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30 activists occupied the offices of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston MP Scott Reid in Perth on Friday afternoon (February 14), between noon and 4pm. The activists were hoping that Reid’s staff would be able to arrange for a phone call with Reid from his office at Parliament Hill.

Reid was not in his office, however. He was in British Columbia for family reasons and was not available, so the protestors stayed until 4pm. They did meet with Lanark Frontenac Kingston MPP Randy Hillier, who shares office space with Reid, when he arrived at 3pm.

The protest was instigated by Anna Stewart, who said she decided to heed “the call out from the Wet’suwet’en for solidarity actions.”

She contacted her friend, Satinka Shilling, who was the NDP candidate in the most recent Federal election, and they began a Facebook thread to plan a peaceful occupation of Reid’s office.

“We know that Scott Reid is pro-pipeline, but we wanted to ask him if he feels he can justify the actions of the RCMP when the supreme court has said that the hereditary chiefs have jurisdiction over the land that the RCMP is seeking to remove them from. We did not get to ask him about that last week, but we will tomorrow,” she said, in a phone interview on Tuesday night (February 18th).

“My ask will be that he take a stand. I don’t see how he can argue that he is against Indigenous rights.”

Stewart did end up engaging with Randy Hillier last Friday, “even though I told him that we were not actually there to engage with him on this, because it is a federal matter. ”

On Monday, Hillier published a statement on his website and publicised it on twitter. The statement calls for an end to the Indian Act, which many indigenous people and their supporters agree with, but he also said some other things.

He said that “small groups of radical, privileged and dishonest idealogues are attempting to derail Canadian society.”

Stewart does not know if Hillier was referring to her, or to the other members of the group that occupied Hillier’s office on Friday.

She said that her motivation for action in this matter comes from her convictions about the rule of law.

“What’s driving us to act is our engagement with the issues. We all occupy the land that we inhabit, and we see what is going on in the ancestral Wet’suwet’en lands and we know that it is illegal to ask a police force to remove people from land that they have the legal right to occupy. This is not about our privilege,” she said, “it is about respect for the legal rights.”

In his posting, Hillier took exception to the groups that he says have “successfully stifled our freedom of speech through coercive political correctness, distorted our education, rewritten our history, abused freedom of assembly,”.

He also challenged the idea that Indigenous peoples in Canada have been victimised by European settlers.

“Neither I, any of my ancestors, nor the vast majority of my fellow Canadians have oppressed the Indigenous peoples of Canada. My ancestors and the history of Canada demonstrates beyond any doubt that consensus, not conquest, was the relationship between the European settlers and the native Canadians. Just as new Canadians arriving today, the first European settlers came here to flee injustice, religious persecution, and poverty in their own countries; and through these struggles, mistakes, and corrections, we have this great nation. We are all Canadians and no one deserves a pejorative label regardless if they have been here two days or two hundred years.

Anna Stewart said that after reading Hillier’s statement she is concerned about the fact that Hillier glossed over the actions of successive governments.

“I worry that people will see what he wrote and become emboldened by it. I worry that people will say this is about a small group of radicals, even though 10,000 people protested in Toronto on Monday. This is really about the Wet’suwet’en and their struggle to assert their rights. That is what we are focussing on.”

Published in Lanark County
Wednesday, 19 February 2020 12:53

No, Randy, there was no consensus

On Monday, Randy Hillier decided that it is his obligation, as an independent politician, to speak out by publishing a statement called “Ending the occupation, the Indian Act, and Hypocrisy”

In it, he said nothing about the Wet’suwet’en and the legal status of their claim, but instead talked about how their supporters across the country are responsible for tearing down free speech, distorting our education system, and denigrating the hard-working people who built this country by calling them settlers.

He said a lot of things in his statement. You can read it in full at Randyhillier.com. I disagree with the way he characterises people in it. Instead of engaging with people he disagrees with, he resorts to insults. But that is not why I am responding here.

I will limit this response to one line in his statement. This one:

“My ancestors and the history of Canada demonstrates beyond any doubt that consensus, not conquest, was the relationship between the European settlers and the native Canadians.” 

This is not only untrue, it is dangerous. It denies the reality of residential schools, the establishment of the reserve system, the Indian Act, and all of the genocidal policies of governments, churches and other institutions that persisted in this country for hundreds of years and are the reason why reconciliation is such an important concept in our times.

