Monday, August 28, 2017

Unexpected Guests: Swainson's Hawks


For the past few weeks Terry and I have been watching
a pair of magnificent Swainson's hawks.


Aerial Dancers Off Our Deck 
Aurora, Colorado,USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




They've taken a great liking to our roof, deck, and airspace,
and they aren't the least bit intimidated by Terry and Me.



A favorite Perch on the Peak of Our Deck Roof
The Swainson's Hawk (Buteo swainsoni), is a large Buteo hawk of the Falconiformes.
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Hanging Out on Our Deck
It couldn't care less that I'm snapping photos nearby!
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




These beautiful raptors are found in the open spaces
of the prairies and dry grasslands of the American west.

They hunt rodents in flight and sometimes chase after insects on the ground.
They especially like locusts and grasshoppers.


Hunting in the Grass
The Swainson's Hawk (Buteo swainsoni), is a large Buteo hawk of the Falconiformes.
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved






Swainson's hawks are similar in size and in habitat to the Red-tailed hawk.

Their white underbellies and white wing linings contrast
with their black flight feathers, helping to identify them.

Swainson's Hawk in Flight  © M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  All Rights Reserved



These hawks like to perch on fence posts, utility poles, and lone trees,
but these two are fond of our decks and roofs.

They can survey two golf holes and all the natural rough surrounding them
from our neighbor's and our roofs and decks.


Perching on Our Neighbor's Deck
The reddish tinge is caused by the way the light is striking the red deck.
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved


This one lands the most on our home.


The Hawk as Seen from Our Bedroom
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Powerful Talons
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved


The Swainson's hawk winters in Argentina in South America
and have one of the longest migration routes of any American raptor.





All too soon our unexpected guests will be heading south.
It will be quieter and less exciting when they leave!


Hawks High Over Our Deck
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




A Joy to See!
Aurora, Colorado, USA
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




I'm no bird expert, so if I've misidentified this hawk,
please let me know!!!

Friday, August 25, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: Early Scribbles


My parents and I viewed the imminent approach
of break-up quite differently in late April, 1961.

While they laid in food and supplies
and worried about medical and dental emergencies,
I was excited by the romance of true isolation in the wild.

No in.  No out.


Causeway to the Father's Island
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada
Painting by Don MacBeath 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



  

A year or so later I tried to capture
what I was feeling at the time
and scratched down:

Spring was the key
that began to unlock
the frozen grip of winter.

Our very souls ached for it.



Early Scribbles
Photo by Louise Barbour 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




But our joy was mingled with vague fears and apprehensions ~
Break-up time was drawing near.

The novelty of break-up fascinated me.
For a period of five or six weeks we would be marooned.
We were the Robinson Crusoes of northwestern Ontario.


Spring Draws Close in Northern Ontario
Flickr:  James Vincent Wardhaugh  License


All about me spring was written into the land.
The snow retreated leaving in its wake a riot of colors.
Red shrubs interwoven with black, grey with rust.

Golden dead flower stalks bravely withstood
the gurgling rivulets of water
trickling from the melting snow to the lakeshore.

The air was filled with the pungent, dank odor of damp earth,
rotting twigs, and the dead sweet fragrance of dried flowers.

Song birds filled the bush,
and the honking of sleek Canadian geese rang in the sky.


Canada Geese in Flight
  

Spring had come.
And with it came mud, thick black mud.

Overnight our school ground blossomed into
an intricate maze of canals, locks, cities, and dams.
What pleasure we children, both copper and white, 
took in the moulding of the cold black muck. 

Halfway down the slope in front of the school
we would laboriously construct a huge dam.
Beneath it we carefully and painstaking laid out
a beautiful city with roads, canals, ditches, houses, boats, and cars.

While we built, the water would build up behind our dam.
When all was finished we would step back and survey our handiwork.

Suddenly with a wild shriek, we would leap unto the dam,
rip it apart, and watch with satisfaction
as the water raged down the slope leaving havoc in its wake.

