Dear Friends and Family:

Today is April 5th and the snow has been falling steadily all day here. It is getting to be a bit of a joke. You may think of where I am as Northern BC and you’d be right. But this is supposed to be a “coastal” climate we have here. Residents cannot recall a winter that dragged itself on so relentlessly right into April. We have had another 15 cm of snow today and, reluctantly, I must undertake the 4th “last shovel of the season” of my driveway. It is wet snow, which will make it heavy shoveling.

But I’m not moping around really. A couple of weeks ago I borrowed a pair of the plastic snowshoes that the school PE department has. I figured I might use them to get into the woods once or twice while the snow melts away. Today was the fourth time I have used them. I used them last Sunday after it snowed all day Friday and Saturday. At one point that day, once I was well into the woods, I shed them. They are, after all, clunky and heavy. It seemed that on the path I was on, under the shelter of the trees, the snow wasn’t that deep. And it wasn’t. But anywhere where there was openings between trees, and there was plenty of those further along the path, I was sinking and floundering in heavy snow which was up to my knees. This was exhausting. Fortunately my gortex pants over rubber boots made a good seal, or I’d have been soaked.

So today I kept the snowshoes on the whole time. Being able to walk on top of the snow drifts, even in clunky plastic snowshoes, turned out to be much easier. You know, there is a lot to be said for plastic snowshoes. (And don’t you just know that I’m about to say it too.) You see, your regular wooden shoes, stung with strips of animal hide, are problematic in wet snow. The strips, no matter how carefully you have lacquered them, will begin to absorb the wetness. And, once they become saturated, “Oh no! I ‘ve stepped through the strings!” That very thing happened last week to a snowshoer I know. Those torn hide straps were not pretty to look at, and will necessitate an expensive rebuilding of that shoe. Besides, if you step half on a log with wooden shoes (which is easy to mistakenly do if that log is covered by snow) your weight may easily snap the wood frame. Then your shoe is toast! But the plastic shoe, on the other hand, paddles gaily over sloppy snow and enjoys springing and straddling on all manner of hidden woodsy obstacles. So keep this in mind, you may have cause to thank me for this information one day.

Despite the slow start the word is that the oolichan harvest has been a successful one. Everyone has more of the smelly little fish than they know what to do with and people are spending long hours with cold fingers stringing them out to dry. Time was, some locals say, when the community elders would dictate when the oolichan catch began, and when it would finish. It was considered bad form to be greedy and the elders called a halt when everyone seemed to have what they needed. Those days are passed now and I’ve heard many people expressing concern about the growing size of the take. The thing is that there is a big market for oolichan and oolichan grease along the coast here. And a few of the big oolichan rivers are too polluted to be fished now. So the Nass River product fetches a good price. They say that kids are hawking buckets of oolichan for $20 in Terrace.

The grease making process has been retarded by the continuing cold weather. The first stage of the grease making calls for the huge bins of oolichan corpses to ferment for about 9 days in warm weather while their oil separates and rises to the top of the bin. But, 4 weeks after the season opened, the fermenting process hasn’t had a chance to begin. Still, Spring must come some day soon and the production will really get rolling. Because of cold weather and an ice covered river, my family wasn’t able to get down and witness the catch over the March Break. I’ve heard lots of tales. One custom is that oolichan fishermen are not to wash their clothes during the fishing season. It is said that this may offend the oolichan. And at the end of the season everyone burns their fishing clothes. This would be an example of custom supporting expedience. The smell of the oolichan fishery is legendary.

I have gone on long enough for this week. I hope all who read this are elevated by it and that, in any case, you are enjoying good, or at least improving, health.

A special greeting to my newly 40 brother Robert, and to my Mom who is visiting with he and his family, Chrissy and Crawford, in Thailand.

Love, Tom.

Dear Friends and Family:

With Spring finally here I am learning new things all the time about this community. I told you before that there is a large bear population in this area. Well, they have all been hibernating of course, making my walks in the woods just that much more relaxing. Bears can never be taken for granted. But this morning a surprising thing happened.

I looked out my window and there, walking down the road and into town, was a grizzly bear. The first one I have seen! I was glad to be inside to watch this spectacle! And then, from the other direction, I see a small crowd of children running up the road toward the bear! My heart jumped into my throat as I desperately tried to think what I might do to distract the bears attention away from the children. But before I could come up with an idea the children were all around the bear, each grabbing a fistful of its hair and joining it for its walk through town.

Shaken, I went out to investigate this incredible event. A young teen, straggling behind the procession, explained to me that for a number of years this “friendly” bear has made this walk through Aiyansh at around this time of year, apparently on his way to the river to check out the spring salmon stock. Every year children have come closer to it as it does its walk through town until, for the past three years, it seems that the bear has become quite comfortable with the ritual him/herself and has gently ignored the children’s accompaniment. Go figure eh? Anyway, it sure amazed me and I wanted to write this special News Aiyansh edition to tell you about it. What a beautiful, muscular, and graceful creature this bear is. Its rich brown fur, matted from long hibernation, must have felt warm and inviting to the hands of the children.

I wish I'd had a camera to take a picture! Darn.

Tom.

March 30, 2002

Dear Family and Friends:

It is a long, long weekend here, as it is where you are. Easter Weekend. Past weekends like this have been wonderful things. Time to be with family and let down a little. But this year the weekend just seems long. After having my family here last week I now am really missing them, and July seems a long way off. Perhaps it doesn’t help that winter just won’t let go. All day yesterday and now today too it has been snowing. Both days, especially today, it is wet snow. After shoveling 6 inches off the driveway yesterday the snow/sleet has had a hard time accumulating, all its combined efforts have succeeded only in depositing an inch of clear slush. Still, when I look out the window, it looks a lot like a heavy snowfall. Bring on the April showers and wash us into Spring!

I am finishing off the work in my Native Studies course. One of the things on my agenda this weekend is to write an essay. (I have a lot on my agenda, motivation is the problem.) I ran into the problem with this research essay of living in a remote community and not knowing how or if I could get my hands on any literature on my topic. Our Instructor didn’t have any helpful suggestions on this problem. I have resorted to conducting interviews. One fellow I talked to yesterday, our main alcohol and drug counselor in the valley, told me how to go about it. But now I don’t have time to order stuff over university library web sites and have it mailed here. So my paper will not be a highly academic piece. It will feature the views of my interviewees mixed with my own opinions.

My topic is “Alcoholism in the Nass Valley.” It is a complex problem. I have learned that alcoholism here is essentially not a different problem than it is anywhere else. And alcoholism in this native community is far less of a problem than it is in most other aboriginal communities. Here it is definitely a minority of families which are beset by addiction problems. At any rate, I won’t go in to it here, but I may attach a copy of my essay to a later letter for those of you who are interested in the subject.

As I write I hear Dave Cunningham in the background hacking away at his latest carving with an adze. Dave is our art teacher and he is very enthusiastic about researching and producing native carvings. He makes beautiful stuff. Along with a local carver, Warren, Dave emphasizes Nisga’a carving and art in his classes. It sometimes seems odd to me to see these intricate carvings that Dave has made, carvings which replicate items that once had spiritual and ceremonial value in Nisga’a communities. What is odd is that a white man has made them, and I wonder to myself, “what are they for?” But this is Dave’s passion and I am beginning to see an answer to my question. Many of the objects which Dave makes have not been made in many, many years. He takes the designs from old pictures of artifacts. And now there is a growing interest among both students and adults in this community in the work that Dave is producing. Dave is rekindling artistic interests that have been long dormant. Dave, white man that he is, is serving as a catalyst in reviving cultural knowledge and activities that the residential school dark ages had almost extinguished from Nisga’a consciousness.

I am putting this is grandiose terms, the movement is still a small one, but it is not insignificant. Boredom is a big problem in this community. Knowledge of what was once done to make life meaningful and rich here has been devastated, quite deliberately in some cases, by the colonial power. For instance, in residential schools, where Nisga’a children from age five lived 10 months a year away from their parents, speaking the Nisga’a language was corporally punishable. The explicit mandate of residential schools was to eradicate native culture and turn their students into “Canadians.” A whole generation was subjected to this treatment. And now a long and painful cultural and psychological rebirthing process is underway. Dave is playing a role in that process. That is one thing that his carvings are for. Happy Easter all of you, may you all enjoy rebirth this Spring.

Love, Tom.

I present my younger brother's birthday email to my baby brother. The only comment I might offer is that I'm a bit more that 1½ years older than Tom and I am constantly amazed at how different are our memories of events.

Celebrating Robert:

It is strange to think now that Robert is 5 ½ years younger than I, because, as children, we played together often. I guess this must have been mainly in my teen years. I remember, for instance, playing hockey in the basement of 154 Hammersmith. It was more a cellar than a basement; concrete floors and walls. We would take turns being “out” and being in goal. I would be Ken Dryden, I don’t recall who Robert (Bob at that time) was. Mom was not happy about this game. Our scuffing hockey sticks would raise concrete dust that settled onto the hung-to-dry bed sheets. There was no rec room. It was remarkable that we could play anything at all in that tiny space, with 6 feet of head room.