The idea that “consensus not conquest” characterises the relationship between settlers and Indigenous people in Canada is false. The only consensus was among the settlers, the first nations experienced something else entirely.

Reconciliation is a long-term enterprise. Contrary to what has been written in some newspapers, this national crisis over an isolated piece of land in Northern BC, and all that has happened because of it across the country in recent weeks, is not the end of reconciliation, it is but one moment in a process that cannot be bound by a timeline. It will be done when it is done, and no sooner. If anything, we are learning how hard and time consuming it is going to be.

Randy’s missive is also part of that process, I believe.

It puts a voice to what many people are thinking, and provides an opportunity for a vigorous response.

Published in Editorials

Connections Adult Learning is offering the free workshop Introduction to Indigenous Crafts on consecutive Tuesdays from Feb. 4 to March 10 at both its locations in Sharbot Lake and Northbrook (9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at both sites).

As of this writing (Feb. 4), there were still openings in Sharbot Lake (613-279-2499) and three spots in Northbrook (613-336-0691).

Connections executive director Joyce Bigelow said the courses being offered are part of the Hands-on portion of the Sioux Hudson Literacy Channel program, a non-profit literacy and basic skills organization in Sioux Lookout that offers courses on everything from reading, writing and math essential skills, preparation for post-secondary credits, art and photography to preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

“We’re not quite ready for that last one,” Bigelow said. “But both our organizations are funded by the Ministry of Labour, Training, and Skills Development.”

Bigelow said they use five online channels. This one is the Native Stream and recommends blended learning — some online and some in person instruction.

She said they chose this course in an effort to foster understanding of First Nations culture through the arts.
“I’d really like to thank the Shabot Obaadjiwan for their help in this,” she said. “In the last two classes, we’ll be looking at feathers and what they represent.

“We hope to have someone from that community to join us for those classes.”
She said there is more to feather crafts than just the obvious aesthetics aspects.
“Feathers represent community,” she said. “All the little bits of a feather and all the feathers have to work together for a bird to fly.

“We have to work together with the indigenous community and we need mutual respect to work together.
“Understanding is the first step towards that.”

The workshops will include creating a beaded rosette medallion necklace, dying and painting feathers, getting quick feather jewelry ideas, learning to do thread work on feathers, and making individualized smudging fans.

Materials required include scissors, glue (E600 or Weldbond suggested) and used gift cards or hotel card for stiffness.

Connections will be offering a makeup class for those who missed the introductory class on Tuesday. The class will be on Monday, Feb. 10 and people can sign up for that class anytime up to the beginning of the class at 9:30 a.m.

Published in ADDINGTON HIGHLANDS

Loughborough Public School (LPS) grade 3 Anishnaabe student Nescia Giangrosso travelled to Winnipeg, early last month, to be part of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Imagine a Canada – Youth Leading Reconciliation workshop and national celebration, which took place at the Turtle Lodge International Centre for Indigenous Education and Wellness in the Sagkeeng First Nation.

Imagine a Canada also includes an art project. Youth across Canada “invited to submit an art piece about the way they envision Canada through the lens of reconciliation”.

Nescia was invited to participate in the workshop because the mixed-media art piece that LPS had created was chosen as the Ontario entry for 2019. 11 or the 16 classes at the school (aprox. 70% of the students) from grades Kindergarten to grade 8 participated in creation of the art piece.

The 13ft long piece, which hangs in the school, is called “From What Dish Do You Want to Feed Your Grandchildren From?” was inspired by the treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississauga and Haudenosaunee First Nations in 1701 that bound them to share the territory and protect the land along the Lake Ontario basin. The treaty carries a message of peace and unity, and it is its environmental underpinnings that make it so valuable in a modern context. This was the inspiration for the art piece.

But the idea of one bowl (or one dish) one spoon is an old one in North America, signifying an agreement to share hunting grounds between neighbouring peoples. It refers to sharing the harvest as well as ensuring that there is plenty left for future generations to share.

The idea for the piece came from a walk that Nescia took with her mother and her little brother along a creek bed that runs through their backyard. When their mother Janza knelt down and thanked the creek, it sparked the idea that led to the art piece that the Loughborough students ultimately made, and idea about reconciliation with the natural world.