We never tired of this.


My School and Friends
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada
Photo by Don MacBeath, Fall 1960 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



When I read my young scribbles about the North,
I see that girl who was and always had been fascinated with nature,
and who was and always would be a Romantic.

I also see that kid mucking around,
creating and destroying mud worlds
with the wild abandon of childhood.

By the time I wrote these scribbles I had matured,
become too old to muck around in the dirt.

I had better things to do,
like learning to jive and to twist,
to follow the Hit Parade,
to experiment with lipstick and mascara,
and to chase boys in a whole different way.


The Twist
by artist Thomas Hart Benton
Flickr:  James Vaughn   License



But you can't deny your basic nature,
and before long I was drawn to literature and geology,
back to mucking around in the dirt
and reading English Romantic poetry.






Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved





Notes:
1.  Romanticism:
     Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement originating in Europe
     near the end of the 18th century.  It emphasized emotion and individualism, intuition over
     reason, the pastoral over the urban, and glorified the past and nature.  Wikipedia

     "To see a World in a Grain of Sand
      And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
      Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
      And Eternity in an hour ..."
   
      William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, poetryfoundation 



For Map Lovers Like Me:


Location of Lansdowne House
A Map Too Fun to Pass Up!




Location of Lansdowne House
Known Today as Neskantaga



Friday, August 18, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: C'est la Guerre


Have you ever experienced dental pain so bad
that you wanted to grab a pair of pliers and rip the tooth out of your jaw?

I have.  Nothing makes me crazier than dental pain.

I recently had to abandon a flight from Calgary to Halifax
and fly home to Aurora because of a sudden and serious dental abscess.
I was lucky.  I accessed expert dental care very quickly.

We take such things for granted today,
but a half century ago in remote parts of Canada people couldn't.


A Last View of Calgary
as I head for Denver instead of Halifax
July 23, 2017
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Photo by Louise Barbour 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Dental care was a concern and a real problem for people
in isolated communities like Lansdowne House back then,
especially during freeze-up and break-up
when there was no way to get out to a dentist.

When my mother wrote to her mother-in-law
shortly before break-up about Milt MacMahon's dental woes,
it's fortunate she couldn't see into her own future.


On April 20, 1961 she had written:
Milt's teeth were bothering him so much, 
he had to get Mike to pull five of them out.

Mike froze his teeth and pulled them,
and then Milt went over to visit Duncan and then home.
When he got home he passed out.

He had a bad reaction to the needle.
It happens in one case in a million I guess.
He was unconscious for half an hour.

Poor Mike, at one point he thought he couldn't save him.
Milt went into shock, his blood pressure shot up, 
and I guess his heart missed a beat.

However Mike saved him.


My mother had no inkling of her own dental future.


The Only Way in and Out:  by Bush Plane
A Norseman on Skis
Flickr ~ NOAA:  Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren   License 



On Monday, April 24, 1961
My father wrote:

Hi There Everyone:
As far as can be determined, the last plane
before break-up will be in tomorrow morning.
The ice is still good up here,
but it is getting pretty bad down south in Nakina and Armstrong.

Just in case tomorrow’s plane is the last one,
I thought I would get another note off to you all, in spite of the fact that
my last effort is still reposing in the mail sack down in Mitchell’s office.
Because of this, you lucky people will have to suffer through
two of my efforts, instead of the usual one.

The last of our freeze-up----damn it, I mean break-up order arrived today.
I can’t ever remember having so much food in the house at one time.
We have enough to last for four or five weeks and even for six in a pinch,
although we will hope that we aren’t pinched.


The Hudson's Bay Post
where the departing mail waited and food could be bought.
Clerk Brian Booth
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario
Winter 1960-61
Photo by Don MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




I was a bit horrified when I got to see the bills
and discovered that the bills for the break-up order came to $195.00;
but actually, that’s not bad, when you consider that we bought a whole month’s supplies.

