The island world that I have experienced and observed has come to share with me its wisdom. It has shown me that our natural environment has changed. Alarmingly so.
I had first become fully aware of those changes in the early 1990s. At the time I was getting set to cross the channel between Christian Island (Georgian Bay) and Cedar Point on the mainland. I was aboard a snowmobile and it was during this time of year (mid-March).
I was on my way to Ottawa to meet with Indian Affairs officials to advocate on behalf of my people as the Chief. I was making a plea for a safer, reliable means of transportation. The ice was still thick enough to hold a snowmobile, but it was degrading quickly. The ferry had stopped running three weeks before and was now at ease in her winter harbour.
My journey across meant that I was forging through up to a foot of water in some areas along the ice road which was marked by Christmas trees (like our ancestors, we don’t waste much).
Dark patches of ice with rippling water atop tested my faith as I drove on, praying that there was indeed ice beneath my snowmobile. Some areas along the ice trail didn’t have water atop but that was because there were air holes in it where the melt from ice was draining through.
I was shrewd enough to have carried a small disposable camera with me so that I could document my harrowing journey (life was tough before cell phones). My plan was to have the film developed before my meeting in Ottawa the next day. It surely was a wise decision as the photos aided in the Beausoleil First Nation being granted some monies to purchase two state-of-the-art (at the time) scoots which, still today, make the crossing less treacherous for the people of Christian Island.
My Anishinaabeg (Ah-nish-ih-naw-behg) ancestors have known these conditions for millennia. They came to know when to trust the ice and when to avoid risking your being to it. But in a world of survival and necessity, the descendants of the old ones are involuntarily often forced to risk all to feed their families.
The people of the Beausoleil First Nation were displaced for the third time in less than 60 years to Christian Island (1886) from Beausoleil Island (1838). And before that they, along with their Anishinaabeg Tri-Council cousins, had been a part of the first Indian Reserve in Canada at Coldwater (1830). They learned to survive the harsh winters while living on their traditional territory. But their experience would be very different from the one that their descendants are faced with today.
Growing up as a young boy on that island in Georgian Bay (Christian Island), I was surrounded by a beautiful dark body of water that would present itself, depending on the season, in various shades and grades of blue and green. It always seemed to be moving, churning, and sculpting the shoreline.
In summer it could present as a clean glass top which you could peer into to see all species of fish and crustaceans. In winter it would freeze solid for three months at a time.
It meant freedom. Freedom from having to schedule your life around the ferry boat schedule. Freedom from having to be confined to the island after 6 p.m. when the Indian Agent, working for the Canadian government, would shut down travel to and from the island. Freedom to come and go as you please whether by car, snowmobile or dog team. The ice road would serve the community for sometimes up to 12 weeks each winter.
Today, that is no longer the case. The ice has not been solid enough for safe travel for the better part of the last decade. That means that since my foray to Ottawa in the 1990s there has been an accelerated change happening all around us.
The winters are milder. The ice is no longer safe enough to provide an ice road. The Christian Island ferry now cuts a path relatively easily throughout what has become shortened winter seasons.
The knowledge passed down by our ancestors has changed through the generations; what I learned from my grandfather is different from what I will teach my grandchildren. The rhythm and relationship with our natural world has been interrupted and nearly threatened out of existence.
We listen. We observe. We see and understand the changes, including knowing that these changes are faster, sharper and come from a different source than those which occurred over millennia.
The reasons for these changes are debated by many, except those who would benefit from a longer, colder winter. The Anishinaabeg are as much a casualty of this unnatural warming trend as the elements themselves.
What remains the same is our awareness, our connection and the respect we have for the land and the waters around us. And how nature teaches us about itself and how we can help to prognosticate future change. Plus, how we can mitigate potential strife as a result of that stress.
From our unique island vantage, we are able to see the changes manifesting before our eyes. There are less fish, less crustaceans, less slugs, less water snakes, worms and leeches: all the building blocks needed to sustain the waterways of our traditional territory.
One is left to wonder if those responsible for these sweeping changes see it as we do. For us, our lifeline is endangered as encroachment brings us increased development. Towns, cities, expand with ever increasing development of subdivisions, malls, and highways. Creating a stress upon the land and waterways that cannot be sustained.
No man is an Island and if we were, we would be in trouble.
I have no way of knowing if my great grandchildren will ride their snowmobiles safely across an ice road to the mainland, although I hope that is a choice rather than an impossibility.
These waters have been pristine since the last Ice Age but they have come to be wounded within 155 short years. We need to stop placing our waters in such a precarious position. We, ourselves, are made up mostly of water and when we threaten and neglect those waters, we do the same to ourselves. Our Island is telling you that.
Jeff Monague is a former Chief of the Beausoleil First Nation on Christian Island, former Treaty Research Director with the Anishnabek (Union of Ontario Indians), and veteran of the Canadian Forces. Monague, who taught the Ojibwe language with the Simcoe County District School Board and Georgian College, is currently the Superintendent of Springwater Provincial Park.