When Anishnaabe elder Deb St. Amant and Anishnaabe parent Janza Giangrosso shared the teachings about One Dish, One Spoon, and the wampum that it has inspired (see photo). They included some text from John Burrows about the wampum.

“We all eat out of the dish, all of us that share this territory, with only one spoon. That means that we share the responsibility of ensuring that the dish is never empty; which includes taking care of the land and the creatures we share it with. Importantly there are no knives at the table, representing that we must keep the peace,” he wrote.

The classes decided to "What do you want your grandchildren to eat?" - detail look at what they ate and where it came from, and ask the question, ‘what dish do you want to feed your grandchildren from?’.

They had the idea for the art piece. On one side it would be wrappers and garbage that litters the community, it would have beaver pelts in the middle, and birch bark on the other side.

They cut out squares of birch for one side, and cut out wrappers and other found materials for the other side. Then they sewed them together to make a very large installation. They each reflected on the piece and wrote their thoughts in many of the squares.

Each side of the piece represents an option for the future.

In her presentation in Winnipeg, Nescia said “Reconciliation is more than just reconciling our relationships with each other. We need to reconcile our relationship with nimamaki (mother earth). She has loved and supported us for generations. We learned about the honourable way to harvest gifts from the earth. This awareness can significantly impact my ecological footprint, as it is our grandchildren that will carry the burdens of the decisions we make today.”

The submission from LPS was an effort of the entire school community. Students from upper year grades helped with the cutting and sewing process, and the school’s ongoing food initiative dovetailed with the project.

Janza Giangrosso, who was also with the project from start to finish, said that a number of passionate teachers in the school and their students made the project what it was.

“We really warmed the ground and as a community, got a taste of what Indigenous education can look like and what is possible when members of the Indigenous community are invited into the classroom to share teachings alongside educators”.

The submission that accompanied a photo of the piece, which was much too large to transport to Manitoba, concluded with the following statement on behalf of the school: To imagine means “to form a mental image or concept of”. This was more than just a dreamy conceptualization of reconciling this country. This work created a safe space within our school community, where multiple perspective, narratives and world views came together to engage in a real, visceral conversation about sustainability and the future lives of our grandchildren.”

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC

23 girls from Sydenham High School and Granite Ridge attended a day-long “Women Write” event at GREC on April 29.

The day started with a journaling presentation and workshop with Carol Pepper, a local artist, writer and educator, and Rosemary Pratt, a teacher at GREC. Students learned about the benefits of journaling, and different ways to journal as a means of expression. They also made journals and took them away.

This was followed by two successful women entrepreneurs and performers, Emily Fennell Taylor and Ky-Lee Hanson, two highly successful women working in the local arts communities.

Emily Fennell Taylor (also known as Miss Emily) led a session on songwriting, and shared her own experiences working in the music industry. She also offered advice to girls wanting to pursue songwriting and/or music as a hobby or profession.

Ky-Lee Hanson, is an award-winning non-fiction writer and the owner of Golden Brick Road Publishing House. Golden Brick Road Publishing House publishes work by women only. Ms. Hanson offered tips for writing successful non-fiction books and encouraged girls to pursue a variety of diverse careers in the publishing field (including graphic art, editing and distribution, for example). She also handed out and signed copies of one of her recent books, “Dear Time, Are You on My Side?”.

Emily Fennell Taylor and Ky-Lee Hanson wanted to inspire young women to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as music and publishing. Due to the challenges they faced, they want to show young women that achieving their dreams is possible, while giving back to the community.

Emily Fennell Taylor is from Prince Edward County, and has had a 20-year musical career, including opening for, and collaborating with, The Tragically Hip.

Ms. Hanson founded her publishing company after having difficulty finding a publisher for her own work. Golden Brick Road Publishing House’s mission is “to focus on women’s leadership and empowerment” and “develop content that effects positive social change.”

This event was part of an on-going Artist in Residence program in local schools, coordinated by Kristin Stevens and funded in part by the Limestone District School Board (currently funded by AIREE Grants from the Ministry) with additional support from Live Wire, Blue Skies, and GREC Parent Council. The purpose is to promote The Arts and Indigenous culture to students in both Elementary and Secondary schools in Limestone District School Board, and overcome gender bias in career paths.

