Thunder Through My Veins Read online

  My great-great-grandmother Mary Henderson was a Cree/Scottish halfbreed who was born in 1863 and whose parents, Peter Henderson and Eleanor Whitford, were from the historic Red River Settlement in Manitoba. Their parents, my great-great-great-great-grandparents, were symbolic of Canada’s early fur-trade history; my Cree grandmothers of that time married, by custom of the county, my Scottish and Orcadian grandfathers, who worked for the newly formed Hudson’s Bay Company. Many, if not most, of my ancestor grandmothers’ Cree names have been lost to history. Their English names, usually given to them by their new husbands, remain the only trace of their existence. These names, ones like Charlotte, Sarah and Christiana, have become the rope back to myself, back to my grandfather’s history and my inheritance.

  My great-grandmother Ida Redford was born in Wisconsin around 1875. She married Levi Scofield from Aberdeen, South Dakota, with whom she had her first family. They immigrated to Manitoba around the turn of the century and settled in Portage la Prairie. They had four children, one of whom died as a toddler. According to census records, Ida’s mother, my great-great-grandmother, also named Ida, lived with the family. They had a large, well-appointed house with a big herd of cattle and livestock. There are a number of stories about Ida and Levi’s relationship, ones that are just as baffling as my grandfather’s early childhood. I remember my grandmother once telling me that my grandfather referred to his mother and her first husband, Levi, as the “Battling Scofields,” because they fought continually. They separated under suspicious circumstances and Levi re-married. He moved back to the States around 1915 and had two more children.

  While Levi and Ida were still together she became pregnant with my grandfather. His conception is shrouded in mystery, although he was the son of Johnny Cusitar (Custer), a Cree/Scottish halfbreed farmhand with whom Ida settled in Bacon Ridge around 1917. Johnny’s own parentage was complicated, being that his parents were second cousins. His father, John Cusitar Sr. was the son of David Magnus Cusitar, a wealthy Orcadian who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Mary Margaret Whitford, the daughter of Christiana Spence and Peter Whitford, both of whom were halfbreeds and born in Red River. Ida and Johnny lived alongside his mother, my great-great-grandmother, Mary Henderson, and his half siblings. Ida and Johnny had two more children, my Great-uncle Boz and Great-aunty Girlie. In spite of Ida’s first marriage having ended, the children were registered as Scofield, so their real father’s lineage and background was kept secret. A few years ago, I was sent a recording of Levi reading his last will and testament. My grandfather and his younger siblings were not acknowledged nor did Levi ever attempt to contact them throughout their lives.

  Like most of the children of halfbreed families in the mid 1900s, they grew up in poverty and shame. For my grandfather’s generation, there was little if anything to be proud of. Riel had been hanged less than forty years earlier for his involvement with the North-West Resistance of 1885; his dreams of peace and equality were long since forgotten, and the First Nations and Métis lands were sold off to homesteaders. Many of the families that had once been proud and strong, independent and hopeful, were now reduced to squatting on Crown lands or living in shanty towns like Rooster Town in Winnipeg, outcasts in their own country.

  Thus began a life of lies and secrecy for many mixed-blood people. Grandpa kept his parents a secret and refused to speak about them, at least not in front of others, including my grandmother. He once told her that his mother died alone in Manitoba. He said that she died of a broken heart but I can only guess at the sad circumstances, which I’m certain weren’t fair or just. She is buried in an unmarked grave in St. Bede’s Anglican churchyard cemetery in Kinosota. However, I like to remember the stories Rod told me about her, the ones in which she was known as “Lady Scofield” in the community and that she had an old pump organ in their cabin, which was always filled with little dogs and visitors.

  Grandpa left home at an early age with a grade-three education and spent the next fifteen years riding the railcars across the country, working at whatever jobs he could find. He later found work on the road gangs with the CPR. Eventually he made his way to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where he met Avis Goud. It was an unusual match, crossing those invisible lines of race and class, of which I’m sure Grandpa was well aware.