We usually have to spend at least this every month on food,
but it is divided over four weeks and doesn’t look so bad.
I’m just not used to buying everything in one swell swoop like this. 

I have lost about half of my pupils for a while.
They have all gone out trapping muskrat.
They won’t be back till after break-up.



Muskrat Tracks:  Wikimedia          Muskrat on Ice:  Wikimedia          Three Muskrats:  Flickr ~ Eric Bégin   License



I was worried that this would reflect on me, and I was wondering,
if I had made my school a little more interesting, they might have stayed.

Bill Mitchell and Sara put my mind at rest on this matter though.
Sara surmised, and Bill definitely stated, that this is an annual occurrence
and the Indians have been doing it for generations.

I can’t see why the men don’t go out for the three weeks alone
and leave the mothers and children home,
so the kids could go to school;
but I have found out that Indian fathers are more interested
in their sons becoming good trappers than good scholars
and that their daughters become proficient in curing the pelts.

I suppose when you look at it from the point of view of the Indian,
it is a practical way of looking at things.
After all, this is the way that a great majority of them
will be making their living when they grow to be adults.


Into the Bush, James Bay Area



Poor Sara had to get a tooth pulled today.
It was causing her a lot of agony,
and the dentist won’t be in till June or July.
A dentist could probably have saved the tooth,
while the best Mike could do for her was to take it out.

This is one of the greatest drawbacks to living in the north.
It is so hard to get dental care when you need it.  

Bill Mitchell was saying that if your teeth won’t last
one or two years between overhauls,
then, if you are going to live in the north for any length of time,
you are just as well off without them.
He had his all out a long time ago.

I am lucky.  Mine haven’t caused me any trouble since I came up here,
and the last time I had any work done to them, except for cleaning them,
was before I got out of the Air Force.
Now Sara, on the other hand, had her last dental appointment
just before she came up here.


Mom (Sara)
Before Five Kids and Dental Woes
Dating Dad at Acadia University
Fifteen Years Earlier ~ 1946
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



I was just looking at the amount that I said I spent for food every month,
and I realize that the food we have on hand is a five weeks’ supply;
and actually this works out just right,
for Sara has just told me that we usually spend about $35.00 a week for food up here.
The actual cost of the food is not very much, if any higher than in the Cove.

What costs up here is having it brought in by plane at ten cents a pound.
This is what really hurts.

Well, here I am with a nice clean white page in front of me,
and all of a sudden, I can’t think of anything else to say.

Oh yes, it’s Duncan’s birthday tomorrow, Duncan senior that is,
and we are going over to help him celebrate.
Mike and Anne are also coming over,
so I guess there will be no bridge, but just a nice gabfest.
Oh well, I always did like a good gossip session occasionally.


Dad and Duncan
Northern Ontario, Canada, 1960
Photo by Don MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



I have been doing considerable painting lately.
I painted a lovely large picture of the Father’s Island,
18 inches by 24 inches, and I gave it to him for his birthday,

I did another one of the Anglican Church up here and sent it to Mother for Mother’s Day.

I did another one of a small wooded island out in the lake in front of our house,
and Duncan asked me if he could have it, so I am giving it to him for his birthday.

It is a winter scene, and I think it is a pretty good one.
I almost get a chill from looking at it.
I find that painting is a great way of relaxing.

I did another painting of the same island that I did for Duncan,
although it is a different view,
and I believe that it is the best that I have ever done yet.
Sara liked it so well that she claimed it for a birthday gift,
before I got a chance to give it away to someone else.

It’s a funny thing, but once I have finished a picture,
I am no longer interested in it
and can only think of what I am going to paint next.

Well, it is getting late, and I was up late last night trying to beat the break-up deadline,
which I thought was going to be today, so I think I’ll sign off now.

Will be seeing you all via the printed page after break-up.

Bye now, love, Don.


The Father's Island
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Circa 1960
Photo by Father Maurice Ouimet
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved


My mother's dental ordeal was not over.  
Break-up arrived and so did more difficulties for my mother.

