Bringing a smile to their eyes

Photographers offer free photo sessions to families dealing with cancer

Story by Casey Lessard
Photos courtesy Sandra Regier

“You always have the image that this can’t happen to me, this is going to happen to somebody else,” says Michelle Smith, whose brother Mike Steckle is recovering from cancer. “You just think it can’t happen to someone who’s 35 and healthy. It can happen to anyone. It affects everybody in some ways.”
Steckle was diagnosed last August after experiencing disabling back pain.
“I couldn’t walk anymore,” he says. “Dr. Teeple at emergency said we’re going to do some blood work, and she told me later that she thought from the start that I had leukemia. It was pretty advanced along, so I spent the next six weeks in hospital trying to get into remission.”
The therapy was successful, but the road to recovery was long and painful.
“I spent the next five months sleeping to recover from the chemo and radiation,” he adds. “I had zero energy and clots in my lungs. The beginning of this spring, things got a lot better.”
In the meantime, his business, a power-washing company, had to continue without him as a hands-on operator.
“The best I could do was drive there and sleep in the truck, letting the guys do the work. I did that for four or five months. I had no control over what the guys were doing, so I learned to be more laid back. It puts life in perspective.”
That’s where Michelle Smith’s friend Sandra Regier comes in. Her job is to put everything in perspective and capture the moment on film (or in the modern era, on a memory card).
“It had been almost ten years since we had family pictures taken,” Smith says. “Sandra called me and told me about Smiling Eyes, and asked me if we would be interested. I said yes instantly, because I knew my mom and my brother would love it.”
Smiling Eyes is a non-profit organization of photographers who offer their time and talent to photograph people dealing with cancer. Photographers spend time with the family and provide the images on a CD free of charge. No catch.
“My aunt passed away three years ago,” Regier says. “I had photos of her, but not a portrait of just her. I ended up making a portrait of her in Photoshop because we didn’t have one. It would have been nice to have had the forethought to take a photograph instead.
“I think it’s important to capture the stages of life, whether you’re healthy or not. To be able to look back years ago and see how big the kids were. On a personal note, I made a point of getting my picture taken this year with each of my kids. It’s just so important to have pictures of your family. When you look back and see how much people have grown and changed, you realize how important those images are.”
Michelle Smith agrees.
“A lot of people don’t take the time to get family pictures taken. It’s great to have somebody who wants to come into your home and capture memories. I don’t know when we would have taken a family picture if Sandra hadn’t called us.”
“It gives you the memory,” Steckle says. “I have a pretty good prognosis. God forbid anything should happen, you have the portraits for your family. It’s nice to have a decent picture that everybody’s in.”
Other families are seeing the value of the process, too.
“The family I took pictures of Sunday,” Regier notes, “the daughter said they wished they had done this a year ago because her dad isn’t with them anymore. Now her mom has lung cancer, so they wish they had the picture with their dad. But at least she’ll have a picture with her mom and her little girl.”
And the photographer gets the satisfaction of doing something nice for someone who will appreciate it.
“I think pictures are important. We do this free of charge, and the images are theirs to do as they will. Hopefully they’ll hang them on the wall.”
To reach Sandra Regier or find out more about Smiling Eyes, call 519-852-4892 or visit www.sandraregier.com

Rock ‘n’ roll helps retired steelworker kick drugs

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Originally from Wales, Bill Osmond is a retired steel refinery instrument technician and Elvis tribute artist. He lives with his wife in Grand Cove Estates.

I was watching an Elvis concert - one of the last ones before he died. He walked on stage and he was just a balloon. He was so swollen and white and sweating. His words were garbled. He looked like he was dying, he was so far up on drugs. I thought to myself, if I don’t get off narcotics, that’s going to be me.