  Grandma Avis’s parents were among the first white settlers in Estevan, Saskatchewan. Her mother, Great-grandmother Brenzel, was German and came from a large religious family with roots in Pennsylvania; and her father, Great-grandpa Goud, was a mixture of German, Irish and English, having immigrated with his parents to England from Germany as a boy. He came from a prominent, well-educated family and went to private schools. In the 1800s he immigrated to Maine, U.S.A., met my great-grandmother and resettled in Saskatchewan, acquiring 650 acres of prime farmland.

  Grandma Avis’s childhood, of course, was very different from Grandpa’s. She was raised with the Bible, literature and art, taught to be elegant and refined. Like her brothers and sister, she finished school and went to college. She became an accountant, taking a job in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with Canadian Airways, which mostly delivered mail and supplies to remote communities in the north. She was a darling of all the pilots, often going to parties and dinners with them. She was the first white woman to step foot on Cree Lake, and I doubt very much she would have imagined marrying someone like my grandfather.

  When she met Grandpa a short time later and they married, he never told her he was Native. By the standards of the day, they were both old to be getting married: Grandpa was thirty-four and Grandma was thirty-two. I suppose Grandpa felt that his chances were already limited and he didn’t want to restrict them any further.

  It seems odd to me that my grandmother never would have identified him as being Native. Although he was fair-skinned, he had dark eyes and hair, predominant Cree features. Perhaps she did know or suspect something, but chose to overlook it. She knew little about his family but recalled he seldom saw his brother and sister, and when he did, they met in private. She said these meetings lasted for hours and that Grandpa would be quiet and withdrawn for days after. She always wondered about their secrecy but respected it.

  At first, my grandparents’ lives were happy and stable. They came to Vancouver in 1943, and Grandpa worked at various construction jobs in northern B.C. In 1944, my mom, Dorothy, was born and two years later Aunty Sandra was born, at which time they acquired the homestead in Whonnock. Grandma traded her mink coat for the property and they had enough money to build a small house, buy some chickens and put up a garden. They attended church every Sunday, and Grandpa, though he could barely read or write, became an elder of the church. They were well respected by the community and considered a generous, loving family.

  Then things started to fall apart. As a boy, he was hit in the head by a baseball bat. He suffered from seizures periodically, but they disappeared as he got older. He never told Grandma—another secret—she knew nothing about them until Aunty Sandra was born, and Grandpa started having epileptic seizures. When Aunty Teresa was born in 1952, she was a surprise to everyone, especially Grandma who was already forty-six. With Grandpa’s health getting worse, making it difficult to keep up the farm, Grandma went to work for a real estate agency in Maple Ridge. Then in 1956 they sold the farm and bought a house in town so that Grandma could be closer to work. Maple Ridge, although still relatively small, was a bustling city compared with the dirt roads, the acres of wild bush and the little farm community of Whonnock.

  After my grandparents moved to town, Mom’s childhood ended abruptly. Grandpa’s seizures were coming frequently and he wasn’t able to work. He was prescribed Phenobarbital, a medication used in the treatment of epilepsy. The medication made him foggy and dopey. In desperation, Grandma took a night job at a mink ranch, stretching and fleshing the hides. Mom and Aunty Sandra began to experience the first pangs of adolescence, trying hard to fit in with the other kids at school. Mom, who
was normally shy and resigned, began to experiment with drugs, getting in with the wrong crowd. Aunty Sandra, who was now thirteen, met my uncle Tim. She became pregnant and had a miscarriage at fourteen. They married when she was sixteen and my cousin, Lisa, was born nine months later.

  I’ve talked with Aunty Sandra at great length about their early lives, trying to make sense of the misery Mom would later come to experience. Why did she end up working as a prostitute? Why did she end up using heroin and meeting someone like my father? My grandparents, notably my grandfather, loved his girls more than anything in the world. To him, they could do no wrong. He never punished them or made them feel ugly or worthless and my grandmother was loving and kind, God-fearing and good-natured. Mom, Sandra and Teresa didn’t come from an abusive home, and yet their lives turned out to be filled with abuse and violence—everything my grandfather had escaped.

