Notes on The Eastmain Journal (1973)....

October 20, 2005
THE EDDY AT CONGLOMERATE GORGE

An update/footnote on the Eastmain Journal that I did after the Eastmain trip in 1973. ...

I just spent an hour chatting with James Cheechoo. His family had worked their ancestral lands which lie just to the south of The Eastmain and from the Village to about where the new James Bay Highway now lies. James is ten years or so older than me. His is the last generation to remember -- first hand -- the life in the bush.

Somehow we started talking about Conglomerate Gorge. I had remembered the spring in the middle of the portage -- where the campsite was. James also remembered the Gorge -- and particularly the custom of sprinkling tobacco over the water at the end of The Gorge -- so as to pacify the great big eddy that is there. Hopefully this would pacify the eddy enough so that it would not roll a canoe. Evidently everybody knows about that eddy.....

That’s exactly what the eddy did when we came through. It rolled Bruce and Sty. And Bruce was the one who forgot his tobacco! The eddy wanted his tobacco and was offended by his negligence!

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TWIN OTTERS
Sunday, July 2, 2006

A couple of weeks ago James was breaking coffee with me. We were talking about Clouston Gorge, and I can’t remember how we got to that topic. James told me that people knew of two giant otters who lived UNDER The Gorge. They were always playing — which is why The Gorge made all that noise. (You couldn’t really hear what someone else was saying.)

You’ll notice that in all of my pictures of The Gorge — and in many of the pictures of other parts of The River — the human figures generally have their backs to the camera. They are looking at The Gorge.

When I presented at the WCA conference in Toronto this last February, after I spoke, a canoe group leader from another camp (Keewaydin/Dunmore) came up to me and shared one of his stories. When the group had finished the portage around Clouston, they, like we, a year or so before, stood and watched The River. One of their number took out his harmonica and played music for The River, The Gorge, The Twin Otters. And, of course, you couldn’t hear a note of it. But The River could.

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O LAMENTED LAND by George Juris Luste

The melancholy cry of a loon
echoes through
these northern wilds

It is a solemn land
a lonely land
a patient land
waiting
unchanging

Frozen in time
Age and rock
Water and bush
A crucible of life
A refuge for
mammals and birds and fish

Old Indian campsites
Voices from the past
shrouded in darkness
and imagination
The progression of life
slowly marching
towards the morning light

But voices from the present cry
‘steel concrete power’
these are ‘real needs’

Foreign men
who have no roots here
are building
roads and dams

To bring a flood
To erase
a treasured gift
which they don’t see

Let the Cree
who live here
Who buried their fathers here
Who watched cold and winter
and starvation
and survived

Let these people decide

Their silent gaze speaks
of memories and needs
of animal spirits
and ancestral deeds

This is
their native land

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Toronto
Saturday, September 8, 1973
(Used by permission)