Standing Into Danger: March 2017

Friday, March 31, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: On the Horns of a Dilemma

Not everyone has the opportunity to have a parent as a teacher,
but I was fortunate to have both of mine for a number years.

Some students, especially in high school, would shudder
at the thought of facing a parent in the classroom;
but I counted myself lucky because I had both during my high school years.

My Parents on Their Honeymoon

Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1948

My parents were excellent teachers, among the best I encountered
from kindergarten through my Masters in Education.

In the end the siren call of teaching lured me from the Oil Patch into the classroom,
where I spent the majority of my working years as an elementary teacher.
It was a choice I never regretted because I consider the education
of children among the most critical responsibilities of any society.

My parents were in my heart and mind as I taught,
for the most important lessons I learned about teaching
occurred not in university but in my parents' classrooms
during the times I was their student.

Solving an Introductory Multiplication Problem

My Classroom

Aurora, Colorado, USA

My father in particular influenced my teaching
because he also taught me while I was in elementary school.
I landed in his classroom for the first time in Lansdowne House
for the last half of grade five.

The contrast between him and my previous teachers was striking.
Yes, my father was well-educated, brilliant, and organized,
but his greatest teaching gifts were his ability to build rapport with his students
and his skill in adapting the curriculum to meet the needs of his individual students.

My father was decades ahead of his time.
Almost forty years later in my Diverse Learners Masters Program in Denver,
I was learning teaching strategies my father had taught me in Lansdowne House
in the remote wilderness of the Hudson Bay Lowlands in 1961.

You might think that a ten-turning-eleven year old
would not be thinking about how teachers teach,
but you would be mistaken.

Counting my father,
I followed the calling of seven consecutive generations
of teachers in the MacBeath line.
Teaching was in my blood.

My Father During His Undergraduate Years

Acadia University

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada

My father discussed many aspects of teaching First Nations students
in his unpublished handbook "The Northern School Teacher."
I'll share just one here.

My father wrote:
"Another difficulty faced by the Indian teacher is that of text books
and the subject matter of the text books,
especially for the readers in grades one to five.
The children just had no way of relating these books to their personal lives.

"Pleasant Street," which I think lead from "Funny, funny Sally's house,"
to "the little store on Pleasant Street,"
had absolutely no resemblance to the narrow woodland trail
which meandered along the shore of the lake from the one-room shack
where Speared Turtle and his twelve children lived
to the Hudson's Bay Company Store
which is usually the only commercial outlet
with which the children ever came in contact.

And Gilbert Thunder of Kasabonika Lake
couldn't care less, and certainly couldn't understand
how "funny, funny Spot, fluffy, fluffy Puff, and pretty, pretty Sally
play and run down, down, down."

From an Unknown Dick and Jane Reader

Back to Front: Dick, Jane, Puff (cat), Spot (dog), Tim (teddybear) and Sally

Google

It is uninteresting to poor Gilbert,
for Gilbert Thunder is twelve years old,
and even though he is only in grade one,
it's not because he is stupid.
Actually he is quite bright.

The reason he is only in grade one is because
there has been a school in Kasabonika for only the last two years.

And the idea of Spot and Sally running and playing together
is utterly incomprehensible to poor Gilbert,
for his dog is named Kitche Schikeg (Big Skunk)
and is a big brute of unsavory appearance, questionable ancestry,
and deplorable deportment.

Kitche Schikeg is not a fluffy little, long-eared pet
with whom the children romp and play.
Kitche Schikeg is a mangy looking, half-starved beast of burden
whom you do not approach unless you are armed with a large stick
and who would bite your hand off if you tried to pet him.

Basilisk & Ginger at Main Base / photograph by Xavier Mertz/ cropped by M. Louise Barbour

Format: Glass negative Notes: First Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914

From the collections of the Mitchell Library

State Library of New South Wales www.sl.nsw.gov.au

Flickr ~ No Known Copyright Restrictions

Usage

I will admit that the Indian Affairs Branch
is on the horns of a dilemma.
The primary purpose or goal of all Indian education
is the ultimate integration of the Indian population
with the white population,
and the teacher has to familiarize her charges
with the white man's way of doing things.

But surely there must be a better way to familiarize poor Gilbert
than boring him and baffling him with this inane drivel
about "funny, funny Puff" and "pretty, pretty Sally.

I think that the suitability or non-suitability of the textbooks notwithstanding,
a partial solution to the problem depends to a large extent on the individual teacher.

The success of the teacher's efforts depends upon his ability or inability
to adapt the textbooks and curriculum to the pupils and the situation.