  By the time Grandpa died of a massive brain hemorrhage in 1964, Mom had already met my father and Aunty Sandra had a two-year-old daughter. Aunty Teresa was twelve, and with Grandpa gone and Grandma working, she was suddenly all alone. Four years after Grandpa’s death, Grandma remarried and sold the house, but her new husband was nothing at all like Grandpa. He was cheap and ill-tempered, even jealous of the girls. Teresa hated him and couldn’t wait to leave home. She finally got married and moved to Washington state, where she began a family of her own.

  I always regret never knowing my kind and generous grandfather, particularly as I had no father. Throughout my childhood Mom told me numerous stories about him. Like my aunts, she loved him a great deal and I loved him by extension. I often wonder how he felt holding Mom for the first time; if he saw himself reflected in her eyes or simply a new beginning, the chance to start over the way Mom would with me.

  My grandparents’ marriage of secrets provided a better life for my mom and aunts, at least as far as racism was concerned. Perhaps, for Grandpa, it was the only way to guarantee his children fairness and dignity. And yet the price of his silence, the denial of his heritage, has left hundreds of unanswered questions and, I strongly believe, deeply affected each generation of my family. The damage of colonial history and government policies, both written and unspoken, has left this as my legacy. Little did I know that one day my grandfather’s silence would become my own voice singing, and a home for my own feet to find roots.

  3

  Only the Memories Live Forever

  • •

  MY FIRST MEMORY is of the house being built in Whitehorse. I remember the smell of the freshly cut timber, the rhythmic pounding of the workers’ hammers, their voices and laughter trickling down from the roof and filling the empty house and bush as if a radio had suddenly been turned on.

  Our house was little more than a big shack, but it was ours. Leah, Tommy’s youngest daughter, and I shared one room and slept on bunkbeds that Tommy built. The mattresses were thick green foam and on top of these Mom put old blankets. A toy-box and an old dresser stood below a small window at the back of the house. Mom and Tommy’s room was next to ours and had a homemade bed, old dresser and two large steamer trunks. Like most of the house, the kitchen and dining room were unfinished. The kitchen had a gas stove, old fridge, plank shelves and open-faced cupboards for storing food and dishes. In the dining room was a heavy Aborite table that sat under the window. The floors throughout were covered with white linoleum. The living room was the only room that was close to being finished, with two big windows that overlooked miles of bush, and an overstuffed couch and armchair, a coffee table and end tables on which stood glass-shaded lamps. On the wall hung a large tapestry of a trapper racing through the snow with his dog team. On the back porch stood an old wringer washing machine and a metal washtub that we’d used as a bathtub before we got electricity and plumbing. In spite of its shortcomings, I loved that house.

  Shortly after the house was built, Tommy had got custody of Leah, and she had come to live with us. I was too little to notice any difference and just accepted her as my sister. Leah was four years older than I, an awkward child with long stringy hair and sad brown eyes. She cried a lot and seldom left her father’s sight. Mom spent a great deal of time holding and soothing her, and I recall feeling oddly jealous, becoming a cry-baby myself. It must have been hard for Mom and Tommy in those early months, making sure that we both felt equally loved.

  We lived fifteen miles outside Whitehorse, which seemed like a big city, although it was a typically small northern town. There were clothing stores, hotels and cafés on Main Street and it always seemed to be filled with activity, mostly people going in and out of the bars. There was an old log church in town and some older buildings that dated back to the gold rush. A Native handicraft store sold mukluks, moccasins, gloves, vests, jackets and various sewing items. I still remember the smell of the smoked moosehide and the beautifully beaded designs on the clothing. Mom and Tommy each bought a pair of mukluks, and Mom bought me a muskrat pelt, which became my most treasured possession.