Published in SOUTH FRONTENAC
Wednesday, 10 April 2019 13:12

Ardoch’s Harold Perry passes

Harold Perry, who died last week, was born at Ardoch. He left for Toronto as a teenager but returned to Ardoch as an adult, and lived the rest of his life on Canoe Path Lane, on a section of the Mississippi River that is called Mud Lake.

He experienced discrimination because of his Algonquin heritage when he was young, in Ardoch and in Toronto.

Nonetheless, he embraced the teachings and connection to the land that he learned as a child. He also developed a very strong and unwavering set of political understandings that have influenced indigenous activists locally and across the province in profound ways. He also was a master canoe builder and country music guitarist. He was proudly inducted into the Land O’Lakes Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2016.

Harold also helped to manage a patch of wild rice, that was transported to Mud Lake by his mother from Rice Lake near Peterborough. And that patch of rice was responsible for a chain of events that changed Harold’s life and many others, and helped spark the re-birth of Indigenous culture in Frontenac and Lanark Counties and beyond.

In the late 1970’s, the province of Ontario granted a license to a rice harvesting company to collect the rice from Mud Lake. Harold was a well-established builder, woodworker, martial arts instructor, and musician at the time, headed towards retirement age, when he saw that the rice patch that he had been stewarding for most of his life was about to be harvested.

He approached North Frontenac Community Services, which had a community legal worker on staff at the time (a position that eventually led to the formation of its own agency – Rural Legal Services.)

That worker was Bob Lovelace, who spent most of his time representing clients of the Oso Township welfare office, who were having trouble accessing funds from the township.

When Harold and Bob met, both of their lives changed.

“I knew from when I was a kid that I was part Indian,” Lovelace said when contacted this week at his home on Canoe Lake.

“I was mainly focussed, at that that time, on the local welfare system. Harold came to see me one day about what he could do about the rice.

Harold and Bob and a host of other community members worked on what were dubbed locally as the ‘rice wars’ for a couple of seasons and eventually the company was forced to withdraw.

The entire episode sparked a bit of a renaissance in Aboriginal culture in the region.

“Local people kept their culture to themselves before that. They kept it within their extended families, but at that time they started to feel they no longer wanted to be ashamed of their identity, they wanted to come together in public.”

A number of cultural and political groups developed throughout the 1980’s in the Ardoch and Sharbot Lake areas, and Harold and Bob formed a friendship and political alliance.

Lovelace, who is a university lecturer at Queen’s, a community educator and political activist, said “I like to tell my students that Harold Perry taught me everything I know about aboriginal culture and politics.”

In the 1980’s, Harold became a central figure in another legal battle, over hunting rights for non-status people of Aboriginal heritage.

“He thought it was important to establish hunting rights, and he said he thought it would take longer than his lifetime to do it, but we had to make a start. It was a shorter fight than he thought.”

It turned out that it was Harold himself who supplied the test case, when he was arrested for shooting a duck without first obtaining a hunting license.

Harold fought the case on his inherent right to hunt as an aboriginal person, and won. The case was later overturned in an appeal court, based on some of the comments that the judge made during the trial, but the government of Ontario has never re-visited the issue, being content to establish harvesting agreements with First Nations to this day rather than challenging Aboriginal hunting rights.

In the late 1980’s the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Allies (AAFNA - later renamed the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation) had been formed, and Harold was elected as Chief through a vote of the family heads council.

AAFNA was approached by Kirby Whiteduck from Golden Lake (now know as Pikwakanagan First Nation) to join in the Algonquin land claim process, and they agreed to participate.

“After about a year Harold realised that the non-status communities were only going to be used and he encouraged the family heads council to have AAFNA step back from the process, and they agreed.”

AAFNA, and Harold, became harsh critics of the land claim process, never yielding in his opinion that it would lead only to the diminution of Aboriginal rights. This led to more than a little bitterness within the local community that is still echoed to this day.

The Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation, based now on White Lake, and the Snimikobi Algonquin First Nation (based in Eganville) remained within the process, and AAFNA has remained opposed.

