Kataquapit tracks down family member’s war history

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.
My feelings were mixed with excitement on one hand and sadness on another. It was good to finally lay my hand on the resting place of my great grandfather John Chookomolin, who had been put in the ground on this spot Sept. 20, 1917.
When I knelt down to read the engraving on his stone it was spelled ‘J. Jakomolin’, a misprint in history that had added to many complications that kept his fate a mystery for some 80 years.
In the bright light of the day in this quaint cemetery in Englefield Green, I felt a sense of happiness in finding his grave but I also found myself thinking about what the final months of my great grandfather’s life would have been like in a foreign country worlds away from his ancestral lands, family and friends. I feel it my duty to give him a voice after all these years.
He had been part of a group of 24 young Cree men who left Attawapiskat on the James Bay coast in the summer of 1917 to take part in the First World War.
A recruiter had appeared that spring to our remote community and had led these young men on a long difficult journey south through the northern wilderness by canoe and by foot to access the rail line near Nakina. According to their recruitment war records, these Cree boys were registered with the commonwealth military in June and July 1917 and in a matter of two months they were shipped off across the Atlantic in September to take part in the war effort in England.
These young Cree men did not speak any European language and they did not fully understand the reasons why they went off across the ocean and left their homes. Their reality had always been the nomadic life of the Muskegowuk Cree on their traditional lands near Attawapiskat on the shores of the great James Bay. They knew nothing of the world outside and yet they obliged some visiting military recruiter who asked for their help.
My great grandfather John Chookomolin was one of the unfortunate ones who contracted an illness during the ship crossing.
He landed safely in England but was subsequently transferred to military hospitals. His records detail his journey to the region of Surrey, east of the city of London where he was treated in a hospital in Englefield Green, a small town near the larger center of Egham.
After nearly two weeks of treatment it is claimed he succumbed to pneumonia and was buried in the Catholic portion of the cemetery of St. Jude’s in Englefield Green.
My great grandfather’s history was a complete mystery until the early 1990s when my cousin George Hookimaw took the initiative to do some research to find out what had happened to John Chookomolin so many decades ago.
Up to that point, my grandmother Louise Paulmartin, had never known what happened to her father and only understood that he had made the Atlantic crossing and just never came home.
John Chookomolin’s mysterious disappearance had made life difficult for my grandmother who was only a few months old when he left.
John’s wife Maggie died a few years after he left for the war, leaving my grandmother Louise an orphan during a time when life was a difficult struggle for survival in the northern wilderness. For more than 80 years no communication made it home regarding John and his orphaned daughter grew up without knowing what became of her father.
Kookoom, the Cree word for grandmother, was happy to learn in the mid-1990s that one of her grandchildren found her father’s grave in England. My cousin, Kathy Koostachin, had made the journey in the 1990s and she took photos for the family so our grandmother received the news with a sense of joy in discovering news about this life long mystery. It made her feel more at peace.
As I stood in St. Jude’s cemetery looking down at the white grave stone it dawned on me how strange it was that my great grandfather had ended up in this foreign land so far from his family. He must have been so full of fear and felt so alone in his last days. At 22 years of age, he would have been fit, strong and ready for any challenge and adventure. I thought about how impressed and awe struck he must have been at seeing for the first time, trains, machinery, ships, the amount of industry, development and size of this powerful country across the ocean.
He had been plucked from a time centuries removed from life in developed Canada and the UK in 1917. He spoke only the Cree language and all of his life experience revolved around living on the land.
I compared his journey with mine. I had flown into the UK on an international flight that required a great degree of preparation, organization and time. After I landed, I rented a car and it was a challenge to relearn how to drive on the opposite side of the road while moving in traffic at highway speed.
Even though I speak the same language, the customs, methods and ways of doing things and culture is very different from my Cree way of life. I felt myself confounded and challenged with the simplest tasks. London and the surrounding area is densely populated and places are connected through a complicated maze of train tracks, roads and highways.
It occurred to me that the experience my great grandfather had in 1917 would have been much more intense and overwhelming than my current day reality. It would be similar to me being picked up by aliens and taken to another planet. Even worse it would end in death.
My pilgrimage to John Chookomolin’s grave is an adventure that is providing me a glimpse of the final months of his life and the lives of those boys that left Attawapiskat on that summer day in 1917. I have been assisted by so many wonderful people here in England who have contributed to shining some light on my great grandfather’s last days in England. The story is unfolding in ways I would never have imagined and I am thrilled at being able to give him a voice.
He has much more to say.