I discovered Elvis when I was 10 years old. We had a sleepover at a friend’s house and we slept in his sister’s room. She was a teenager, and she had a picture of this strange looking guy leaning against a gate. He was wearing a red shirt and sneakers. It’s kind of a famous picture.
When I started to hear his music, I thought he was fantastic. I was an Elvis fan until he came out of the army. Then, of course, we had the Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds and the Beach Boys, so I kind of went off Elvis. I still liked him, but it wasn’t the music of the day.
Then in 1970, I saw an album of his called Moody Blue at the supermarket, so I bought it. His voice was much deeper and it had a new excitement. I got right back into it. I was working the steelworks at night, walking on the catwalks and I’d be singing my brains out. I’d go into the workshop and I’d always be singing there.
Six months after I came to Canada, I was picked to go and commission a new strip mill. The second day on the job I had this terrific pain in my back. It just brought me to my knees. The engineer saw me and called the ambulance. I thought I was having a heart attack, the pain was so real. That was my first kidney stone. They shot me full of demerol to get the pain down. They operated on the stone to get the stone back in the kidney.
There was nothing for about five years, and then they came quicker and quicker. I got kidney stone disease, and it got to be impossible for me to go to work. Every time I’d go to work, they’d be shipping me out in the ambulance to operate on me. I had every operation going for kidney stones, including a kidney transplant. In the end, the company said, “If you want to retire early, we’ll give you a part pension and carry your benefits on for life.”
We moved to Grand Bend in 2000. I was on a lot of pain pills. I was kind of out of it and very dependent on the drugs. I hurt my back and went to the health centre here, and there was a Chinese doctor who gave me acupuncture for pain. I never thought acupuncture really worked, but it did. It took me about six months to get off all the narcotics I was on. I did it gradually myself.
One day I thought, maybe I’ll go down and sing some karaoke at the Riverbend, so I did. I was singing different songs, and one of them was an Elvis song. Women would come up to me with their husbands, and ask me to sing another Elvis song. After doing that three or four times, I thought this might be something to do in my retirement.
I went to an Elvis competition in Brantford. All I had was a black shirt with a large collar on it. There I met a guy named Marcus Wells who is one of the top Elvis guys in Ontario, and he gave me my first jumpsuit. He said, “You should have a jumpsuit because you’ll get more points from the judges. I’ve got one for you; I’ll send it to you when I get home.”
I do parties and stagettes, and whatever. When my dad’s partner died suddenly, we had to go down to Port Dover and rescue him; we put him in the Bluewater rest home. I found out that they had volunteers going in to sing to these people. I volunteered my time one day, and I thought, this isn’t going to really go with these old ladies. But into the third song, I’m singing Teddy Bear, and they’re all tapping their hands and their feet, and they’re all listening intently. I thought they’d all be fast asleep. I’ve done that place about four times now. They just love it down there.
I get more out of doing stuff for people like that than getting paid for jobs. You’re rewarding people that need to be rewarded, who are forgotten about.
Being in pain, I can understand other people’s pain. Being locked up in a ward, I can understand the people in Bluewater or Forest, or the other places I sing. It gives me more compassion to people who are worse off than I am myself.
The pain clinic had told me I’d have to be on narcotics the rest of my life. But the more you’re on narcotics, the more they become no use to you. It doesn’t free you from the pain for long. Maybe three or four months. You’re in a dream world all the time. It made me aggressive sometimes, it made me cry sometimes. I was living in a plastic world, and nothing was real.
Now when I have a stone, I go the hospital and have a shot to get me over the worst part, then live it out at home. I’m a lot happier now than I’ve ever been and people don’t shy away from me. I enjoy the good times and lay down when I’m not feeling well.
Bill Osmond is available to perform as Elvis; you can contact him at 519-238-2005 or via email at elvis@torontobluejays.net. He performs free for local non-profits.

From the Port to the Pacific

Couple hopes to one day sail around the world in hand-built catamaran

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Retired teachers Hank (North Lambton Secondary School, Forest) and Diane (Our Lady Immaculate, Strathroy) VanderVelden, both 58 years old, set sail from Port Franks Thursday, embarking on a journey they started almost 20 years ago. With an interest in sailing that started in the early 1990s, Hank has spent the last eight years building a 14-metre long by 8-metre wide catamaran they now call home. The boat has three queen-sized bedrooms, two bathrooms (one with a bathtub), a storage area, a full kitchen, and living room with television. Equipped with a machine to convert salt-water into drinking water and solar panels for electricity, the sailboat (with two backup diesel engines) allows the couple to be self-sufficient on the ocean.

This year, their destination is Florida, next year the Caribbean, the following year Europe, and if all goes well, they will sail around the world the year after that.