In 2007, a uranium exploration company began doing testing on Crotch Lake, using an old mine at Robertsville as an access point from Hwy. 509. Crotch Lake and the region surrounding it are the traditional territory for both AAFNA and the Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations.

In spite of the schism between the two groups, who share territory and family connections, the two First Nations worked together and occupied the site, saying they would not permit drilling on their ancestral territory. It was an uneasy alliance that frayed pretty quickly, but the occupation held for several months.

“Harold, Doreen Davis (Chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan) the Badour and St. Pierre families deserve credit for putting that coalition together,” said Lovelace, “even if it was tough.”

After the occupation ended, a court case, launched by the exploration company, culminated in a Superior Court Judge in Kingston demanding that the community representatives who ended up facing charges of trespassing, commit to staying away from the site.

In the end there were three who resisted making that declaration, which was a matter of principle more than practicality since by that time the site was back in the hands of the company and access was blocked.

The three were Harold Perry, Bob Lovelace, and Paula Sherman, all Chiefs or former Chiefs of AAFNA.

“Harold was 78 at the time, and I knew from working in the prisons that he was not in good enough health to go to prison, so we talked him into making the declaration,” Lovelace recalls. Lovelace was the only one who ended up in jail, until he was released on appeal several months later.

The company ended up leaving and the land is no longer eligible for staking, and is part of the lands earmarked in the land claim, for transfer to the Algonquins.

Harold Perry lived on at his home in Ardoch with his wife Elsie until last week.

He was an unassuming, even a shy man, but a ferocious political fighter for the rights of non-status Indigenous people, and whether they agreed or disagreed with him, no one can deny the impact he has had on Indigenous politics in this region, and beyond.

Published in NORTH FRONTENAC

Mich Cota is a two-spirit Algonquin woman living in Montreal but her roots run deep in this area. Two-Spirit comes from an Ojibwe phrase niizh manidoowag and has become an umbrella term for many Indigenous people across Turtle Island to verbalize fluid sexual orientations and gender identities. When asked about her relation to two-spirit identity, Mich recalled meeting someone at the Silver Lake Pow Wow when she was 13 or so.

“He was really forward and asked me a lot of questions that I didn’t really understand at the time but he explained to me what two-spirit meant. In Montreal and online I’ve met more two-spirit folks. It can mean that someone is both masculine, feminine or neither, or traditionally, one can be different creatures.

"The most visible concepts of two-spirit peoples are queer, transgender, and non-binary aboriginal people. But it also pushes the colonial concept of gender, encompassing intuition, empathy, respect and love for all genders, paying attention to our bodies and our emotions. In my way, I hold myself and express myself. I’ve always been sensitive, and now I see that as an asset. And it’s a quality of being a two-spirit woman."

Mich’s family has been on these lands for generations, but she grew up in Maberly. She graced the stage of the former Sharbot Lake High School Auditorium, in coffee houses, and productions with the North Frontenac Little Theatre. She moved to Perth as a teenager and then went on to pursue a creative career in Montreal, where she has been releasing solo works and albums with her former band Archery Guild.

Kijà / Care is a beautiful journey of self expression. Switching back and forth between Algonquin and English with an electronic tapestry of synthesizers, strings, drums and ethereal voices, this album has the power to transcend not only gender but also time and space. The opening song Kijà / Care is infectious, with the line “Do you see, if we don’t act now, we will lose everything” becoming a mantra. This album serves both as a departure from her earlier work, and also as a natural evolution.

“I’m feeling like I’ve finally tapped into a place in myself that is honest and joyful. I have always wanted to express myself through my ethnicity, and it took me a while to figure out how to navigate that. I first started to write in Algonquin using nature mythologies and applying them to my own life. But I was having trouble overcoming my own victimhood. I wasn’t paying attention to the beauty of Algonquin Culture. I was just looking at the darkness.

“For this album, I started writing in English. I started with the second song on the album Takokì /  Step, singing about how comfortable I felt wearing a dress; How strange it was to be hidden as a young kid. I had named myself Michelle and I told people I was a little girl. But that was overshadowed by people telling me that I lived in a fantasy. I did live in other fantasies, but this one was a reality. Now that I feel the strength of being myself, being a woman, I am also feeling more of the strength and pride in being Algonquin simultaneously.

 “I had a lot of help translating English to Algonquin from Paula Sherman and using some online resources. My method for making Algonquin poetry was not by writing sentences. Instead I put words together and let the spaces between them remain ambiguous for people, both Algonquin speakers and not, to relate to and interpret. I hope these songs will be used like incantations, like prayers, like tools for empowerment, for peaceful moments.”

Mich has been playing many shows, including a performance as part of the First People’s Festival in Montreal this summer. She played an album release show in Montreal around Halloween, and came onto the stage being held up by six white men in a dive bar with low ceilings. The room acted as a container for her expression. She stood on a table in a dance portion of her piece and pushed up against the ceiling with her head, symbolising being held captive by the room, bursting boundaries of what a concert can look like.

“My friend and collaborator Pamela Hart has suggested that I should be playing in art spaces. Performing in a concert setting isn’t difficult, but the audience doesn’t know how to react. My piece is like a meditation, a performance, exhibitionism, what kind of body do you see? What is this body allowed to do?”.

 You can listen and buy the digital download of Mich Cota’s album Kijà / Care online at Kijà / Care - or go to the  following youtube videos from the record Madjashin/Goodbye or Kija/Care

 This week is Transgender Awareness Week. It started with Monday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to mourn and honour the countless deaths by acts of anti-transgender violence.

On the subject of being Trans in Canada, Mich commented “In Canada, things are very scary, but we are fortunate that our existence is legal and not punishable by death. But the impact of ignorance through verbal and emotional abuse can really stunt trans people’s growth and lives. Everyone deserves to live and be themselves. Let’s listen and believe each other. We know who we are.”

Photo by Joel Moyer taken just outside Sharbot Lake

Published in CENTRAL FRONTENAC

As part of a province-wide speaking tour, individuals representing the Labrador Land Protectors – a group who are trying to stop the threat posed to a number of Indigenous nations by a massive hydro project at Muskrat Falls, Labrador – will speak at a free public presentation on Wednesday, November 22 at St. Paul’s United Church, 25 Gore Street West, at 7 pm.

Organized by the Ontario Muskrat Solidarity Committee and supported locally by Lanark Neighbours for Truth and Reconciliation, the evening will discuss the issues surrounding the $12.7 billion project, which is backed by over $9 billion in federal loan guarantees even though it has doubled from its original price, and will likely cost even more if completed. A significant concern is whether the dam will hold, given a significant portion is being built on quick clay (sand subject to liquefaction under pressure), as well as the flooding of sacred territories.

In addition, during the fall of 2016, Harvard University produced a report documenting the alarming rates of methylmercury poisoning that could be expected if specific mitigation measures were not undertaken at Muskrat Falls (especially clearance of vegetation, trees, and soil in a large area slated for the dam’s reservoir). The issue of mercury poisoning’s severe impact on Indigenous people is well-known in Ontario because of the international attention focused on the Grassy Narrows community. For Indigenous people and settlers living in Labrador, poisoning of traditional food webs that include seal, fish, and other creatures would likely have a devastating impact.

“I can’t help but ask why it’s okay to disregard the concerns of Indigenous people affected by a hydroelectric dam,” says Kelly Morrissey, a Nunatsiavummiuk Inuk woman from Labrador who will be speaking at the Perth event.

“I can’t help but wonder why it’s okay for the government to complain more about the ballooning costs of this mega-project than the human health effects. What about my Indigenous sisters and brothers who wonder if their children and grandchildren will be born with developmental concerns, and those who wonder if the dam, built on clay and sand, will hold.”

Morrissey notes that forcing Inuit and Innu to turn away from eating their traditional foods will not only affect their culture, but also pose the economic challenge of purchasing exorbitantly-priced store-bought foods. “And even if they can, how will this affect their ties to the land? In turn, how will this affect the culture?”
The Perth speaking event takes place two days before Prime Minister Trudeau will travel to the province to deliver an apology to Labrador residential school survivors. Some of those survivors are among the three dozen Indigenous and non-Indigenous protectors who have been criminally charged for peaceful acts of protest, including one journalist facing contempt of court proceedings for covering the issue (a case which has drawn the attention of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression).

The Perth event is free and open to the public. For further information, call (613) 300-9536 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Wednesday, 05 July 2017 12:03

The tradition of black ash basketry.

Making a useful basket from a tree trunk could be a mystery for any one other than an indigenous person. For many years our First Nations people have traditionally used the trunk of a black ash tree to provide the fine splints for basketmaking. This is done by pounding the trunk with a wooden mallet until the growth rings separate.

This summer the Lanark Highlands Basketry Museum, in the village of McDonald's Corners,is celebrating black ash basketry. During the month of July there  will be a demonstration of pounding the black ash to release these fine splints. On August 26, Richard Nolan, a basket teacher from Kahnawaake, QC,  will be coming to the MERA School house in McDonald's Corners. He will teach a workshop on making a small black ash basket and also discussing the traditional preparation of black ash splints.

The Lanark Highlands Basketry Museum, 5596 McDonaldsCorners Rd., McDonalds Corners, is open every Saturday from 11 AM to 3 PM, or by appointment 613 278-1203. During July visitors are invited to try out pounding the black ash which is set up in the garden. Admission is by donation.

The workshop with Richard Nolan on Aug 26 will be at the MERA Schoolhouse and the details can be found on the Mera website, meraschoolhouse.org.

It is important to pre-register as spaces are limited.

For more info about the museum see www.lanarkhighlandsbasketrymuseum.ca

Published in Lanark County

Those of us who are over 55, have some memory of  Canada's Centennial year. I happened to be a kid living in Montreal in 1967, and as part of their efforts to make the World's Fair, Expo '67, a crowd pleasing success and to make it accessible to Montrealers, there was a family pass available for the entire run of Expo.

I looked it up, and even accounting for 50 years of inflation, the price was indeed pretty reasonable. $35 for adults and $17.50 for children for a seasons pass. For our family the total would have been $122.50 for the season. Allowing for inflation, it would have cost about $850 in 2017 dollars, still a pretty good price for a 180 day festival. We packed a lunch and went just about every day. We wandered about the site, got lost and found, ate soft ice cream, and saw every pavilion, including the Czech and US pavilions which were the best ones, the Czech for artistry and the US for the awe factor, a Geodesic dome with the longest escalator running way, way up into the centre of an open space.

Expo was controversial when it was conceived and throughout its construction, but it was a monumental success for both the City of Montreal and for the country, and between it and the thousands of Centennial arena's and parks that were built that year, the Centennial year was a huge coming out party for the country that had a lasting legacy.

When Canada 150, a prosaic name if there ever was one, came along, I was expecting something to happen, nothing on the scale of the Centennial year, but something to mark the moment in our nation’s history. Federal governments have become pretty good at waving the flag over the last 20 years, calling us the best country in the world whenever they get a chance. They have turned the Olympics, for example, into a patriotic event so much so that Canadian coverage rivals US coverage in its fixation with medal counts by Canadian athletes. But as our 150th anniversary approached, there has been nothing, it was met only with the announcement of a Canada 150 infrastructure program that is indistinguishable from any other infrastructure program that the government undertakes. There is no symbol of Canada 150 other than a stylized maple leaf, no song, no signature event, nothing beyond a bigger show in Ottawa on Canada Day and maybe a few more fireworks.

The shame is that, given the efforts locally to create memorable events this summer in communities around Eastern Ontario and across the country as well, it is clear that there is a desire among the population to mark the occasion.

Certainly in Frontenac County there is such a desire, as the list of Canada Day and Canada 150 events grows and grows.

Perhaps this is a marker of how Canada has developed as a nation of communities that are self reliant, with a federal government that exists in its own remote world, no matter which of the two old line parties is in power.

As we get ready to celebrate Canada Day over the next few weeks, we can look clearly at our successes and failures as a country. The country was built by bringing new people in throughout our history and that is our strength. At the same time we are finally starting to face, for the first time, the cost and continuing fallout from the fact  this country was built upon stolen land, that land remains stolen no matter how much time passes. Reconciliation with the Indigenous, First Nations, peoples in this country is not a tap that can be turned off and on when it is politically convenient, but an extensive, long term project.

If it can be accomplished, it will be a bicentennial project, requiring 50 years of unrelenting effort to achieve.

If that happens, the 200th anniversary will certainly outflank Canada 150 as a year to celebrate, and even the centennial as well.

Published in Editorials
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With the participation of the Government of Canada