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Cece Hodgson-McCauley
Guest comment
Monday, December 17, 2007
Merry Christmas to all you good people. May the good Lord bless and protect you and your loved ones during the happy days of Christmas time.
Christmas is the time to reminisce (to each his own!) and mine always brings me back to my convent days in Fort Providence. It is very ironic at this time of the controversial, one sided, issue of residential abuse, the many silent majority who have very quietly agreed among themselves that it wasn't that bad.
I speak for myself, my sister and my brother. We became orphans. Our mother died at 32-years-of-age. Dad put us on the last steam boat that fall to send us to the convent at Fort Providence. My years in the convent were my happiest time. The nuns were strict and we prayed a lot but we sure learned a lot.
We learned to sew our own dresses, how to knit our own stockings - even learned how to set rabbit snares etc, etc. But Christmas was special because you may say we celebrated Christmas with the people from the community of Fort Providence.
As young girls we were interested in who was the best dressed, which meant whose husband and children had the fanciest embroidered parka, moccasins, mukluks mitts and gloves! Women used to try and outdo each other in the sewing department.
They took pride in their sewing! All the women wore fancy shawls - all black. A shawl was the height of fashion! All our mothers had a shawl with long fringes.
At midnight mass, us convent children used to be upstairs in the balcony of the church, where we had a bird's-eye-view of everyone in church at midnight mass.
We used to spend our time figuring out who was the best dressed person in church! We knew all the families and every song was in Latin. To this day I can sing Christmas hymns better in Latin than I can in English. I must confess, I listen a lot to Latin. I have Andrea Bocelli, who sings many songs we sang in the convent, such as Panis Angelicus, Santa Lucia, Adeste Fideles, Ave Maria etc... I always said, I hope to attend a Christmas mass in Latin before I die and I used to say the only person who could make it happen would be a man like Joe Mercredi! By the way, where is Joe? We sure miss his dynamic newspaper! He was bigger than life, as they say.
It is mind boggling, when you think of the early years before government. The NWT was a forgotten land. They say because "stupid" Queen Victoria said " forget the NWT it's a waste land, so they ignored us completely.
We didn't even get care packages. We sure could have used second-hand clothing, food packages, books and magazines, but we received nothing! All this time, Eastern Canada was rich and getting richer. I will never forgive Canada and its government and its people for being so dumb and ignorant of the Territories - for depriving us of an education, of being a part of Canada, until 1960, when they finally gave us the vote.
But they screwed us again by creating our own government, GNWT, which is self-serving.
Gee whiz, I was going to be nice in my column today because of Christmas time. So much for nostalgia, eh? Maybe best not to think of the past after all?
The future could be great if we get ready to face it! It is a very shaky future; climate change, the world over-populating, terrorism.
The world is getting too small to accommodate everyone. The future needs broad minded people, not radicals. It's going to be tough going in the future. Just keep up with current affairs. See you in 2008.
- Cece Hodgson-McCauley is the founding chief of the Inuvik Dene band and will remain honourary chief for life. She can be reached at fax (867) 587-3003 or by phone (867) 587-3037.