Attawapiskat First Nation wrapped up another successful Kattawapiskak Keekehwin Gathering for the community. The week-long event was held from August 2 to 8...
Forest fires have always been a deep worry for those of us who live in the far north of Ontario. We are surrounded by endless forests and we know full well...
There’s poetry to life. When you’re graced with the opportunity to live beyond the mayhem of the city where the wind can get at you, you discover that for yourself.
It’s lain within you like a latent gene for years but it takes the open land and the ability to dive right into the heart of perfect mornings like these mountain mornings to really let it breathe.
I watched a really terrific movie recently. I watch a lot of movies and frankly, there aren’t many nowadays that have the power to reach out and touch me.
Hollywood has strayed from the art of storytelling to the fascination with flash, technology and puerile, sometimes senseless action and violence.
That’s okay for those keen on escapism but I’ve always loved storytelling’s power to lift me, transport me, elevate me and take me somewhere I have never been.
When I was nine I was a huge Mary Poppins fan. Now that I’m nearing 55 and with a lifetime of manly pursuits behind me it seems like a silly thing to admit. But when I was nine and adjusting to a strange new adopted home the story of Mary Poppins was invaluable to me. I saw the movie first and then bought the soundtrack LP. It was the first record I ever bought and I listened to it over and over. I learned all the words to all the songs and could never seem to get enough of it.
Where we live, in the interior mountains of BC, the land is a spectacle. You can’t go anywhere without having your breath taken away by great stretches of beauty or grand displays of Creation that literally lift you up and away from the restrictions of your life. Right behind our house is a long, steady slope that leads to a peak a few miles back and from our deck we look out over a pristine lake clenched in the tight vee of another pair of mountains. When the sun shines just right on a clear, windless day the mirror of that lake makes it feel as though there were two skies.
One of the things about the writer’s life that I love the most is the seclusion. I’ve always been a loner at heart and maybe it’s fitting that I found my way to this work.
There’s something about the private confines of the imagination and the intellect that fulfills me and I love nothing better than to sit at my writing space and create. We’re conjurers, we writers. We create whole worlds out of thin air or fashion messages that touch, enlighten and empower people.
The home we live in is small. It’s a rancher style house with a crawl space for a basement and everything exists on the one floor. But there’s only the two of us and a small dog so there’s no need for a whole lot of room and we’re comfortable with the space we’ve got. Our house sits in the mountains overlooking a lake and we love living there. The deck has a marvelous view and we sit there in the afternoons or the long evenings watching the sun go down and never wish to be anywhere else.
There are three traditional hand drums in our home. Two were gifts and one was made by my wife a handful of summers ago. They hang on our walls as reminders that we’re supposed to be prayerful, to be in gratitude and live our lives as though they were a ceremony.
When we centre our lives on the traditional teachings within those drums everything is harmony. We use them at gatherings and ceremonies or whenever the feeling of praise and thankfulness hits us. They’re good friends and their comforting presence is a blessing. I always feel empowered when I play them.
These are the days of summer’s end. Above the mountains clouds become a heavier gray, ominous with snow that’s a mere month or so away. There’s a washed out feeling to the blue sky now and the jays and other winter birds have begun to peck about the yard. Even loon call in the thick purple night is urgent now. Autumn moons. Time to fly.
When I was nine I got eye glasses for the first time. I was born with terrible astigmatism but it went undiagnosed and uncorrected until I was adopted. Up until then I had just assumed that everyone saw the world the same way that I did – all fuzzy blurry and devoid of detail.
But those new lenses brought everything into a sharp and sudden focus and I was amazed. I never knew such a world existed.
In 1966, I was eleven years old. My adopted family moved that summer to a rented farmhouse in Bruce County in southwestern Ontario. I remember standing on the porch for the first time, seeing the empty fields around me and feeling lost and scared, and as empty as them.
Attawapiskat First Nation wrapped up another successful Kattawapiskak Keekehwin Gathering for the community. The week-long event was held from August 2 to 8...
Forest fires have always been a deep worry for those of us who live in the far north of Ontario. We are surrounded by endless forests and we know full well...