Hank: I’ve watched the round-the-world rally races for about 20 years, so it’s always been something I’ve been fascinated by. Certainly you get to see a lot of the world, and parts of the world you won’t see through a travel agency. Backwards parts of the world, interesting parts of the world, scary parts of the world; it’s not boring, that’s for sure.
We plan to go to Europe in 2009 with a group called ARC – Atlantic Rally Crossing – where you pay a fee and about 250 boats cross through Bermuda. They supply all the charting, weather forecasting and a doctor on one of the boats. It sounds like a lot of boats, but three or four days out you won’t see anybody anymore. You might see a mast way out in the distance, but you’re in radio contact if you have problems. We’ll go to Holland and the Mediterranean, and come back in September. We’ll see where we go from there. We may get out there and say, “Holy crap, this is not for us. This is too scary.” Maybe we’ll just float back and forth to the Caribbean. There’s no guarantee that we’ll circumnavigate. It’s our dream, but it’s a dream that has to come with a certain amount of reality.
Diane: Hank said he wanted to do this for our retirement, so we started looking around. We got our plans from Roger Simpson Design in Australia.
We sold our house about 10 years ago to stay with my mother who was dying of Alzheimer’s. Then we moved to an apartment and she moved into a nursing home, so we just stayed in the apartment. We just kept getting smaller - from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment to a boat. The boat’s our home.
Hank: We enjoyed sailing all the time, and we thought it would be nice to retire on a boat. The advantage of a catamaran is it doesn’t keel over. You can put a cup down and it doesn’t go sliding off the end of the table; everything stays on the level. And it’s got more room. A cat this size probably has as much room as a 65’ mono-hull. We started looking at boats, and we decided on a catamaran. Then we started looking at catamarans and realized they were too expensive for us (a new boat this size would cost about $800,000), so we had to build one; that’s the only way we could get one.
I first got interested when a good colleague of mine and I sailed on another friend’s sailboat. The three of us guys would sail to the North Channel, to Tobermory. Then Diane decided she wanted to sail, too, so we took the courses together and we chartered together. As we became more confident in our skills, they let us go out on our own. Then we had the boat for two weeks alone in the North Channel, navigating around rocks and all that other stuff.
Would I tell somebody else to go and do it (build and live on a boat)? I’d say, you’d better really think it over because there’s a lot of work involved. As long as you research and understand what it’s going to cost and what it’s going to take. When you’re out on the golf course, you know where I am. When you go away for the long weekend, you know where I am. It’s a dream, but there’s a cost. It’s hard, dirty work. If you want it, you have to pay for it one way or another.
Diane: For the last month we’ve lived on the boat, and it’s been an uphill climb. There have been a number of setbacks – you get one thing fixed and something else comes up.
Hank: Both of us have mixed feelings because you’re leaving behind friends and family. If I told you we had no second thoughts, I’d be lying. Of course I’m apprehensive. You’d be crazy not to be. But it’s a trade off: do you want to just sit around at Tim Horton’s every day talking to your friends or do you want to go out and do something? You decide.
I can see it going ten years. That’s what we’re thinking right now. You don’t know until you go out and do it. We know what it’s like to live on it for two or three weeks, but we don’t know how it’s going to be over several years.
Diane: I’ve survived 38 years with Hank; I think we can survive a few more.

World travellers aim to do good

Elinor and Fred Clarke love to share their experiences of life on all seven continents

Seventy-four year old Elinor Clarke leads an aerobics class for seniors at the Grand Bend Legion Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays starting at 8:45 a.m., with classes resuming the first week of September. Participants pay $3 per week, regardless of how many days they come, and all funds go to charity.
“It’s very important to be in shape,” Clarke says. “It’s not just keeping in shape but we work on balance, flexibility, strength, and cardio. We stretch to begin with. We walk. We lift weights. I’m up to five pounds in each hand. That’s the max I’m going to go. I’m exercising far more now than I was 10 years ago. When I first joined this group they were exercising for 40 minutes. When I start at 8:45 we don’t stop until 10:00 at all.”
It’s hard to pin the Corbett Line resident down; finishing with a trip to Antarctica this year, she and her husband Fred have visited all seven continents.

As told to Casey Lessard by Elinor Clarke

I think I was born with an itchy foot. My father had an itchy foot too. Until I reached Grade 10, I never went to the same school two years in a row. We moved continuously.
As a child I lived all the way from California, Oregon to North Bay. I ended up at high school in London, and then lived in London for a long time.
When I was 17, my grandfather was going to England and wanted a companion. I said, “Sure, I’ll go with you.” That was sort of the beginning of really travelling. I love learning about different cultures, and in the 1950s England was a different culture compared to Canada.
Fred and I believe in traveling with our children. When they were very tiny we traveled North America and in 1967, we took our first big trip overseas to Europe.