I remember going to the school at Pikangikum once to inspect the school.
The grade four reading lesson that day was about school safety patrols and traffic signals.
To illustrate the lesson the teacher and the pupils had built a beautiful working model
of a traffic light powered by four flashlight batteries.

This would have been a wonderful teaching aid for outside
but it was of no earthly good to children
who never have and most likely will never see a car or street
and whose only conception of traffic
was canoes on the lake in the summertime
and dog teams on the ice in the winter.

Learning the White Man's Way

Dunking for Apples on Halloween

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

I do not want to blow my own horn too much,
but by way of illustration,
I want to tell about how I handled the identical lesson
when I was teaching at Lansdowne House.

I briefly explained about traffic and the necessity
of having stop lights, school safety patrols, and safety rules.

Then I got the children discussing things in or about Lansdowne House
which might need regulatory measures in the manner of safety rules.

We started off by drawing up a set of safety rules for canoes,
rules such as never standing up in a canoe situation.
and always making sure the canoe is drawn up out of the water
and tied whenever you stop on an island for dinner or for the night.

Wikipedia

We got so enthusiastic about safety rules
that we drew up two more sets of rules:
one for safety on the ice during freeze-up and break-up,
and one for safety around aeroplanes.

A Norseman on Skis

Flickr ~ NOAA: Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren License

This last set of rules might seem strange for children
who have never seen an automobile,
but not when you consider that they are very familiar
with the bush planes which bring in all the mail,
take a great many of the families to and from their winter traplines,
and which always bring the government officials on their periodic visits.

Before we left this particular lesson for good,
we also drew up sets of rules for the care and maintenance of canoes,
the care and maintenance of kickers (outboard motors),
and the care and maintenance of snowshoes."

Lansdowne House

Members of the Fort Hope Band watching a floatplane arrive

at the dock at Lansdowne House at Treaty Time, June 1956.

John Macfie Transparency Reference Code: C 330-14-0-0-95 Archives of Ontario, I0012712 archives.gov.ca/on © Queen's Printer for Ontario

The materials on this website are protected by Crown copyright (unless otherwise indicated), which is held by the Queen's Printer for Ontario.

If credit is given and Crown copyright is acknowledged,the materials may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes.

When I was a student in my father's class in Lansdowne House,
I experienced him using many strategies,
that I was later trained in during my teaching career,
strategies such as making learning relevant to his students
adapting lessons to meet the needs of individual students,
and designing lessons with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic components.

I think back to that place and time,
and I am in awe of all that my father accomplished as a teacher.
I saw him continue to do so when I was in high school.

My mother may have been one of the best teachers I ever had,
but my father was the best.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

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

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Hudson Bay Lowlands (green)

Wikipedia

Location of Northern Communities

Wikimedia

Friday, March 17, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: Ablutions and Indian Dogs

Without a doubt there is one thing we four MacBeath children
who attended my father’s school in Lansdowne House remember,
and not with fondness: the daily government health program.
We all, including my father, disliked it for various reasons.

Church of England Indian Day School

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

My father wrote of this program in Indian schools throughout Northern Ontario
in his unpublished handbook for northern teachers:

“Another problem faced by the Indian teacher,
and incidentally, a constant source of irritation and frustration,
is the modification of the normal school program
which is necessary to accommodate the health program
being carried on by The Indian Affairs Branch
and The Department of National Health and Welfare.

The Indian children rarely wash before coming to school,
and they quite frequently do not have breakfast before school.
The Indian families do not have regular meal hours like white people do.
In a lot of families, it is rare for the whole family to sit down together for a meal.
Something is usually boiling on the stove,
and the members of the family just eat when they are hungry.

Because of the irregularity and haphazardness of the eating habits,
and the fact that the children do not wash too frequently,
our health programs are practical rather than theoretical.

The teacher is expected to do his best to clean and nourish the pupils in school.
In the morning after the opening exercises, the pupils have a period
when they wash their hands and faces and brush their teeth.
The soap, towels, and toothbrushes are kept in the school,
and it is responsibility of the teacher to see
that the various toilet articles are kept reasonably clean.

In addition to the ablutions period, the teacher has to dispense
powdered milk and vitalized biscuits twice a day to the children,
usually before the morning and afternoon recesses.
The vitalized biscuits and the powdered milk are provided
in quite ample quantities by the branch to be dispersed by the teacher in school.

It is quite a nuisance having to mix up the powdered milk twice a day
and to make sure that the utensils and drinking cups are kept clean.

