The Lansdowne Letters: Alone

It’s difficult to express how isolated Lansdowne House was a half century ago.
Even today the village is one of the remotest
in one of Canada’s least known and least visited regions.

There are a number of names and boundaries for the ecosystem the community exists in,
but there is no disagreement over the fact that it is located in a vast wetland
of stunted forest, muskeg, bog, and fen,
crossed by slow-moving rivers and dotted with countless lakes.

Flying Over the Albany River (Right)

Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960

Photo by Don MacBeath

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Whenever I fly over the area, I am struck by how wet it is, 
for it appears to be more water than land.
I am also struck by how empty it is,
for it is rare to spot any sign of human activity.

To get to Lansdowne House today, fly you must,
because there is no permanent road into the tiny community,
and the region is almost impossible to travel over
unless it is frozen and the winters roads are passable.

Trucks Crossing the Albany River on a Winter Road

Northern Ontario, Canada, 2004

The edge of the road is marked by small trees.

Heavy vehicles must maintain wide spacing and slow speeds.

Wikimedia

Lansdowne House’s isolation today is a far cry
from its isolation in the winter of 60-61.
Now the community is connected year round
to the Outside with an all-weather airport
and internet and telephone services.

It no longer has to rely on the telegraph or short wave radio,
and it is no longer cut-off from the Outside during freeze-up and break-up.

The Ojibwa have modern housing and electricity and motor vehicles.
Yes, cars and trucks!
(To see a photo:  Click Here)

Whenever I look at a map of the new Lansdowne House’s tiny streets and its one road
snaking down to the tip of the peninsula where it once stood fifty years ago,
I’m reminded of living on Long Island off the tip of Digby Neck.

Whenever the ferry service across Petit Passage shut down,
there was nowhere to go except up and down the length of the island,
back and forth in a car on the main road.

In Lansdowne House there is nowhere to go
except up and down the length of the peninsula,
back and forth in a car on the only road.

Old Lansdowne House (Upper Right)

New Lansdowne House or Neskantaga (Middle Left)

Lansdowne House All-Weather Airport (Middle)

Map Data:  Google

Imagery:  Digital Globe, Landsat  

A year after I left Lansdowne House, in the summer of 1962,
I tried to express my feelings about the isolation I had experienced in the village.
I wrote (rather floridly):

“Winter in the Northland is bright, blue, brassy, and barren.
The naked birch and scraggily fir people the rocky shores
and march across the bleak horizon.

Thousands of tiny lakes, scarring the land,
lie locked in the frozen grip of winter.  

Occasionally a hungry pack of fierce wolves can be seen roaming the empty wastes.
More frequently smoke from a tiny Indian settlement of cabins,
a church, and a Hudson’s Bay post floats lazily up into the still cold air.

A silence hangs over all, broken only by the biting buzz of a lone power saw,
the ring of an ax, or the protesting squeak of sleigh runners
hauled over the snow by huskies.

The Northland is silent, lonely, barren, and deadly.
Underneath her apparent peacefulness and lonely beauty danger lurks.
Her watchfulness never ceases.  She waits, and waits, and waits
for the unwary or careless intruder who dares to cross over her borders.

The more you love the Northland, the more you respect and fear her.
The life that is there pulses with a vital rawness.
There is no in between; you must love the North fiercely
with all that is in you or hate her just as passionately.”

Locked in the Frozen Grip of Winter

Peawanuck, Weenusk First Nation, Northern Ontario

Flickr:  J.H.   Licence

Once I wandered off by myself
along the shore of the peninsula between the ice and the bush.
I stopped and looked across the frozen surface of Lake Attawapiskat
to the treed horizon and realized that no one,
not single person in the world, knew where I was.
I was truly alone.

Looking at the surrounding wilderness I thought,
“Maybe no other human has ever crossed this spot."
I wondered at the rawness of the land and at the absolute silence.  

In the bitter subzero cold, the air seemed frozen, crystalline.
I felt I could shatter it with a tap of a finger,
and the shards would collapse soundlessly into the snow.

The profound peace I felt at first slowly changed into uneasiness
as I glanced at the scraggily black spruce at my back.
I thought, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is hears it, does it make a sound?
If I fell and cried out and no one heard me, did I make a sound?”

Those numberless stunted and spindly trees
and those sweeping stretches of ice
made me feel small and insignificant,
and then the bone-burrowing cold and the wild solitude
sent me hurrying home to the security of warmth and love and consequence.

I have never felt so alone, and in this crowded and connected world,
I may never feel so isolated again.

Black Spruce, James Bay Area

Flickr: Peupleloup   Licence

What I didn’t understand as a young girl
is that the intimidating and dangerous wilderness I experienced
was home to the Ojibwa around me.

They and the nearby Cree had inhabited this region for thousands of years,
surviving on the food, shelter, and medicine the land provided.
They knew and understood their land and were deeply connected to its forests and waters.

When I lived in Lansdowne House over fifty years ago,
the Ojibwa lifestyle of trapping furs to trade for supplies
at the Hudson’s Bay post was disappearing;
and after I left, the people became welfare dependent in less than a decade.

Little development has occurred since then,
and the Ojibwa still depend on the moose, caribou, Canada goose,
and lesser snow goose their land provides.

The Hudson's Bay Post
Clerk Brian Booth and Two Ojibwa Men
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario
Winter 1960-61

Photo by Don MacBeath

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

The recent discovery of rich chromium deposits in the Ring of Fire 
holds the promise of jobs, economic development, and a waged-based economy
for Lansdowne House and other remote Ojibwa and Cree villages in the area.

But the Ojibwa and Cree love their land
and value their traditional cultures.
They are concerned about the impact
mining and development could have on their land
and about whether or not they can maintain
their cultural identity in the face of massive change.

I remember the silent solitude and wild beauty surrounding Lansdowne House,
and I know that development and change are irreversible.

I worry that this vast and fragile wetland, so rare and precious,
will be broken and fragmented and lost
and that the indigenous people who have lived there for millennia
will not be the ones who prosper from the riches of their land.

My Father Crossing the Peninsula

near Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue


Bay of Fundy out of Westport, Brier Island
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1.  Winter Roads:  In recent years the province of Ontario has invested in building and
     maintaining winter roads to connect Lansdowne House and other remote First Nations
     communities to permanent roads and railway systems, but the roads are passable only
     from mid-January to late-March and only if the weather is wintery enough to provide
     the heavy snow-pack and ice required for the roads.  With rising temperatures and
     unpredictable weather due to climate change, these winter roads are increasingly
     unreliable.  cbc.ca

2.  References:  In writing this post, I referred to Canadian Geographic:  Special North Issue,
     March/April 2017, Vol. 137, Vol. 2:  "Out of Sight" by Jesse Gamble, pages 38-45.
     I also watched, yet again, the Ojibwa documentary "We Love Our Land" filmed in Neskantaga.


For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House Lies in the Wilderness

West of James and Hudson Bays

Flickr:  Stuart Rankin   License

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Hudson Bay Lowlands (green)

Wikipedia

Lansdowne House 
Northern Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia