Thunder Through My Veins Read online

  Home. My home, twenty years later, is now a place of peace and safety. Each season, I watch as the leaves change their clothing. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, a loon calls on the lake. I talk back to her, knowing she is one of my Grandmothers. The houses, hotels, shacks and apartments of my childhood are gone. The river is gone. The people are gone. In their place is a new house, a sacred lodge, where I’ve been able to lay out my bones for rest.

  Occasionally, in the dark of night, such as tonight, a storm will move across the sky. I lie with my head pointing West, the little boy held close to my heart. We listen to the rain, the thunder breaking open the clouds. Beneath our eyelids we can see the scars of lightning. “This is where we’ve been,” I tell him, and he crawls the length of my bones back to himself. “This is our voice,” I tell him, and he falls into dreams, singing. nikamowin. Singing. The way it has always been, and the way it will always be.

  GREGORY SCOFIELD, 2019

  BETWEEN SIDES

  Where do I belong, way up north?

  The first white trader

  Must have felt this way

  on the reserve a curio being looked over

  my skin defies either race I am neither Scottish

  or Cree

  So why those disgusted stares?

  I speak the language

  Eat my bannock with lard

  I am not without history Halfbreed labour built

  this country defending my blood has become a

  life-long occupation

  White people have their own ideas

  How a real Indian should look

  In the city or on the screen

  I’ve already worked past that came back to the

  circle my way is not the Indian way or white way

  I move in-between

  Careful not to shame either side

  —The Gathering: Stones for the Medicine Wheel

  THE HOUSES, HOTELS, shacks and apartments where I grew up are too numerous to count though many of them loom in my memory like misshapen rocks, jagged with the indecipherable ghosts of my childhood that to this day remain so much a part of me. Others have faded over time, submerged in that river of my blood that has always been home.

  The homes I most remember are the ones where my mother scattered her crocheted doilies and rag rugs, painted the rooms with the sorrowful lyrics of Kitty Wells, Hank Williams and Wilf Carter, hung my grandmother’s homemade curtains, pictures of the Yukon, sepia-coloured photos of her childhood, and various snapshots of our nomadic tribe captured like prisoners and staring their contempt from behind dust-covered frames. And always, wherever we were, Rembrandt’s Man with Golden Helmet, whom Mom called the “Iron Soldier,” whose strong, shadowed features and downcast eyes seemed to watch our every move, his golden helmet shining victoriously, a beacon of irony that I am sure spoke to her at the Salvation Army thrift store.

  But there are also places and memories that belong to someone else—someone who looks identical to me—someone who survived the blackness that now seems so long ago. It is he, the boy I carry within, who remembers the years of separation, silence and fear, the premature aging of my mother’s face, the many towns where we sought refuge, the numerous homes where social workers, threats and crashing fists followed us like a curse, a world where dreams of peace and safety lay shattered like the dishes on the kitchen floor. It is that world I’ve spent a lifetime running from, and that world I have finally begun to understand and accept.

  Maple Ridge, the town where I was born and the place I have come back to, has, like me, changed and grown up. The hotels and apartments down by the river have vanished, giving way to the newer-looking condos and office buildings. Aunty Georgie’s little shack has been transformed into an opulent castle—my memories of hot tea and bannock, songs and stories no longer there. The broken-down jalopies that were once the Cadillacs of welfare kids have been hauled away as if they never existed. The dense thickets of willow, dogwood and maple along River Road have been levelled and turned into subdivisions where families with money now live. Even the Fraser River has changed: its once treacherous waters now placid and resigned, laden with log booms that never seem to find their rightful place. Only the funeral chapel and the Chinese grocery up the street remain the same, enduring triumphantly like a few of the old-timers who have preserved themselves with the bootlegger’s brew.

  Walking now among the new and old, I sometimes see myself in the faces of today’s children—children who despite their parents’ wealth carry within them a different kind of poverty; they are survivors who, too, may one day write about their lives.

  I have returned to Maple Ridge, my hometown, for one reason: I hope to find the little boy I left long ago. I hope to find his mother, tiny and frail, broken like the frame of the Iron Soldier, who despite her frailty led them from one war to the next. I hope to find peace with them, to finally give them words to speak their pain, which until now has been a stone in my throat.

  This is my story of survival and acceptance, of myself and my widening family. I write it for all of you who have survived and for those of you struggling to survive. Had it not been for the books I read as a teenager, I am sure I would not be at this place, today. Those very writers, people like Margaret Laurence, Maria Campbell, and Beatrice Mosionier, made me want to write. They brought my mind and spirit to life. They gave me a sense of something larger than myself, something more profound than the pain, fear and anger. They led me to a place of belonging, a permanent home where I have found a voice to speak with.