My father discussed the situation in his unpublished handbook
The Northern School Teacher:

"Medical and dental care is a problem in the bush,
for anything serious always entails a trip out by aeroplane.
The government pays the cost of all such emergency transportation
for medical and dental treatment, it is true,
but there are periods when it is just not possible to get out.

I refer especially to the freeze-up and break-up periods,
which usually average about a month each,
but can last as long as seven or eight weeks.

During the break-up at Lansdowne House,
Sara came down with a horrible toothache.
She just could not bear it.

Mike O'Flaherty, the nurse, whose enthusiasm
frequently exceeded his ability,
said he could pull the tooth out for Sara.
Since anything was preferable to the agony of the toothache,
Sara consented.

I accompanied her to the nursing station,
where Mike sat her down on an ordinary kitchen chair
and proceeded to pull the tooth.

After much wincing and crying, swearing and cursing,
and prying and pulling, the tooth was successfully extracted.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong tooth,
and the whole agonizing process had to be repeated.

Once outside we had to get a partial plate to fill the gap in Sara's mouth.
As the French say, "C'est la Guerre."

"C'est la Guerre," indeed!





Till next time ~
Fundy Blue


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











Notes:
1.  Milt MacMahon:
     Milt was one of the two Department of Transport employees in Lansdowne House,
     and his duties included running the weather station.

2.  Mike O'Flaherty:  
     Mike was the nurse at the nursing station and had to handle whatever came up,
     especially when planes could not fly in or out of Lansdowne House. 
     He and his wife Anne had a baby daughter Kathie who was about 5 months old.

3.  Brian Booth:  
     The clerk at the Hudson Bay Post.  He was seventeen when he first arrived at the Bay
     in Lansdowne House.

4.  Break-up Order:
     Typically white families in Lansdowne House ordered most of their food and
     and supplies once a year and had them delivered by tractor train.  The tractor trains
     (sometimes called cat trains) delivered the orders during the winter when it was
     possible to travel over the frozen land, muskeg, and water.

     My parents arrived too late to put in their annual order, so they had to fly everything
     in by bush plane.



A cat train on the move to Tigvariak Island
 Alaska North Slope, Spring 1949



A cat train on the move across the tundra 
carrying equipment and supplies for the construction of the DEW Line.
Alaska North Slope, Spring 1949




5.  Bill Mitchell:  The Manager of the Hudson Bay Post.

6.  Duncan and Maureen McRae:
    Duncan was the other Department of Transport employee.
     He and his wife Maureen were good friends with my parents.

7.  Unpublished Handbook:
     Recorded in Dad's unpublished The Northern School Teacher:  A Hand Book To Be Issued To All
     New Entrants To The Teaching Profession In The Indian Schools In The Sioux Lookout Indian
     Agency, 1966, page 25.



For Map Lovers Like Me:




Location of Lansdowne House
Known Today as Neskantaga
Hudson Bay Lowlands (green)


Lansdowne House Lies in the Wilderness
West of James and Hudson Bays




Lansdowne House, Armstrong, and Nakina 
Northern Ontario, Canada




To see a map that shows the northern limit of connecting all-weather roads or rain lines, Click Here.



Friday, August 11, 2017

The Lansdowne Letters: The Occasional Dog Fight in the Kitchen ...


The forestry shack that our family rented in Lansdowne House
was smallest place we ever lived in,
with the exception of a tiny log cabin at a fish camp on Lac Seul.

In one way the house was well ahead of its time, 
for the kitchen opened into the living room
forming a kind of great room that is so popular today.

Not that it was great ~
when we were not sleeping in the two tight bedrooms,
our family of two adults, five children, and one dachshund
crammed into a living space crowded with a kitchen table and chairs,
a 25-gallon water drum, an oil burner, a couch, a coffee table, a daybed,
and a bookcase, perhaps all of 500 square feet.