It is very time consuming too,
but when you see how much the children like the milk,
especially the little ones,
it seems to be more than worth the effort.

Some of Dad's Little Ones

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

The biscuits, on the other hand, cause you very little trouble
but are not very popular with the children.
I think the main difficulty with the biscuits is their appearance.
They are sort of like a better grade dog biscuit.

They remind me of the biscuits that my father used to feed to his foxes
when we had a large fox ranch back on Prince Edward Island.
They are flat, hard, light brown in color with a slight cinnamon taste,
but as nourishing as all get out.

One or two biscuits constituted a very adequate supplement to any diet, and
six biscuits were sufficient to maintain health and strength over quite a period of time.
The children were not too fond of them, but I always made sure
that each child ate at least two biscuits a day.

There was one boy by the name of Soloman
who had me puzzled for quite a time.
He would take all the biscuits that I would give him.

One day just to see how many he would take,
I let him take as many as he wanted.
He took sixteen biscuits.

I asked him why he liked them so much,
and he told me that he did not like them, he hated them;
but his dog loved them.
Oh well, at least the dog was well nourished.”

My Father's Handbook

What my brother Roy, my sisters Donnie and Barb, and I remember
with intense dislike is the wretched lumpy powered milk.
The biscuits were edible, but the milk was ghastly.

My father expected the four of us who attended school
to model everything for the Indians.
So we too had to wash our faces, brush our teeth,
eat the biscuits, and drink the milk.
Getting the milk down was doubly hard because
we always ate a good breakfast before school,
usually hot porridge with more powdered milk.

At some point during the first two or three days, Dad realized
I was helping my mother bake bread and prepare meals at home.
He decided I was capable of mixing up powdered milk twice a day.
He showed me how, and one of his irritating chores became mine.

There was a small room at the back of the classroom
where our coats hung, the oil stoves sat, and supplies were stored.
Twice a day I dragged a cardboard drum more than half my height
out of its storage area, dug out cups of milk powder,
and dumped them into two five-gallon buckets of water.
Then I stirred and stirred, trying to squash all the lumps
on the sides of the buckets until that milk was frothy.

The overpowering smell of several cubic feet of milk powder
in that drum threatened to upend my stomach as I prepared the milk.
No wonder my father pawned that chore off on me!
I was always thankful to secure the cover on the drum and stash it away.

Dad's Children in His Classroom
The storage room was behind the white wall.

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

Then the Ojibway children and my less enthusiastic siblings lined up
with their cups, ladled out a serving, and headed back to their desks
to eat their biscuits and drink their milk.

All of us were welcome to go back for as many servings of milk as we wanted
until the buckets were empty, and extra biscuits were available on my father’s desk.

We four would force down our milk;
Roy glugged, Donnie stalled, Barbie pretended and shared,
and I gagged my way through the dreadful, blue-white liquid.
At least the biscuits had a better flavor.

Soloman’s dog was not the only Indian dog getting fatter.
A number of times I saw my two younger sisters
slip government biscuits out of their pockets and toss them
to the dogs hanging out near our back door step.

The Four of Us Who Attended Dad's School

Back: Roy and I

Front: Barbie and Donnie with Gretchen between their feet.

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

Our school did not have running water.
Dad had to carry the water for mixing powdered milk
and cleaning the buckets, cups, and toothbrushes
from the nearby DOT waterhole or from our home.

He strained the water through cheesecloth
and purified it by adding a few drops of chlorine bleach,
because the lake water was dangerous for human consumption.
The nurse Mike O’Flaherty had confirmed this fact
after he, Dad, and Duncan McRae collected water samples
from around the peninsula and those samples were tested.

Dad crosses the peninsula on a water-sampling excursion.

Photo Likely by Mike Flaherty

Dad went through a short period when he had Mom boil
the school’s water on our kitchen stove, and he hauled
the heavy buckets of boiled to school twice a day.

Soon he conscripted Roy and me to haul the water after lunch
from home to school for the afternoon powdered milk.
The path though the bush was long and narrow,
and we slopped more water than we managed to carry to school.

Boiling and lugging water so far proved to be onerous and time-consuming,
so Dad soon reverted to straining lake water through cheesecloth
and purifying it with Javex.

All classrooms have their daily routines,
but this government health program in the Indian schools took the prize.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue

Boars Head Lighthouse
Tiverton, Long Island, Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

Lansdowne House

Surrounded by Water

Lansdowne House and the Father's Island, 1935

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Library and Archives Canada / PA-094992

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Technical Challenges ~ LOL!

Just in case you're wondering why I'm taking so long to reply

to your comments and visit your posts.