  I have been writing and publishing books for seven years now. I am not very old and consider myself fortunate to have found my life’s purpose, to see my dreams come true. The sacred ways of my great-grandmothers are just as much a part of my life as is the act of writing, and the healing I derive from it. In Cree, the story I am about to tell would be called âcimowin, which loosely translates to the telling of an everyday story, experience or happening. Our creation stories, much like those of ancient tribal people, even the Bible itself, are known as âtayôkkan. They tell of the sacredness and power of the spirit world, of those very things that we as humans have little understanding and knowledge.

  ni-âcimowin (my story), like all stories, songs, dances or any acts of creation, comes from the Thunderers, the Spirit-keepers of the West. Through dreams and visions I have been given guidance by them, and it is perhaps for this reason that I was chosen to be a writer, a storyteller. But, still young, I have much to learn, not only about storytelling but about life: its sacredness, its intricacies and mysteries, its beauty and ugliness.

  In writing this book, I have encountered many difficult obstacles, most of which resulted from reliving the painful moments of my childhood. In some cases, notably my mother’s early life, I have had to rely upon stories and recollections of family and those who knew her. Reconstructing her life before my birth has been much like putting together an incomplete puzzle, most of the pieces having gone to the grave with her.

  However, the details and events in this book are as accurate as my memory can recall. For privacy reasons I have changed the names of those involved and occasionally details of their lives, all except for my great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, their siblings, my mother and Aunty Georgie. Names of towns and institutions are accurate, as are the time sequences of my life. In this, I hope to bring you, the reader, into a world I often found disjointed and traumatic.

  * * *

  —

  THE RIVER IS good today, calm and peaceful. I stand before it, a mixture of blood and history running through my veins. I am neither from one nation nor the other, but from a nation that has struggled to define itself in the pages of Canadian history, in the face of continued denial and racism. In keeping the spirits of our ancestor Grandmothers alive, the first country-wives of this land, we claim our Indigenous he
ritage and inherent rites, which have yet to be fully recognized by our Native and non-Native relations. In keeping with the hopes and dreams of our ancestor Grandfathers, who fled to this land in search of political and religious freedom, prosperity and new beginnings, we claim our rightful place as distinct yet valid people.

  I am neither victim nor oppressor. The choices I have made in my adult life are mine alone. I blame only myself for the shame, anger, pity and success that I have allowed. I speak for no one community, although my heartland, my ancestral and spiritual homeland, is among the scrub poplar and wolf willow rustling along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, the fiddle as it echoes through the empty coulees at Batoche—the very place where Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont fought to keep our nation alive. I claim nothing except my place in the world, a place granted to me by the Thunderers, by the Celtic gods of a country I’ve never seen—those ancient spirits that live in the cells of my being.

  The river is good today. Below the surface are the memories of a thousand years. Somewhere beneath its murky water lay the beginnings of my story and the words to tell it. It does not frighten me as it once did. I own each rock, each twig, each leaf, every bone that has collected on the bottom. The Thunderers of my ancestors, the Old Ones, flourish in my veins, rumbling from somewhere deep within—only this time, the Spirit-keepers are with me.

  I

  1

  Goodbye Before I’ve Begun

  • •

  MY FATHER’S STORY is like the twisted roots of an old tree: roots that have crept into my own story, reaching those far-removed places within me that have forever kept him silent and dead. Even now, he is the voiceless crow who sits in the tree of his and my mother’s making: a tree made whole by my mother’s love and nurturing, a tree that has prospered without him.

  His life was a mystery. No one, including Mom, knew much about him, his childhood and parents, even if he had siblings. He was said to be from Winnipeg and was reputed to be a big-time con man. Mom claimed that he was connected with the underground world, dealing in counterfeit money, drugs and stolen goods, that he pulled scams on everyone from the local barber to business executives. He had numerous alias names and warrants out for his arrest all across Canada and the U.S. The few glimpses she allowed of him stirred my imagination, and as a child I remember thinking of him as a shadowy character in a gangster movie.

  Equally mysterious are Mom’s beginnings with him. She was nineteen in 1964 and living in Vancouver, supposedly housekeeping for a wealthy Jewish family, although I later discovered she’d been working as a prostitute and living in a brothel. Looking at old photos of her, I can see why my father noticed her right away. She was petite and beautiful, shy and unassuming with high cheekbones and delicate features, neatly styled auburn hair and bright hazel eyes. They met at the Belmont Hotel in Calgary, and in no time at all he persuaded her to help him get rid of a suitcase filled with counterfeit twenties. Shortly after he brought her back to Vancouver and to the brothel where she was living. However, he’d fallen in love with her, and came to get her a few months later.

  Mom never spoke about her past and I always wondered if she was working as a prostitute. The secrecy of her early life, not to mention the recollections of Aunty Sandra and Mom’s best friend, Barb, has led me to believe this. It’s difficult to fathom what would have seduced her into such a world, although I suspect it may have been heroin. I can only imagine the ugliness she must have endured and the shame and self-hatred she must have felt throughout her life. Even now, I feel as if I have betrayed her in writing this, but I must share her beginnings in order to share my own.

  In looking at Mom’s early life, many things don’t make sense. Why she would end up on the street, using drugs? Her childhood seemed idyllic, my grandparents loving and kind. Everyone knew her to be highly intelligent, an avid reader and writer of poetry. What is even more puzzling is that she was terribly shy, almost to the point of being an introvert, with little or no self-confidence. Aunty Sandra remembers her as somewhat sickly and depressed as a young woman, although the initial signs of lupus would appear only later, after my birth.