Tanzania

In 1983, Fred and I were watching PBS and we saw the movie The Flame Trees of Thika. Fred said he’d like to go there. We had no idea where Thika was, so I went and explored and it’s in Kenya. He said he’d like to go, so I started looking and I thought we should go from one end of Africa to the other. We’d start in Egypt, because I always wanted to go to Egypt, and we’d travel all the way down. Well, Fred said there was no way he could go away for that length of time because he was still working. He said, “Let’s just zero in on one thing.”
In one of the books it had ‘Safari.’ A two-week safari. This was in Tanzania. That looked pretty good to do. Well, turning the page over, there was another trip you could tack onto the safari - climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. So I said, “I’ll go on a safari and sleep in a tent and all the rest of it if you climb Kilimanjaro with me at the end.” That was the first big trip by ourselves to do something like that.
Of course I took a lot of pictures. When I came home I started showing these slides. I’ve got cheetahs and wild dogs. I’ve got some good pictures. When we were climbing Kilimanjaro, the guide who helped me reach the top was asking me if we had somebody that could send them clothing. The borders were closed in Tanzania at that time and there was nothing in the stores. We went into one shoe store and there were three pairs of shoes. No children’s shoes at all.
When I showed my slide presentations people would ask what my fee was. I’d say, “Bring me used clothing - good used clothing - and let me sell my etchings of animals, so I could raise the money to mail this stuff.”

Swaziland

Just before Fred retired, he came across this article in the London Free Press, and it said, ‘Are you looking for new direction for your life? Would you like to volunteer overseas?’ There was going to be a talk at the London Library that evening. I asked if he was going, and he said he thought he would. I asked if he was going alone. He said, “I kind of thought maybe you’d come with me.” So we went.
The young fellow that spoke had just come back from doing some work in Swaziland. This was Canadian Crossroads International - a university organization. So we applied. When we first applied it was really for university people. But then they sort of had a change of thinking and decided that newly retired people had stuff to offer too as well. They got back to us and that’s how we ended up going to Swaziland.
You have to raise your own money and it has to raise public awareness. I used one of my etchings on a T-shirt. We sold T-shirts and I sold hasty notes and this sort of thing.
We were supposed to go to Zimbabwe. Just before we were to leave - we were to leave New Year’s Day - we got a call saying we weren’t going to Zimbabwe because a missionary family had been killed. But Christmas Eve they phoned and asked if we’d be wiling to go to England and wait there until they find us a country to go to because they’d already paid for the plane ticket to England. So we went to England.
We were in England for a month not knowing where we were going. While we were in England we got a phone call towards the end of the month saying we were going to Swaziland. We had no idea where Swaziland was. (It’s in the southern part of Africa.) Off we went. You don’t know what you’re going to do. I’m a craft person; I knit, I sew, I do all those sorts of things. Fred’s hobby is carpentry. He was to teach carpentry in English. I was to teach dressmaking and bookkeeping as well. We were there for five months.

