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Tuesday 16 September 2014

Franklin discovery

Last week's big Franklin announcement - the finding of a significant shipwreck from Sir John Franklin's fated 1845-46 expedition in Canada's Arctic waters - left me rather cold (pun intended).  As a student of Canada's north, I suppose I should have been excited, but I must admit that I wasn't.

The story of the Franklin expedition is one that Canada loves to tell (hence Prime Minister Harper was on hand to help make the announcement).  It seems to say something about us.  A kind of national narrative.  Of course, if it says something about Canada, its message is rather oblique: after all, Franklin's expedition was British, not Canadian.  And as it was a mission to find the Northwest Passage, it's worth keeping in mind that the whole purpose of the journey was to avoid Canada.

But, that aside, it offers some suggestion about Canada that we seem to enjoy.  Perhaps because the Franklin expedition provides a message about the harshness of our country, about our northlands, about how we must observe humility in the face of this harsh northern region--because all hubris will be crushed.  But what if it's the wrong story to tell? What if it's too much of a cliche to still be telling that story in 21st century?  

One thing that I like about the news re. the Franklin discovery: it proved that the Inuit had it right all along. They knew where one of the ships could be found.  And maybe that should be the story: the story that we need to know and reflect on.



In the Opinion/Commentary section of The Toronto Star, Kathleen Winter had this to say: "How long do we refrain from challenging a national government that uses sad, outworn tales of lost Franklin ships like a magic lantern, superimposing a narrative of patriotic swagger over the real north — a land whose elements, people and animals are trying to tell us something about what it might really mean to be Canadian in this melting global world."

For Winter's full piece:
 http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/09/15/the_true_legacy_of_the_franklin_expedition.html


Thursday 11 September 2014

Bears

In Norway House, as summer winds down and autumn takes hold, both teachers and black bears can be found returning to the community and roaming around at large.  Presumably the teachers are largely well-behaved--but the bears are a another matter.  They're usually shy and easily scared off, but the potential for danger is there.  

After a couple of encounters with a scrawny-looking yearling bear that was hanging around our property, I phoned the Conservation Officers to let them know.  After I made the phone call,  a bear trap - which is a wide culvert pipe with a metal grill at one end and a trap door at the other - was placed along our laneway.  But the bear never took the bait and after a day or two the trap was placed at a different location. 

One of the Conservation Officers told me that there are about 15 bears prowling around the community, all hoping to fatten up for the winter.  The COs try to trap and relocate them, but the bears have got wise this year and are largely avoiding the traps.  (I heard today that they had to start baiting the traps with fruit instead of meat because they were mainly trapping stray dogs.)   


In a few more weeks, of course, these bear sightings will grow less and less frequent. And then eventually the bears go into hibernation.  It's just part of the cycle of the year here.  

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The bear photo (above) was taken by my wife as we were on Highway 373 (a.k.a., the Norway House Road).  It was just hanging out by the side of the road, no doubt hoping for handouts from passing cars.  As we slowed down to have a better look at it, the bear came out to greet us. Needless to say, we didn't give it anything to eat.  About 500 metres up the road we came to a construction zone and we told one of the workers about the bear nearby.  "We know him allright," the guy with the Slow-Stop sign said. "He's the friendly one." 

Thursday 4 September 2014

Backyard revisited

I should qualify my remarks re. the sacredness of the backyard.  I don't think that if we only loved our yards and gardens more we would then become more ecologically minded.  Instead we might just want to spray it all down with weedkiller--all in the name of love, of course.

However if we loved our yards and gardens the right way, then we might become more environmentally aware and sensitive.  My thinking on this is informed by William Cronon's well-known essay "The Trouble with Wilderness," in which Cronon argues that one of the problems that wilderness poses is that we tend to denigrate the nature around us (like, say, weeds growing in a vacant lot) in favour of what we perceive to be pristine, unspoiled and largely untouched distant wilderness regions.  Cronon points out that we often do terrible environmental damage close to home simply because we don't value the nature close to home--nature that might also be called wild.  After all, are sparrows or dandelions any less wild than grizzly bears or sequoias?

It seems to me that an appreciation for those weeds, for the scrubby greenery blooming in that so-called vacant lot - or for the birchtree in the yard or for the moss growing along the fence - might just give us a greater appreciation for the sometimes subtle but always powerful workings of nature. 

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For more on this: here's a link to my poem "Slow Life."

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/artsculture/artsandletters/2010/Slow_Life.pdf