This is what I have to do right now to access the internet!

LOL ~ Too many friends stopping to chat in the lobby

or breezeway to get anything done!

I'll be by as quickly an I can!

Aloha!

Friday, March 10, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: A Spin on a Little Ski-Dog

The first time I saw a Ski-Dog,
it came racing along ice-bound Lake Attawapiskat, veered sharply,
and roared up the snow-covered hill in front of our school,
stopping abruptly near the steps.
Father Ouimet hopped off and dashed inside the school
to visit my father before recess ended.

Father Maurice Ouimet with My Father Don MacBeath

Photo Probably by Uno Manilla

All the Ojibway children on the playground
immediately crowded around the strange object
laughing and chattering, including my siblings and me.
It was an unknown thing to We Five MacBeath Children,
but not to the Ojibway children who had become very familiar
with Father Ouimet’s marvelous machine.

I had no idea at the time, but this strange apparition
was about to take the north by storm.

View from the Edge of the Playground

with Lake Attawapiskat and the Hill in the Background

Photo Probably by Uno Manilla

Have you ever raced over snow and ice on a Ski-Doo?
Felt that exhilerating rush of cold air and spray of snow?

Rotax powered Bombardier SKI-DOO XRS 800

Wikimedia

I have, and chances are I did it before you!

When Father Ouimet returned outside from visiting my father,

he offered me a chance to ride on his Ski-Doo.

Of course I didn't pass up the chance,

but I'm not sure which made me more nervous,

to ride on a motorcycle with skis

or to wrap my arms around a Roman Catholic priest and hang on tight.

We flew down the hill and made a big, looping circle

out on the frozen lake, bumping over mounds of snow

and throwing up roosters of white.

The snow sparkled in the brilliant sunlight,

and the cold air stung my face and watered my eyes.

I'm sure my siblings and the Ojibwa children watching

from the top of the hill could hear my delighted shrieks

and Father Ouimet's laughter above the growl of the engine.

It was one of the most exhilarating events in my life.

All too soon we flew back up the hill,

and my brother Roy took his turn behind Father Ouimet.

Okay, granted the first Ski-Doos were manufactured in 1960,

and I didn't ride on one until early March 1961,

but I rode on the very first Ski-Dog!

"Ski-Dog?" you might ask?

Yes, Ski-Dog.

Were it not for a publisher's error in a sales brochure,

Ski-Doos would have been Ski-Dogs.

Wikipedia

Facebook

Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the Ski-Dog,

a small, lightweight snowmobile

designed to replace the dog teams used for transportation

by hunters and trappers in remote areas of the north.

He had previously developed large tracked vehicles

that could hold up to twelve people.

In fact, Bombardier gave one to Father Ouimet in 1949.

But what was really needed in the north was a machine for one or two people,

something that would make Father Ouimet's work easier in his northern parishes.

Ouimet suggested this to his friend Bombardier,

and from this idea Joseph-Armand created the Ski-Doo.

This is a late wood-bodied Bombardier B-12 snow bus,

similar to the early one Father Ouimet had and slept in.

Circa 1951

Wikipedia

In 1958 Joseph-Armand built a wooden prototype of a small snowmobile ~

You Tube ~ Ostieguy

And in the winter of 1959 Joseph-Armand hand-built the first two Ski-Dogs.

In April, 1959, he personally delivered one of them by bush plane

to his long-time friend Father Ouimet in Lansdowne House.

The Canadian Encyclopedia

As readers of my northern posts may remember,

my family and I were life-long friends with Father Ouimet.

Little did I know when I rode with him on his Ski-Dog

that I was riding on an invention that would change the north

and launch a new winter recreational sport.

1960's Ski-Doo Clips

Racing in Kirkland Lake, Ontario

Birth of the Snowmobile

You Tube ~ Leo C.

Father Ouimet reminisced about these vehicles

in French radio program about his life:

Here is my rough translation:

"Imagine I am the first ski-doo owner in the world!

Mr. Armand Bombardier of Valcourt gave me a snow mobile

that could seat 12 people in 1949.

It was amazing but too heavy and very difficult to transport in our regions.

I suggested building a device for a passenger of my height.

This idea caught on ...

... Mr. Bombardier came by plane to bring my snowmobile on April 15, 1959.

This fast means of transport has impressed the Indians."

(with the help of Google Translator and some dictionaries)

Very Similar to the Large Snowmobile

Father Ouimet Had

You Tube ~ Yvon Beaudet

This novel form of transportation fascinated the Ojibway community,

and Bombardier presented Father Ouimet with the Ski-Doo

which he went on to thoroughly field-test in Lansdowne House

during the following winters.