Papua New Guinea

Before we went to Swaziland, we had already applied to the Anglican Church to volunteer overseas. When we came back, they wrote us asking if we were still interested. We said we were, so they said, “Would you like to go to Uruguay or to Papua New Guinea?” Fred said he’d always been interested in Papua New Guinea. We’d read Margaret Mead.
(The reason we went to the Arctic in 1987 was because Fred had always wanted to go the Arctic. He’s read all about Frobisher. He knows all about it so then you want to go and experience it.)
So we choose Papua New Guinea. We were there for over two-and-a-half years the first time, living in the bush. We got to where we were working by Cessna 206, which would fly Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, weather permitting. To do my grocery shopping I would fly out on Monday and fly back on Wednesday because it only came once.
I managed a Westpac bank agency, and I was the village postmistress and paymaster. We had a small airstrip and health center and school. The teachers would get paid by cheque; then, of course, I would have to cash the cheques. I was the secretary for the station, World Vision committee and all these sort of things.
Fred maintained the airstrip. He was advisor to trade-stores. He looked after an airstrip that was flying time away or two days walk (he never walked there). He built the water system. He built two houses and he tore one down.
We were administering an Anglican mission station, which was in an expatriate’s house. We were living in a bush house a ways. Some rascals broke into the office. They didn’t get the safe out - they just broke it so we couldn’t get it open. We figured out how to get it open, so now I can add ‘safe cracking’ to my résumé. So then of course I had to fly out to buy a new safe.
When I went out to do grocery shopping I would also have to do my banking. I’d have to take all my paper work and all that sort of thing. My first stop would be at the bank. It was only open from 10-2. There were three big grocery stores. I would keep a list on my kitchen counter top of what I needed because I only grocery shopped once every six or eight weeks. I would go to all the grocery stores and price the items because there could be a difference of $3 or $4 on a pound of butter. Then I would go back and buy at each store what was a reasonable price. (Cont. on p. 4)
(From p. 3) If there was something that you saw, and you might not need it now but you might like it for Christmas, you bought it. I would take it on my head or in a pillow back to the mission home where I was staying. They would freeze my meat. I would do this between Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday I would pick up my banking stuff. And then Wednesday somebody would take me out to the airport at 7 a.m. and I would sit there until the airplane was going to the Jimi Valley. I might get home at 2 p.m. I might get home at noon. If it was raining in the Jimi Valley I might not get home at all.
There were two places you could buy a safe. Burns Philips and the Christian bookshop. I went to both of them and I looked them over. The one at Burns Philips had a dent in it. But the one at the Christian bookshop was a bit cheaper, so I bought that one. Fred had to make arrangements to borrow a truck, and it was a three-and-a-half hour drive over three mountains to get this safe and bring it back.
On Easter Monday they broke in again. This time they got the safe out and rolled it down the mountainside and broke it open. Our passports and our traveler’s cheques were all found in the mud on the side of the creek. Bartholomew, the headmaster, took it and wiped it all off and dried it and brought it all to us. We did lose all the stamps for the post office. Some of the money was found dug underneath a beer club. We got a little over two thirds of the money back. The bills when I had closed the bank on the Saturday at noon were still all folded, all the 50 Guinea notes, all the 20 Guinea notes.
All the rolled coin was broken up. That upset me because I hated rolling the coin. There was about 1300 or 1400 Guinea. That’s about $1500.
The police came and they said to the villagers that we will be back next Saturday and if you haven’t got the money they’d ‘cook em house and kilim pek’ which means burn their house down and kill all your pigs.
By the next Saturday they had collected all the money. Some of it was in cheques from the fathers of the rascals, who were health workers.
Things were stolen all the time. They didn’t think of it as stealing. If you weren’t using it, you didn’t need it. So it was beneficial to anybody else. I almost lost my shoes. If you left at the back of the church when you went in they’d be going down the mountainside. So I’d say, “I need those shoes. Give them back.”
One time we had the only broom and dustpan and hoe and hammers and things like that. Fred would lend things out to his workers to do something. Then he would say, “I need my hammer. Where is it?” “I lent it to so and so.” Of course he’d lent it to so and so. Fred would just say, “I NEED MY HAMMER.” And the next day it would be back.
Anyway, they paid me the balance of the money with cheques. They were signed and I just sent them all out with the police officers. The police weren’t above suspicion either. I could have lost it all. But I didn’t. They honoured me.
We lived on the side of a mountain. Fred was doing heavy manual labour, digging ditches, building houses; he was not a young man. We felt we needed something, an ATV or something. We found this Mitsubishi Pajero, which is like a Jeep. That was really useful because it also became an ambulance. Several times Fred took people out. He took a pregnant lady to Tabibuga in the rain at night. We lived on mountainous roads that were treacherous. There was one time when we were taking some people up to a village and it started to rain. It was like coming down the back of a greased pig. I almost jumped out of the vehicle I was so scared because of the precipices and all. Not easy. Land slides.
When you give of yourself you get back in friendship. It broadens your life, your world experience.
I also worked in Thailand by myself for about five weeks. The camaraderie I had with the women, and what they do for you too.

When we went back to Papua New Guinea in 1995, after we built this house, we went back for six months because that’s all OHIP will cover you for. To buy health insurance for these sorts of things is expensive.
So we went back and we were working in Lae in a small city. Fred renovated five buildings. I spent five months going through 11 filing cabinets that people had been putting stuff for the church in since 1961. It wasn’t in any order. So I had to go through everything and read it and decide whether it was archival or whether it was currant or whether it could be burned. When I emptied all these filing cabinets Fred took them all apart and I sanded and primed. I put two coats of paint on them and he put them all back together again. We gave about six of them away.
This was in Lae, which is a costal city. While we were there the people of Koinambe, where we were working before, made the three-day trip down to see us. Three days. That’s with walking over mountains.
John Pin brought little Fred (several of the children there are now named Fred or Elinor). One of my sewing girls came with her father just to see us. Then we went back to Koinambe for a Christmas holiday and slept in our old bed in our old house.

The Arctic

Fred’s oldest niece was a nurse in the Arctic. She was in the eastern Arctic first then she moved to Saks Harbour on Banks Island, which is right in the Arctic Circle. It’s the furthest northwestern settlement in Canada. She asked to come visit, so we went for a month. We had time in Inuvik; we went to Tuktoyaktuk. I took slides of Ontario into the schools and showed the kids. I also took my African slides and showed them. We lived in the community. Although we were only there for a month, we did everything they did. I drove a snowmobile - I had never driven a snowmobile before in my life.