And then there was our dirt backyard, where Dad had set up a badminton net. Robert and I played quite a bit of badminton, and I acquired a life long love of the game. I think I always won, which was gratifying for me - even if our age difference made this neither surprising nor fair. “Pretty good for my age”, as I seem to recall, was Robert’s common refrain. We had fun, and that was the main object always.

Robert was our singer. He sang to himself as he moved about the house. I enjoyed that, he sang well.

Robert, unlike me, led a full teenage life. His involvement in Drama at Malvern High School seemed to transform him from the quiet kid into an out-there presence in the school. Robert won for at least two years in a row the best costume prize at the Halloween dance. He acted in plays. His picture, dressed to kill as prom queen, hung for years in Malvern’s front hall. Robert had a girl friend, Kelly. I wished that I had enjoyed high school like Robert apparently did.

Every summer, from childhood through his teen years, Robert was involved in a day camp. He graduated from participant to camp co-director over those years. His last year he shared camp directing with a woman named Chrissy. He liked Chrissy! But Chrissy had a boyfriend and, as the summer waned, Robert could not bring himself to declare his feelings. I remember him sharing this struggle as the family sat on the porch of 31 Maclean. He finally got the courage to say it. And, as I recall, Chrissy declined and then, a day later, she dumped the other guy. The rest is history and Vietnam, and Crawford, and Thailand, and so on.

It is a sad thing how in our lives we siblings drift apart. I often feel that there could be more there, more of our shared history to ponder together and perhaps enlighten. Much of that history was gloomy. I miss my childhood buddy and I’m sad to know now that, despite appearances, he hasn’t always been a happy guy. In the tangled and lonely jungles of our childhood I see that Robert deserved more love and attention than he received. It isn’t enough to say that we all needed more of that. That doesn’t change the fact that he was little when our world fell apart. In our all out scramble for emotional survival the adorable, apparently happy-go-lucky Robert was not given enough of a chance to cry and feel that he was still loved.

Like Rosemarie, also the youngest in her family, Robert has asked for equal standing in the family. At 40 he is wiser, in his own ways, than his older siblings. I have wanted to give Robert his due, and sometimes I think my efforts only appear to be patronizing.

I celebrate you Robert on your 40th Birthday, it is with tears that I tell you I love, cherish, and respect you. I hope this half of your life will be your best.

Brother Tom.

March 8, 2002 Happy IWD!

Dear Friends and Family:

I have been just walking in the woods. I loved it. After last week I was glad to be back there again. Last week I took the same familiar route. But last week the snow was rotting and soggy and sinking me with each step anywhere from 6 inches to a foot deep. Determined to do my route, I was sick of slogging by half way along. By the end I was stumbling with exhaustion and my socks were soaked from the snow my boots had swallowed. I despaired that it might be weeks before enough of the snow had melted from the woods to allow me to make my way into them again.

But this week we had a deep freeze. The snow this afternoon was petrified all the way through where last week it had yielded. The going was nevertheless uneven as each step crunched through the top crust one way or another - sometimes turning my foot. And it was noisy; crunch, crunch, crunch ... But there I was, in my woods. I could gingerly step across boggy areas which at any other time are impassable, now covered in 2 - 3 feet of dense and frozen snow.

This deep freeze has spanned most of BC this week. People here say this is unprecedented for early March, when the spring thaw is usually in full swing. The oolichan (fish) started coming in earlier this week. One crew of men managed to fill a couple of boats full of them on Tuesday. But after that the Nass River froze up solid and the swarming millions of fish have been shielded from eager fishermen by a new layer of ice whose strength is too uncertain to risk going out upon. So the community is just waiting for this unusual cold snap to break, and with it the ice.

Much of the oolichan will be eaten fresh. More still will be frozen for later consumption. And even more will be set aside in the soon to be spring warmth to ferment (rot basically) for a week or so. Obviously nothing is going to ferment at -10 degrees so the whole oolichan process is on hold right now - except for the fish, who continue to swell in with the tide to their spawning grounds. I suppose the catch will be down this year since the weather will shorten the time of the catch. From beginning to end the oolichan are in the river in their millions for only about two weeks. First the females come up. They make the best oil because, with their egg sacks, they are bigger and fattier. Then the males come up to fertilize the eggs. Then, in the third and last phase of the oolichan catch, the fish are swept back down the river by the tide. The best oolichan are caught in the first week. And, this year, most of the first week has been a bust.

