Xavier Kataquapit

I think all of us northerners are fed up with this long and dismal winter. The misery is made because so many people in my life have passed away this winter over the past month. It does not feel like spring.

I have lost my cousin Norman Kataquapit, a kind and gentle man I grew up with. I know his brothers Robert, Billy, Steve, Ron, Eric and Lindy and their families and friends will always hold the memory of Norman in their hearts. It’s especially sad as our families have only recently recovered after losing their brother Jeffery just over a year ago.

I grew up on the James Bay coast and from an young age I learned early on that we were more or less on our own when it came to medical emergencies. We had limited health care on the James Bay coast as was the case with most remote Indigenous communities across Canada. Most have never had a full time on site doctor and if any serious health matter arose, people had to be airlifted from Attawapiskat to Moosonee, Timmins or Kingston on emergency flights.

Attawapiskat First Nation is my home community and it was where I was born and raised with my family. When I think about where I grew up, I feel like I came from some different country or part of the world that is not part of Canada at all. It was so different to everything I later learned about that was outside my home community.

When I first met my partner Mike’s mom Emily McGrath so many years ago I was immediately struck by how open and kind she was. Everyone knew her as Emmy and she reminded me so much of all the Elders I had grow up with in my family. I was a soft spoken Cree from the James Bay coast when I first got to know her. Life was intimidating for me when I first started to live and work as a writer away from my home community but Emmy made sure I was always safe, comfortable and looked after. I owe a lot of my transition to a new life to her.

When I was a teenager attending high school in Timmins in the early 1990s people from the James Bay coast were just starting to get accustomed to the modern way of life in the south. There were not a lot of people who had drivers licenses and there were even less people who owned their own vehicles. It was a very special thing to see someone from the James Bay coast driving a vehicle and even more so if they owned the car or truck they were in.