Xavier Kataquapit

On a bright sunny morning recently, I found my long-lost great grandfather John Chookomolin’s grave, in an English cemetery just outside of the historic city of London.
His white-stone commonwealth cemetery headstone glimmered under the strong spring sun on a lawn of well-tended grass. I found him in an ancient part of the cemetery where the grave memorials were pitted and roughened with age and stone borders had moved, cracked and in parts disappeared.

I am happy for my mom. She got a great gift this hunting season with a helicopter trip back to her traditional family home on the shores of the Nawashi River. This place is special to my mom and I understand that.
Susan, my mother or nigawi in the Cree language, was born and raised on the land along Nawashi. She is the most recent link for my family to the traditional life that the Cree lived for thousands of years until the coming of the European.

Six First Nation trainees are ready to start work in the mining sector thanks to a partnership program between Matachewan First Nation, Northgate Minerals Corp. and Dumas Contracting. The graduates of the Underground Miner Training program, which was provided under the Matachewan Aboriginal Access to Mine Jobs Training Strategy (MAATS), were honoured at a community gathering in Matachewan First Nation, May 26.

I woke up one morning in a half dazed fog. I was in the woods at a cottage in the wilderness where normally the forest was quiet and still. There was no wind this night to rustle the leaves in a nearby stand of poplar trees or to blow through the tall pines surrounding the building. It was the early morning, in those dark hours just before the first signs of twilight. My friend Mike had woken me up and I popped up in bed with a focus on the window. He was wondering about a sound. Then it broke the silence. It was a hard knocking sound deep in the woods.

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time in northern Quebec. The change in scenery is very enjoyable. I have met many great people and I have made a few new friends.
There is something wonderful about crossing the Quebec border from northern Ontario. I always feel more like I am driving into France from some non-French speaking European country. I have done that a couple of times. Although the border is only a few hours away from just about anywhere in northeastern Ontario it seems as though I have travelled to another country when I reach Quebec.