The Forestry Shack
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960
Drawing by Donalda MacBeath, Age 7

Text:  Dear Nana, This is a picture of our home.
Note:  Indian "Gods" (Dogs),  Buckets of Meat Hung from the Eaves, 
a Box of Groceries on the Roof,
and the Weather Vane on the Chimney 

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



Inside the Forestry Shack
Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, 1960
Sketch by Maureen McRae 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



Everyone was on top of everyone.
If Mom was teaching Roy and me to play Bridge at one end of the kitchen table,
Dad was at the other typing while our three younger sisters
played around the couch and coffee table,
and Gretchen found a spot wherever she could.

In mid-April 1961 the approach of break-up on Lake Attawapiskat
prompted my father to dash off a series of personal and professional letters
before the ice became too weak to support mail-carrying bush planes from the Outside.

In an excerpt from an April 16th letter, 
my father wrote to his mother Myrtle
about our "semi-disorganized" life in the heart of our home.


Father Ouimet, Dad, and Brother Bernier (left)
Myrtle Pratt MacBeath (right)
Lansdowne House and Charlottetown
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



Apart from the possibility of the new job in Sioux Lookout,
the nearness of the break-up, and the occasional dogfight in the kitchen,
life in the MacBeath household is proceeding in its usual semi-disorganized manner.

The last mentioned occurrence was something that usually happens to me,
but darned if I didn’t sleep through the whole thing.
I guess that Sara told you about it.

Apparently, she was in the kitchen working, when the door burst open
and in ran a dog closely pursued by a dog team of four other dogs,
intent upon committing mayhem on the body of the first dog.


A Dog Team on the Yukon River
NPS Photo, By Ranger Josh Spice


The dog team was in turn closely followed by the driver of the dog team,
and a more embarrassed Indian you never saw in your life.
For a time life in our kitchen was complicated, crowded, and exciting to say the least.

I wish I had awakened, for I bet it was amusing.
However Sara won’t tell me too much about the whole thing.
If I had seen it, most likely I could have written several pages on the subject.

Incidentally, the dog team mentioned earlier was complete with sleigh and load,
including a large pair of snowshoes, and our kitchen is not very large.

I don’t see how they were going to find room to fight,
but this little consideration of space didn’t seem to worry the dogs too much.


Dog Team on the Ice
Location Unknown, 2017
pxhere   Creative Commons CC0


Sara is trying to start Louise and Roy at Bridge.
The first lesson is in session right now.
I don’t know just how successful the attempt will be, 
but I don’t think it hurts for anyone to learn this game as soon as possible.
Louise for certain is ready for the game, and I think that Roy is too.

If nothing else is accomplished,
I hope that we can get them started playing together
and perhaps do something towards overcoming
the intense rivalry that seems to have grown up between them.

Right now they don’t know what cooperation means.
It would be wonderful if they learned to cooperate through Bridge
which is a game requiring cooperation between partners.


Early Rivals
Three-year old Roy laughs as the photographer tells four-year old me
to pull down my skirt because my underwear was showing.
Living Room, Our Apartment, Charlottetown, circa 1954
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



Sara is glaring at me right now
(the Bridge lesson ended in a fight between Louise and Roy),
and now she wants me to get away from the table
so we can have our dinner.
I will finish this after dinner...




I think the only person
besides Dad who doesn't
remember the dog team
plunging through
our open kitchen door
is my baby sister Bertie.

Bertie in her cousin's home
Montreal, Quebec, February 1961
Photo:  Thanks to Dawn MacDonald White






It was all Whitey's fault!
The dog team belonged to our Ojibway neighbors the Jacobs,
and the lead dog on the team was Whitey.
On this day he looked healthy and fattened up,
but that was not how he looked when we first met him

I don't know what the Jacobs called "Whitey."
That was the name we kids gave him.
He was one of the scrawny Ojibway dogs that bedded down
in the snow near our house,
the "little god" Donnie drew in her letter for Nana.

