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

National Park Service

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

Wikimedia

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