Peru

When we come home from one trip we’re already talking about the next one. Some of the trips are on the spur of the moment; Peru, for example. We were at the Santa Claus parade in Lucan just before Christmas and my daughter said to me, “Can we come and stay in your house over the Christmas holidays?” They wanted to refinish some floors. I said yes. When I mentioned it to Fred he said, “Good. Now we’ve got a chance to go away for a holiday.” I asked him where he would like to go. He said he’d like China or Peru. I said that I wasn’t going to China in the wintertime. It will be summertime in Peru so we’ll go to Peru. That was just before Christmas and we left Boxing Day.
Fred wanted to see Lake Titicaca, which is the highest navigable lake in the world. I found everything on the Internet and booked it out of Miami. We had tours of Lima. We also had time to walk the streets ourselves. We went to Lake Titicaca. While we were there part of what we had organized was to go out to an island where the Indians still live and stay overnight in an Indian home. The toilet was a hole behind a wall down through a potato patch. We ate our dinner by a candle - literally a candle. The food was Peruvian Indian food. I really enjoyed staying with an Indian family.
We took a bus trip through the mountains to Cuzco and from there we took a train before hiking two days to Machu Picchu and sleeping in a tent.
As we were traveling from Puno from Lake Titicaca to Cuzco, the bus stopped and there was a herd of llama and one of them giving birth. We stopped and I have pictures of this baby animal not quite born yet.

China

The first time we went to China was in 2001. We went with our daughter Pam to bring home a Chinese baby. We have ten grandchildren. One was born while we were in Swaziland. One was born shortly after we came home from Papua New Guinea. Pam has two children of her own and wanted more. They weren’t coming. So they decided to adopt and felt there were girl babies in China that needed homes. It takes almost two years to get your application through and get over there.
We got this picture of this little round-faced, spiky-haired child when she was about six months old. Robyn was 13 months when we got her and she was absolutely beautiful. Just beautiful. She still is. A precocious seven-year-old going into Grade 2. Very, very smart. She reads chapter books, as she calls them, and has been writing since she was about four.
In that trip we flew to Beijing and overnight flew down to Guanjo. We got the babies that day. We had four days in Guanjo. We were taken on a bus tour back to the orphanage where she came from. We met the woman who runs the orphanage, which she runs in conjunction with a senior citizens’ home. The senior citizens look after the gardens and talk to the babies and that sort of thing. It was a nice orphanage for a baby to come from.
When we got back from Guanjo we had to go back to Beijing. We had about six or seven days because we had to go to the Canadian Embassy and through medical tests. On the trip, only six of us went for three babies. It wasn’t a big group. We had five-star treatment. We stayed in a five-star hotel with these three babies. Normally one parent will do the sightseeing and another parent stays with the baby in the hotel, then vice versa the next day. But all these parents wanted their children to go with them.
So we had one day where we did the Great Wall of China. We had one day where we did the Forbidden City and the summer palace and all these things. The days in between that should have been tours were free. Mothers went off shopping.
Fred and I put Robyn in the stroller and we walked the streets of Beijing. We would go through parks and we found that in the parks there were mostly grandparents looking after grandchildren. So we were part of the local scene. We went to school. We saw senior citizens. This is like daycare.
We again were experiencing the actual culture of the people in the city. And that’s what we like to travel for.

When we went back to China in 2002 we drove in a Jeep across China. There were five of us - Fred, myself, Tony the guide, Mark the other driver and a mechanic. I have a Chinese driver’s license, but they wouldn’t give Fred one because he was too old, (but the guys let him drive anyway). The other man was supposed to be a mechanic, but when we had a flat tire he didn’t know anything about cars and he couldn’t speak any English. I think we were paying a person’s salary.
We were there 28 days. We started in Beijing. We went to Xi’an to see the warriors. We stayed in everything from one-and-a-half-star hotels to five-star hotels to a Taoist temple on the top of a mountain. We ate in everything from five-star hotels to truck stops to little cafes where we sat out on the sidewalk. We ate all the local food. Tony would order what he thought we should try. We ate 1001-year-old eggs. We figured they were 1000-year-old cause they were a year past their prime. (Ew!). We ate everything. Shrimp with the total shrimp, eyes and all. I have a whole list of everything.

Cruise life

We’ve also gone on working freighters. We were the only passengers and I was the only woman. There may be a crew of 22 or 24. The first freighter went out of Florida, across the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal. We stopped in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. And all those places coming back again. We made 13 stops all together. (Cont. on p. 6)
(From p. 5) The second one was out of Long Beach, California. We went to Tahiti and the Samoas. That is also experiencing another culture. The culture of a working freighter. You’re sharing food with the workman. We didn’t even help with any of the work. They did call Fred ‘Navigator’ because he had his GPS and he would check that we were still on course and all this sort of thing. But that is another way of experiencing a culture.

