The Lansdowne Letters: A Lesson Learned

I was tired when we finally arrived in Lansdowne House,
but I can't imagine how worn out my mother must have been.
As a young girl, I took her energy and optimism for granted; and especially so,
because she sheltered my siblings and me from her challenges, big and small.    

My mother had a core of steel and powered through life with an unbelievable will.
No matter how difficult it was, she faced life with a courageous optimism.

Some women might have looked around on arriving in such a remote place
and taken the return trip to Nakina with the pilot.  
My mother looked around and embraced the positive.

My Mother, Sara (MacDonald) MacBeath

Studying at Acadia University

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1947

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

On Friday, February 24, 2016 she wrote
to our extended family in her unassuming way:

When we landed I expected the Indians would look at us blankly.
Instead they were all smiling and seemed to love watching the children.
We went to Maureen’s and Dunc’s and they gave us dinner.
Then Don and I came to visit our house.

Don said the house was small,
so I was quite amazed to find it spacious.
It has lovely cupboards and drawers in it,
seven drawers and four sets of cupboards.
There is a lovely dinette set in it.
Best of all, though, is the lovely gas range.

Love to you all, 
Sara.

The Forestry Shack

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Sketch by Maureen McRae

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

My mother was not a Material Girl.
The only things she truly wanted in life during my childhood
were her husband and children close, healthy, and safe,
and if that came with a gas range thrown in she was delighted.

My father returned from the forestry shack and collected us from the McRae's,
leaving my mother behind in her new home for a few rare minutes alone.

By then it was dark, and brilliant stars filled the sky like I had never seen before.
The starlight cast spindly tree shadows on the deep snow,
as we trudged through the bush to our home on the other side of the peninsula.

It was the coldest cold I had ever experienced;
and when I breathed in, my lungs burned.
I remember wrapping a scarf around my face to cover my nose and mouth.
Within a minute or two the front of my scarf was a sodden mess,
the inside warm and wet, the outside already stiff and freezing.
My moist breath froze on my eyelashes,
and my eyes watered making it hard to to see in the dark.

Half blind, I stepped off the packed down snow.
There was a reason the narrow path through the bush was well-trodden.
The moment my foot veered off the path, my leg sank in the snow to my crotch,
and I was down on my left knee struggling to pull my right foot out.
It came, but with no boot.

"That will teach you," my father laughed,
as I retrieved my boot and banged the snow out.
He was a big believer in experiential learning.  

I managed to haul my stiff boot on my icy foot and stumble along the path,
peering through upper and lower eyelashes now frozen together.

Later in the spring, as the snow melted away,
everyone tottered around on those frozen snow paths
that stood above the muck like slippery balance beams.

It was the strangest sight,
but so much fun for veteran rail-walkers like Roy and me.

But very soon, the well-trodden snow paths melted too,
and we were all slogging through the mud,
in a world alive with the sound of trickling, running water.

Winter Sky

usm.maine.edu

We came out of the bush and into the open.
On our right was a long, dark, log church; and on our left,
a cluster of log houses spilling dim light through the odd window onto the snow.
Directly ahead was our new home, and home looked really good!

Nothing stirred around us as we rushed for the door,
except for the Indian dogs bedded down in nearby snowbanks.
A few rose to their feet and stared at us with hungry eyes.
We didn't have to be warned to be wary around them.

Sled Dog

Wikimedia ~ edited

The kitchen was lit with two softly hissing kerosene lamps,
but the rest of the house lay in shadows.
Dad lifted one lamp off its hook in the kitchen ceiling,
the shadows swinging wildly as he carried the lamp to show us around:
from our water supply (a twenty-five gallon drum with a wooden cover)
to our bathroom with its chemical toilet (a low seat over a bucket in a tiny room),
to the bunk-crammed bedroom we five children would share.
Our parents had a second bedroom just big enough to squeeze in a double bed.

Last was the small living room with a big window that looked out into darkness
beyond the pool of light from the kerosene lamp.
I'm sure if you made a beeline from there to the North Pole and beyond,
you wouldn't have encountered a single light in the vast, empty bush.

Before I knew it, we had found our pyjamas, brushed our teeth,
tried out the chemical toilet, and claimed our bunks.
Roy and I were on the top, with Donnie below me
and Barbie and Bertie toe-to-toe under Roy.
Roy was close enough that I could lean across the space
between our bunks and poke him (and him me).

We lay on our stomachs in our top bunks and stared out the  window,
me on the left and Roy on the right.  It was a moonless night,
but the Indian homes stood out starkly against the starlit snow.

We whispered excitedly in the starlight gleaming on our pillows.
We couldn't believe it ~ 
We were finally here:  in the mysterious North! 

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Crossing Petite Passage
Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia
Photo Copy by Roy MacBeath 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:  
1.  Photo:  For the view from our front window, click here.  This is summer in 1956 before the forestry shack was built.  The Indian tent is pitched just to the right of where I went down to our waterhole on the frozen lake.  The tip of the Father's Island is in the middle right of the photo.

2.  Rail-Walker:  

Walking the Rails

Flickr ~ Rafael Clemente   License 

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Map of Canada

Highlighting Ontario

Wikimedia

Location of Lansdowne House

Wikimedia   edited

Lansdowne House

Sketch by M. Louise Barbour

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Peninsula and Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development 

Library and Archives Canada:  PA-094992

Rough Sketch of Lansdowne House

by Donald MacBeath, Fall 1960

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

This sketch shows the Father's Island and the tip of the "Mainland" peninsula

that contained the community of Lansdowne House.

                                                                    #18 McRae's

                                                                    #16 Anglican Log Church

                                                                    #15 Forestry Shack (Our Home)

                 Black Dots ~ Indian Homes