Oolichan oil is made in a complex process of fermenting, straining, and boiling. I don’t know much about it but will know more in a couple of weeks after Rosemarie and the girls and I make our tour of Fishery Bay; action central for the Nisga’a oolichan harvest. I gather so far that during the fermenting stage the rotting oolichan, in large holding bins, yield their oil - which rises to the top of the bins. This is then skimmed off and rendered into the much prized final product, oolichan grease.

The Greenville guys in one of my classes thought I was foolish to want to take my family to Fishery Bay. “That place stinks!” Their opinion of me was confirmed when I told them that the hot springs were also a stop on our tour, another stinky place which none of them had ever been to. They smell its sulfureous odor twice a day when they pass nearby it on the school bus.

Sea lion hunting joins in with the oolichan harvest at this time of year. The sea lions come into the mouth of the Nass after the seals who are after the oolichan. Often the orca are not far behind, they too are after the sea lions. A full grown sea lion is a long as two couches and is as big around. Hauling one aboard after a kill can be a six person job. Their meat is smoked and then frozen. I like the taste and texture. Very fatty, but a healthy kind of fat I’m told. Succulent would be a good word for it. I’m just hoping we may see some sea lions on our short boat run down to Fishery Bay.

I have attached a picture of me from last Saturday when a few of us groped our way through the woods in the dark to the hot springs, Doug toting the web cam. I’ll also have attached a picture of one of the Aiyansh mountain views that have dazzled us all the cold but sunny week long.

Love, Tom.

My brother Tom's first teaching position is in the town of New Aiyansh, part of the Nisga'a nation in northern British Columbia, Canada. You can find it on a map by looking east of the tip of the Alaskan panhandle.

As I write, my dear friend Lars, a man whose physical, intellectual, and spiritual vitality has been a source of strength for all who know and love him, is in Vancouver General Hospital battling a rare disease of the bone marrow. It has been frightening to see his precipitous decline since the Fall. There is hope that a bone marrow transplant will return him to health. Please spare a kind thought for my friend and his family as you read this.

On a happier note, two people close to my heart are glorying in new love these days. Yippee!

And I am in New Aiyansh, far from you, far from my family, and far from the madding crowd. Sun and warm weather were in the air this first day of March, rapidly melting away the greyish roadside snow mounds. I and many others here harbor a hope that Spring is making a non-stop bee-line for the Nass Valley. We have had enough of shoveling out our driveways. And my wood pile is doing a distressing disappearing act. I want to walk into the woods again!

Alcohol has been much on my mind these past few days. In my Career and Personal Planning (CAPP) class we have been talking about its evils. But I have felt that there has been a dry, rote quality to these lessons about liver failure and fetal alcohol syndrome. Today I wrestled my crew out for a walk up the road, away from the school. There, we stopped and I exhorted them to become, in whatever they do, great native leaders. "But I want to be a nurse," Diedre said, with a protesting smile. "Yes," I said, "but you can be a nurse who is a great native leader." I told them I am not talking about making speeches and leading hundreds of people through the streets. I am talking about being examples of strength and integrity.

This message may have fallen on mostly, or all, deaf ears. Who can tell? I told them that succumbing to peer pressure and becoming a slave of alcohol is the opposite of becoming great in this way. Then, yielding to the great temptation at hand, we lapsed into a snowball fight. Fortunately Charles, at least, took my side.

Alcohol is a pervasive reality for a large percentage of my students, some of whom, at 14, are already alcoholics. Bootleggers do a booming weekend trade in Greenville. A couple of my students told me that it is common for teens to spend 50 to 100 dollars each weekend on booze. The hard stuff is what they go for, vodka for instance. "Where do they get the money?" I asked. "Steal it from their parents" is what they said. Yeah, well this isn't exactly a reliable source of information, but there were rings of sincerity to what they said.

I am proud that I seem to be winning the battle to subdue my grade eight Social Studies class. They are falling into line and beginning to learn something each day as I gain in the twin pillars of strength of presentation and good humour.

But it is Friday evening now. I have already been in to Terrace and back for my biweekly shopping trip. This trip is an hour and a half plus each way and, though scenic, is wearing. I am tired and will sign off saying, talk to you again next week! I am checking my email more often and don't think twice about writing.