Antarctica

Going to Antarctica was a spur of the moment thing. Actually we just got something in the mail that said ‘Antarctica’ and Fred said, “I think we should do this.” It was the one continent we hadn’t been to. We’ve been to all seven continents now.
Why did we go to Antarctica? (Laughs) To experience another culture. Again this is the only cruise we’ve ever gone on. A cruise ship is another culture again. And Fred has said that he wouldn’t do that again. That’s not our cup of tea.
My highlight is when you get to Deception Island, which is an extinct volcano, and the harbour is inside the caldron of the volcano because the wall is broken in one place. It’s considered the safest harbour in the world. But on the outer wall, ships run aground including the sister ship of the one we were on. When you get there, and this is right on Antarctica, you have the opportunity to swim in the Antarctic Ocean if you would like. So I did.
The water temperature was 2 degrees. The air temperature was 2 degrees. It was 8:30 at night. The sun was starting to go down. They have a contest. It’s based on the number of people per country. There was one person from Argentina and he swam. So they got 100%. There were 16 Canadians. We had I don’t know how many Americans. Well over 100. We had 16 Canadians and 11 of us swam so we came 2nd with 69%. I was one of the 11. Fred is one that didn’t so he wrecked our percentage. (Laughs).

Global Warming

I’m in a quandary over global warming. I still think we are a global world now. Television brings it right to us. It can be a bit of a guilty thing to think about travelling, but I do it anyway.
By travelling to these places I think we do enough good that it balances it off. A lot of people travel and they take their own baggage with them. That I don’t agree with. As Fred says, we ate in the streets of Irian Jaya. We’ve slept on rusty camp beds. That’s what the people there do, so that’s what we did. I’ve tried to educate the people back home about how other people live. And how they are.
Not everybody is as fortunate as we are. When we were in Papua New Guinea we had quite a bit to do with World Vision, and we sponsor a World Vision child. It’s a question of putting your money where your mouth is, I guess really. When I was in Thailand I taught a sewing skill to village girls so that their families wouldn’t sell them into prostitution.
Going to Antarctica I have tried to talk about global warming in that. Global warming and travelling is one thing, but if you notice, I don’t have my air conditioning on. We haven’t run it all summer. We haven’t run it for about three years. Conservation starts at home. I took my garbage out last night. From three weeks I have one (grocery-sized) bag.
I compost. We compost in the field and in the garden. Fred says we built this house with a lot of the stuff he has saved over the years and used up. If he has to cut trees down he makes boards out of them. He made the tops of my compost box out of lumber that he’s made. We do our bit. We don’t rake leaves. We don’t rake grass. It composts.

Slide shows

I was showing slides of Newfoundland to a group of people one time and a man in the audience recognized his grandmother’s house. That really makes you feel good.
I will show my slide shows to anybody, anytime; all they have to do is ask. We have done them in private homes. People hear about it. And they say they’d like to see the Antarctica ones. So we go and do them. If people would prefer an evening here at my home we have a sort of projection room upstairs.

Lesson learned

People are the same the world over. You can be in Papua New Guinea and there’s a little old lady that reminds you of Auntie Winnie.
If you are friendly and put yourself forward they will be friendly back. We’ve walked the streets of Cairo. We’ve climbed Table Mountain in South Africa. We climbed Kilimanjaro. We hiked to Peru. People asked us if we are afraid.
If you treat people well, they will treat you well back. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you really.

To contact Elinor and Fred Clarke regarding their travels, slide shows or Elinor’s exercise classes, call (519) 294-6499.

Motocross racer gets the Boot

Grand Bend teen earns top honours at Canadian championship

Fourteen-year-old Dylan Kaelin, who lives south of Grand Bend, swept the motocross racing categories he entered at the Canadian Amateur National Championships in Walton, Ontario, August 15-19. Dylan took home three top-honours and the Bronze Boot award for best all-round amateur rider.