  At first, I thought my father might have bought her from a pimp in Calgary and had her working, but now I believe he rescued her, despite the lifestyle he drew her into. He managed to get her out of prostitution and off heroin and even paid for the burial of her first baby, which wasn’t his and which died at birth.

  My parents were married in Whonnock, B.C., (a little town close to Maple Ridge) in 1964 under an alias name and spent the next two years in hiding, moving from province to province every couple of months. Mom was surprised to find out that my father was already married and had a young daughter. In spite of this, she stayed with him, and in 1965, while dodging the police in Port Alberni, she became pregnant with me. Not wanting to raise a baby on the run, she finally convinced him to turn himself over to the authorities. They returned to Maple Ridge where he turned himself in. Ironically, he ended up having a heart attack on the stand and beating most of his charges.

  I was born in July of 1966, the very day my father stood trial. He was rushed to the same hospital for treatment. Though there were guards posted outside his room, Mom somehow managed to bring me to see him. After he recovered, he was sentenced to two years less a day for fraud and then sent to Oakalla prison.

  I’m told my father saw me only twice after that, and in the visiting room at the prison, he held and kissed me, marvelling at the new life that slept so soundly in his arms. I suppose if ever I felt close to him it was then, though I cannot remember him. As with so many other people, he has faded to that part of my memory where nothing exists but empty space, space that has become inaccessible over time.

  Mom soon met up with her old boyfriend, Tommy, who was non-Native. He had two young daughters and was unhappily married and, like Mom, wanted something better out of life. They began to date again and it wasn’t long before they decided to run away together. Three months after my father went to jail, Tommy, Mom and I moved to Hope, B.C. We lived there less than a year and then Tommy found a job in Lynn Lake, Manitoba. While Tommy made arrangements, Mom and I went to stay with Aunty Sandra and Uncle Tim in Washington.

  I can only guess why Mom ran away with Tommy. Perhaps she feared my father wouldn’t change and that our lives would be spent on the run from the police. Perhaps having me had changed her, had given her new hopes and dreams, a reason to leave behind the pain of the past.

  We left Washington and took the train to Lynn Lake. Mom said that when Tommy met us at the train station he reminded her of an expectant father. He couldn’t have been happier to see us. He had rented a trailer in town, and Mom told me that she cried when she saw the nursery. He had spent hours painting and decorating it, filling it from top to bottom with toys and stuffed animals.

  We lived in Lynn Lake less than a year. When Tommy’s job at the lignite mine finished, we moved to La Ronge, Saskatchewan, where he took a construction job that lasted only a couple of months. Then in 1968 we moved to Whitehorse in the Yukon. For Mom and Tommy it was a place where they could build a life together.

  I don’t know if Mom ever talked to my father before she left or if she just vanished without a word. Either way, I never saw him again, and he never once tried to contact us. When I was older, she gave me two wedding pictures, and I recall feeling oddly angry at seeing my parents smiling and happy: my father standing tall and stiff in his black suit, his dark hair neatly greased and combed, his eyes black as crows and spying something beyond the camera, something that I desperately wanted to see but couldn’t; and my mother, tiny and glowing in her crisp white dress, gloves and veil, looking unused and untouched by any of the ugliness I would later come to know.

  Looking at them now, I can only guess what my life might have been like had she waited for him, had he tried to find me. And yet, over the years, he has become more fiction than fact. Sometimes I look in the mir
ror and wonder if I resemble him. And I wonder if he ever thinks about me or imagines what my life has become without him.

  2

  New Beginnings, Old Worlds Forgotten

  • •

  I OFTEN WONDER if the secrecy of Mom’s life, and even of my own, began with the shame my grandfather carried throughout his life for being Métis. Perhaps it goes back even further, back to his mother, my great-grandmother, who had him and his two siblings out of wedlock. It’s painful to think that three generations—all of whom died before they were sixty—grew up in a world of half-truths, racism, poverty and broken blood ties. I’ve come to understand this secrecy, but my spirit has refused to accept it and its carefully buried pain. I’ve always wanted to unearth my grandfather’s legacy, my mother’s inheritance, no matter how insignificant he felt it to be.

  Like so many other things, the pieces of my grandfather’s puzzle have come to me via letters from various relatives, marriage, birth and death certificates. But perhaps the most significant pieces have come from relatives and those who knew my great-grandparents, my grandfather, and his siblings. Many of these pieces have been collected over the years, given to me by people like the late Elder Rod Sanderson from Kinosota, Manitoba, a Métis community on the western shore of Lake Manitoba, which is close to Bacon Ridge and Ebb & Flow First Nation, where my grandfather and his siblings grew up. Pieces have also come from my grandfather’s cousins in Portage la Prairie, who graciously opened their homes and photo albums and who gave me stories and photographs. Still, there are many lost pieces and those yet to be discovered. I have relied a great deal on my grandmother’s recollections, although much of my grandfather’s childhood and past continues to be a mystery. The secrecy of his life is reflective of that time in Canadian history when there were few, if any, opportunities for those of mixed ancestry.