Day 43 Grand Rapids, Manitoba N 53° 10’ 42” W 99° 15’ 24” Steele: At Grand Rapids, Manitoba, past the hydro dam where the song of millennia was killed with a single stroke by Manitoba Hydro, Miss Moose was pulled out of the water for the last time — not a minute too soon judging from her ragged bottom. In another No-Tell motel, eating Diane Constant’s gift of delicious borscht. This river and her peoples keep giving and giving. J hitchhiked up to The Pas and met up with band counsellor Rick Constant and his wife Diane, and the chief and fetched our truck and trailer and Diane loaded Skip up with bottles of pickles and borscht and now we’re chowing down to delicious homemade food and getting ready to release the glacier water we’d brought 2200 kms from Our Lady the Saskatchewan River’s birthplace in the Rocky Mountains. I’d spent the day at Chemawawin Cree Nation while J hitchhiked to The Pas to get our truck. I had a steady stream of sightseers from Ch’wawin. Come to see the sailboat and us. The boys at Old Post had told them we are coming. Posted pictures of us all over Facebook so the Elders tell us. All came to check out this strange sight, a sailboat on their river. This is the stuff of history, or folly, they laugh. The posse of children that gather around me show me their village, proud of their new pavement. For fuck’s sake 50 years after their village was flooded, their graveyard flooded, the village relocated 70 km down the river, Hydro Manitoba finally gave them the money for the long- promised pavement. wtf Manitoba and Canada?? After J returns from The Pas, our last portage. I sit on the dock and show some of the Elders who have driven down to see us and the boat, videos shot of the glacier with J’s iPad and they are amazed to see the birth of their river. They search for a Cree word for glacier. They use the word ice. miskwāmē . They bless us a safe journey. The river keeps giving and giving. We know we will arrive. We are tired and anxious to finish before the snow falls. To return west. Somehow, the river, kisiskaciwani-sipiy, will continue to give as she did, even on the most miserable, dispiriting days, she will give the entire way. *
Today as I am drinking coffee on deck, an 11-year-old named D comes down to the boat and starts poking around at the shrouds, the bowline and the stern line. He pokes and prods the outboard motor. All he wants is to start the motor. I tell him to leave it alone and that when J gets back he can talk to J about starting the motor. He’s a bright kid, the kind of kid that if left alone smells trouble and grabs at it. The fishermen come and go all day. Some are indifferent to me and the sailboat, but that may just be their way here in Ch’wawin. They unload their boats, gut their fish then drive away in pickup trucks down the newly paved roads. I’m using the bathroom inside the big building where the fishermen gut and clean their fish. The bathroom is full of dead flies and it stinks. There’s a shower in there but I wouldn’t use it. There’s an older woman gutting fish at one of the fish tables. She nods at me as I walk by. D comes back and I tell him I need time to take a birdbath inside the cabin and clean up the boat so come back later. I promise him that J will talk to him about the motor. He goes to the big fishing boat next to us and helps the fishermen with little chores. The water is disgusting around the dock, filled with a weird pink stain, and oil slicks. I haven’t seen filthy water like this since Fort Mac. I use the last of our fresh water to clean. I have been using our water for the past week as the water quality of the river had gone down significantly the closer we got to Cedar Lake, the lake made for the hydroelectric dam. Th e lake is a weird fluorescent green with some kind of algae bloom and I can’t help but think of all that has been dumped into the river from upstream, beginning at Drayton Valley, into Mordor, the sinister- looking sections of the river where oil and industry suck water from the river, Edmonton, then North Battleford, Prince Albert, and the farmlands that front the river and the phosphates they bleed into the water table. I remember the bloated body of the steer lying half in the water. This seems to be the problem, it seems everybody thinks only of their little section of the river. Intellectually everybody knows the river comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, but it really does seem to be a case of out of sight, out of mind. I’m okay so that’s all that matters.
56 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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