winter break. My friends and I would stop for lunch at a city beach as a break in our ride each day. Predictably, my first move would be into my bathing suit and out onto the water, and once I was in there, hard luck getting me out. There’s nothing like big surf to make me ignore the numbness of toes and fingers while competing with neoprene-clad surfers for some wave action. Fortunately, lunch always involved both avocados and chocolate, so my friends were able to roust me from my marine trance without much effort. In fact, we all enjoyed the waves, as they offered a chilling therapy for sitting in the saddle all day.

My ecstatic relationship with the ocean draws from a strange mixture of comfort, abandon, and unpredictability. Effortlessly, I float over the tops of massive waves and watch their surge and crash at the shoreline. Maybe I choke and blindly struggle to maintain forward momentum when swimming a long distance against the surface wind. Or I spend too long in a front crawl daydream, only to look up too late and pinpoint my destination, now located to my rear. Or perhaps I get sucked under a wave I am trying to surf down, performing a series of possibly graceful underwater cartwheels as I gradually lose speed to the sandy or rocky or weedy bottom. My suspicion is that in a past life, I was a sea turtle. Not an exceptionally fast swimmer to be sure, but well equipped to navigate oceans all over the planet.

Swimming in a small ocean: part of the Georgian Bay in Bruce Peninsula National Park, ON.

I think my seafaring family did a wonderful job of instilling a sense of home within me. It is the ocean I carry with me when I am stressed or overwhelmed, my place of detachment from care and worry. And it is a home that I am lucky enough to visit every day.

Works Cited

“About us.” Vancouver Open Water Swimming Association, 2009. Web. 31 January 2014.

“Durrance Lake.” Secret Lakes of Southern Vancouver Island, 2013. Web. 31 January 2014.