Our mother and we children were terribly distressed
when we first moved into the forestry shack 
and saw how malnourished the Ojibway dogs were.
Whitey was the runt of the bunch, and he often lost out
to the bigger dogs when scrambling for scarce food.

We made Whitey our special project by driving off the bigger dogs
and feeding him the choicest scraps left over from our kitchen.
We fed the other dogs too, but we made sure Whitey got the most.

When Donnie and Barbie went to the door to scrape off their lunch dishes,
they had no idea that Dad's student George Jacobs
would be heading off to the bush with his family's dog-team.
It was muskrat season, and he was leaving for the traplines.

Whitey took one look at my sisters on the doorstep and raced for the door,
dragging the rest of the team and George behind him.
The other dogs knew exactly what was going on,
and they rushed for their share of the leftovers.

Donnie and Barbie fled into the kitchen
toward my mother who was washing dishes,
as the snarling, viciously-snapping dogs exploded into the kitchen
and squeezed between the water drum and kitchen table.
Roy dove over the couch, and I jumped up on the daybed
as the fully loaded sled tangled up in the kitchen chairs.
Bertie and our dachshund Gretchen scattered.

With the growling and yapping and shouting and screaming
of dogs and people and the crashing chairs and smashing sled,
it's a wonder that Dad didn't wake up from his nap;
but then, my father was a master napper.

A frantic and cursing George managed to unhitch
the dogs and drag them out the door.
Then, mortified and apologizing, 
he untangled the sled from the pile of chairs,
yanked it out the door, and disappeared.


George on the left, Simon on the right
in Dad's Classroom
Photo by Don MacBeath 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved



Fortunately for George, by the time he returned
from the trapline with his family,
the pandemonium had died down ~ but was not forgotten!

Meanwhile Roy and I continued our own dogfights
in the kitchen, on the school grounds, and around the village.
To this day we battle fiercely over cards,
every game of which is meticulously recorded in
the diary of my generation's answer to Samuel Pepys, 
my brother Roy.






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








My Three Younger Sisters:
Donnie with Bertie and Barbie
Grammie's Backyard, Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia
Summer, 1960
Photo by Sara MacBeath 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved


Notes:  
1.  Unit Conversions:
     325 square feet = 30.1 square meters.

2.  Muskrat Season:
     George Jacobs was one of my father's older male students.  In mid-April 1961 he was expected to go
     to his family's muskrat traplines as break-up approached.  Ojibway fathers often considered their sons'
     training in traditional hunting and trapping skills more important than attending school.  The Ojibway
     primarily trapped muskrat and other small fur-bearing mammals for their furs which they traded
     for supplies such as flour, sugar, lard, and tea at the Hudson's Bay post.  Sometimes the animals' meat
     supplemented the Ojibway's food supplies.

3.  Samuel Pepys:
     Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was an administrator in the navy
     and a Member of Parliament in England.  He is famous for the
     private diary he kept from 1600-1609, with its detailed accounts
     of the Great Plague of London, the Great Fire of London, and
     the Second Dutch War.  Pepys' Diary is an important primary
     resource for the English Restoration period.  Wikipedia 

     My brother Roy has consistently kept a daily journal since the
     mid-1960s.  Roy takes great delight in recording events big and
     small, and he often writes in his meticulous small script in his
     latest leather-bound journal while enjoying a glass of scotch or
     cognac.

     I am happy to report that I beat everyone playing Thirteen
     in the one game I played while in Calgary recently.  Thirteen
     is a great card game that Roy and his wife Susan learned
     while traveling on the Mongolian Steppes last summer.
     I know my brilliant win is recorded for posterity in Roy's
     current journal.  Pepe's Portrait:  Wikimedia





For Map Lovers Like Me:
Map of Canada
Highlighting Ontario



Location of Lansdowne House
Wikimedia   edited



Lansdowne House
Sketch by M. Louise Barbour
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




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.         
                                                                    #23 My Father's Church of England Indian Day School
                                                                    #15 Forestry Shack (Our Home)
                 Black Dots ~ Indian Homes