  Tommy had a job at the copper mine and left for work every day at four o’clock in the morning. In the summer it wasn’t so bad because the sun never went down, but in the winter, he had to leave two hours early. Most of the time Leah and I were still asleep, but sometimes I woke to find Mom busy at the stove, frying bacon and eggs, humming softly to herself. She loved the North and the remoteness of our lives, and like the kerosene heater, she was forever aglow in Tommy’s presence. She took great pride in the house and worked tirelessly, scrubbing the floors, painting and decorating, whatever it took to make our home warm and cozy. Those times were the happiest of her life.

  When Grandma and her new husband, Lyle, came to visit us our first summer in Whitehorse, I was so excited I followed her everywhere. With her powder and perfume, curled silver hair, rhinestone glasses, long colourful dresses and matching earrings, she was like a queen. They brought a small trailer that Grandma decorated with pictures, floral-print curtains and a matching bedspread. I would find any excuse to go there. Sometimes I even got to sleep with her and she would draw me pictures and tell me stories.

  Lyle was a horrible man, cranky and impatient, especially when it came to us kids. Grandma would come huffing into the house, red-faced and threatening to leave him. Sure enough, toward the end of summer, Lyle packed up the trailer and left without her. She stayed with us for the winter and then in the spring she went home to Maple Ridge, where she moved into an apartment. I cried for weeks after she left.

  At some point Mom and Tommy decided they wanted to breed huskies, so they bought a blue-eyed bitch and a breed dog from a racer who lived a few miles down the road. They built a huge compound, and in no time, there were cute little puppies running around. Leah and I were in heaven, playing and sleeping with our new babies, and many tears were shed at the very mention of selling them. Nevertheless, come springtime, the pups were sold, and after our fits had passed, we could barely wait for the next litter.

  The winter carnivals in Whitehorse, called the Sourdough Rendezvous, were unlike anything I’d ever seen. Thousands of people came from all across the Yukon, Canada and Alaska to race and show off their magnificent dog teams. Huskies everywhere were decorated with colourful pompoms and tassels: all of them excited and barking, waiting their turn at the various competitions, one of which was to see how many pounds of flour or dog food a team could carry. Sometimes they even carried up to eight hundred pounds. The owners, or “mushers,” stood behind them cracking their whips and screaming, “Mush! Mush!” They looked like giants to me, with their long bushy beards, their parkas and fur caps, their mukluks and gloves.

  The highlight of the carnival was the race, which usually lasted a couple of weeks along a course that covered hundreds of miles, ran through dense bush and snow and had various check-in points along the way. Whoever made it to the finish line first was the winner and collected a huge cash prize. The ending was often dramatic, with two teams coming in at once and the crowd jum
ping up and down and screaming.

  When Leah started grade four in the fall, Mom and I were alone during the day. My love of literature and music grew out of that time as she spent hours reading and playing old records for me. I remember sitting on her lap, singing along with Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window” and Wilf Carter’s “Blue Canadian Rockies.” She would hug and kiss me, laughing at the little stories I made up, forever telling me that I was her “special blessing.” A deep bond developed between us.

  But soon, Mom became very ill. Tommy did his best to look after us and keep the house in order. Mom was so sick that she could barely get out of bed in the morning, let alone get Leah off to school or tend to me. Her headaches were getting worse by the day, and she could hardly walk without help. Sometimes at night I woke to hear her crying, and I would sneak into their bedroom. Tommy would be holding and rocking her, talking softly. I was so scared I would burst into tears. Tommy would take me back to bed, lie down with me, and stroke my hair, promising that everything would be better tomorrow.

  As Mom got worse, Tommy could barely keep up. His once-happy face was now drawn and tired, though he still pretended to be a good father and husband. Leah began to miss school and fell behind in her studies. She tried her best to look after me, telling me fantastical stories about faraway places. Then, one day, without warning or even a goodbye, Mom was gone. Tommy wouldn’t say where she was, though I kept asking. Nothing in my life made sense after she went away. I felt such a terrible loneliness, an emptiness comparable only to death. I remember very little except for the howling of the huskies, the long nights and the frightening blackness that seemed to envelop my five-year-old world.