A four-stroke Kohler engine powered this first Ski-Doo,

and a single rubber track as wide as the machine propelled

its steerable wooden skis.

Facebook

Snowest

In 1960 Bombardier Limited manufactured 225 Ski-Doos in Valcourt, Quebec,

and fourteen years later it produced its one millionth!

Unfortunately Joseph-Armand Bombardier died in 1964

and did not live to see that one millionth machine,

but his wife and Father Ouimet were present

for the celebration of this milestone in August, 1973.

Facebook

Newspapers,com

Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907-1964):

Getting Around in the Winter [philatelic record]:

Joseph-Armand Bombardier: vision et détermination

Library and Archives Canada

Online MIKAN no. 2266912

Flickr License

Father Ouimet's personal Ski-Doos were important to his priestly
and missionary duties in the remote Oji-Cree villages west of James Bay.
He and I corresponded over the years,
and sometimes he mentioned his Ski-Doos.

On December 18, 1982
Father Ouimet wrote to me:

"Well, I am still in this world.
Still in good shape, but getting older every day ~
Pretty near 71 years old.
Should be retired ~ but no way ~ nobody to relieve me.

I am alone in charge of 5 missions: Lansdowne House,
Fort Hope, Ogoki, Webique, and Summer Beaver.

Travelling a lot.
Last winter I covered 8,258 miles by snowmobile.
That's a lot of fresh air."

On January 11, 1986
Father Ouimet wrote to Terry and me:

"Still living, only 74 years old, still a young man.
Like ever, I am running on a snowmobile.
I have a very nice machine in fact,
a Christmas gift from my friend ... Bombardier."

Father Ouimet's first Ski-Doo, the one I rode on,
was obtained by the The Museum of Ingenuity J. Armand Bombardier in 1969.
Sled Magazine

Father Ouimet was honored for his role in the history of the Ski-Doo
by carrying the Olympic Torch for the 1988 Calgary Winter Games
on a 1988 Bombardier Ski-Doo.

Calgary Herald
Sled Magazine

This was the first time the Olympic Torch was carried by snowmobile.
Father Ouimet led off the snowmobile contingent near Shanty Bay, Ontario on its 1,740 mile snowmobile journey from Shanty Bay to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

For a photo: click here

No Snowmobile for My Father,

Only His Trusty Snowshoes

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1961

Photo Probably by Duncan McCrae

The last time I rode with Father Ouimet,

it was under much different conditions.

My sister Barbie and I had braved a frigid night

to cross the ice to the Father's Island

to watch the Saturday night movies in the rec hall.

When it was time to leave, the temperature had plummeted way below zero,

the Indian dogs were howling in the bitter cold,

and the wolves were answering from the ice.

Father Ouimet stopped Barbie and me on our way out

and told us that he thought he should run us home on his Ski-Doo,

the night was so cold, and it was too dangerous

for the two of us to cross the ice alone.

So we waited and watched as Father Ouimet,

in his black cassock with a roped Crucifix hanging from his waist,

rewound the film reels and slipped them into their metal shipping cases,

banked the fire in the stove, and tidied the hall.

The Ojibway were long gone by the time he was finished,

and we followed Father Ouimet over to the Mission

under a sky filled with bright stars and weaving, dancing lights.

The sounds of the dogs and wolves were primal,

and Barbie and I were glad of the ride home.

Barbie clung to Father Ouimet, I held on to both of them,

as the little Ski-Doo left the Mission and roared across the ice to the Mainland.

We all were wrapped against the bone-gnawing cold,

but the frozen air burned our lungs and eyes.

Yet again, all too quickly, our ride was over,

and we hustled into our toasty kitchen with Father Ouimet.

Our appreciative parents fortified him with a cup of hot tea

before he disappeared into the northern night.

As long as I live I will not forget Father's Ouimet's wonderful Ski-Dog!

Weaving Dancing Lights

Flickr: Emmaneul Milou ~ License

Notes:

1. Transcript of an unidentified, undated radio show:
Mémoires du Père Maurice Ouimet o.m.i.
(Monastère des Pères Oblats Cap-de-la Madeleine)
Thanks Jean-Claude Gilbert O.M.I. Superior

2. Miles to Kilometers:
8,258 miles = 13,290 kilometers
1,740 miles = 2,800 kilometers

3. Joseph-Armand Bombardier:
For more information about the inventor of the Ski-Doo and other machines check out this link:
Musee Bombardier

For Map Lovers Like Me: