Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Day One

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I spent the day at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first national event, here at the Forks in Winnipeg. My heart is full, and — to borrow the expression Marie Wilson, one of the commissioners, used — it’s also “leaking.” The day felt weighty and often emotional. I can only imagine how intense it must have been for the many survivors of the residential school system and their families in attendance.

Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, commissioner, speaking at the opening ceremonies

This event will likely be well covered by the media, so I’m not going to give any kind of journalistic play-by-play but simply a few of my own impressions and experiences.

1. Personalized

I’m attending the event in response to the call by the TRC to come and bear witness to the dreadful legacy of the residential school system in Canada, a system set up by the government and implemented through various church groups to “civilize and Christianize” native people by forcible assimilation through education. The intent, stated most bluntly, was to “take the Indian out of Indians.” Continue reading →

Defining big words

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The experience of Alaska’s coastal scenery, which was part of our recent vacation, falls very quickly into cliche, into big broad adjectives like spectacular and beautiful. These words seem good enough for short answers (“how was it?”) but don’t really communicate that much. Not to others, not to one’s own perception or memory either.

Some extra attentiveness, it seems to me, is required. For most of us, today, the default solution is to point and click the digital camera. A quick capture, that, of what’s worth capturing, with the possibility and intention of looking again and remembering. Perhaps that’s enough. Still, sometimes I sat watching with my journal open, trying to find specific words, trying to put some content into the repetitious inner “oh wow” of this mountainous, green, and blue terrain. What is the green of this particular green, the blue of this particular blue? How to describe the sound of glacial ice calving, an eagle in a tree, the sight of whales when evidence  as slight as a tail above water or a spume of spray can set a whole deck-row of folks exclaiming, clicking, and training binoculars as a kind of burrowing for more?

It’s harder work than one expects, this describing, this paying attention, when it’s — yes — simply spectacular and one wants to leave it at that, except that one knows only too well that the big disappears more quickly than the intentionally-apprehended, which is often smaller.

As for the culture of cruising, that’s hard to describe as well. When I used that expression to someone we met on ship, he asked, “What do you mean?” Good question. What did I mean? Vaguely Las Vegas says something but is also cliche, a big-word stereotype. Slow Vegas for a lot of people over 50 gets closer. Not good enough, though. What exactly? This too needs reflection, definition by detail and story. I feel like it needs analysis.  I’m a woman at the end of  my holiday, however, not a travel writer. Let’s just say it was a “great” (big word) time for now and I’m much too relaxed to work at it further at the moment! For my own future, I’ve got some photos and notes.

On vacation

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H. and I are currently in beautiful British Columbia — visiting our oldest son and his wife and their four children. We don’t see them nearly as often as we’d like — this time the absence had stretched from Christmas — but every visit is a wonderful experience and somehow we’ve managed to stay closely bonded. The children are at the age now where they make cards and welcome posters for us, so it’s all very heart-tugging and warming indeed!

Tomorrow H. and I set off on a cruise to Alaska, the inside passage. We’ve never done anything like this before, so we’re looking forward to experiencing ship life and to seeing the “sights.” Then it’s back for a few more days with the kids, before we return to Manitoba to pick up our regular routines of work and writing. The first week after our return contains Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Commission public events, to be held in Winnipeg. I’m hoping to take in as much of that as I can.

All this to say I may not post much for the next week or two, or even check in, unless I’m inspired with some thoughts post-Alaska. But the next weeks belong first to us and to our children and to the relaxation of vacation. Until later then….