As told to Casey Lessard

Amateur motocross is what I race. I started riding when I was three, and started racing when I was four. I’ve been at it ever since. It’s what I want to do when I’m older - become a professional motocrosser and make a living off it.
When I was younger I just rode around on a pedal bike. We had an old Honda Z50 mini-bike - my sister rode it and then I starting riding it. It had training wheels on, and I told my dad I wanted to ride without training wheels. He didn’t believe that I could do it. A week later he bought me a PW50 and then a couple months later I went to my first race and I got dead last (laughs).
When I was six years old, I won the four-to-six 50 CC class at the Canadian national championships. I went to Loretta Lynn’s (US championships), which is the biggest amateur national championship in the world, when I was nine years old riding 50s; I’ve tried to qualify for Loretta Lynn’s a few more times. At Walton (the Canadian championships), I should have won the 50 CC seven-to-eight class in 2002, but I broke my femur. In 2005, I got a third place in the seven-to-12 class. This year, in one week, I won three classes, becoming Canadian champion for all three. Plus I won the Bronze Boot, which is for the most accumulated points throughout the whole week. That’s the biggest award you can win there.
The very first moto (race at the Walton) I just wanted to go out there and win and get it out of the way and just have a good mindset for the rest of the weekend. Luckily I did that. I had a mid-pack, top-5, top-10 start. It was pretty good. I got up front and I won that moto so that was good.
In the second race, my friend crashed in front of me on one of the big jumps. I ran his bike over because I had nowhere to go. Then I went down and I was back in about 15th or so. I worked my way to second. I was right behind the leader by half a bike. I was behind him five feet or so when we came across the finish. I needed to win that one to make sure I would be in a good position for the third moto to get the championship.
Everybody really started getting into it after that crash. I was walking around the pits and everyone was saying, “Good ride! That was awesome how you came from the back of the pack and almost won.” The rest of the week everybody was cheering me on. It was great.
After my first day of motos I went 1-2-1. The next day I got 1-1-1. Then after that I was kind of starting to figure it out. I just had to go for the third day and ride like I did the rest of the week. I knew I could probably win all the championships if there were no bike problems and I didn’t crash.
I was so nervous. That morning I didn’t want to eat - I felt like I was going to throw up. Mentally it’s a big game. Coming up there that week I knew I could do well but I was second-guessing myself.
You always fear getting injured. Crashing into somebody else, somebody crashing in front of you, bike problems.
Winning the Bronze Boot and the three national championships is definitely going to help out for next year. I’m sending résumés out to gear sponsors and bike sponsors right now. Next year I’m moving up to intermediate class so that will be a big difference. In that class, a lot of people sponsor the faster riders. A lot more people come and watch. It’s a bigger deal, for sure.
I’m going to try to stay in the intermediate class as long as I can because I’m only 14. Most people who are pro are 20 or 21. I’m probably going to run intermediate Canada for about two years, then I’ll go to the States and run their ‘B’ class for a year. I might go ‘A’ in the States, then come and race in Canada.
Without my family I wouldn’t be able to do it at all. Having the business here (dad Rob started a motocross sales and repair shop in Dylan’s early racing days) basically was to help me out in the beginning and then all my parts were cheaper, and it helps us find sponsors.
I’m going to be home-schooled this winter for second semester. Last year I missed three weeks of school to go down south to go riding. My teachers helped me a lot.
I think I was born to do motocross. I’m not really good at anything else. There’s a chance to make millions and there’s a chance you’ll be working at McDonalds if it doesn’t work out.

“I hope he can fulfill his dream and make it to a factory ride,” says dad Rob Kaelin, owner of The Cobra Shop (thecobrashopmx.ca). “I just hope he stays healthy. I know receiving the Bronze Boot was a dream of his. I was pretty fortunate to be able to witness him have a dream come true.”
“Every weekend since the time he was four years old, my daughter, my son and my husband and I spent the weekends together,” says mom Teresa, who takes care of the nutrition and cleaning. “You grow extremely strong and close as a family. It’s very much a family affair.”
“As far as academics,” Rob adds, “he must carry a B+ average to be able to go and ride and go train like he does and take x-amount of weeks off school. As long as he keeps up his end and we don’t get too many injuries, everything is good.”

Main Street never sounded this good

Grand Bend native joins ensemble cast for “best summer job ever”

Lambton Main Street Players
Funded by the Sarnia-Lambton Business Development Corporation
Various venues and times across Lambton county until August 25
Grand Bend: Farmers’ Market July 18 and 25, 10:30 to 11 a.m.
On the beach – August 3, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Huron Country Playhouse – August 11, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

The Lambton Main Street Players were formed by Sarnia-Lambton Business Development Corporation’s community economic development officer Mary Alderson, who saw a similar group called Vibe last year in Muskoka. A funding organization called ArtsVest had money for Lambton county arts initiatives, and Alderson applied. Twenty-three young people auditioned and six were chosen to perform throughout Lambton county this summer. Grand Bend native Christine Vandenberk is among the six.

As told to Casey Lessard

This is my summer job. It’s probably the best summer job I’m going to ever have. It’s pretty awesome.
We are a song and dance group that does mostly 50’s and 60’s music. It’s really high energy and enthusiastic. The group consists of kids between 15 and 20, all from Lambton County.
I became interested in theatre when I was about 12, ushering at the Huron Country Playhouse. We got to see shows for free because we had to sit in the back. I probably saw about 30 or 40 shows over the course of four years. That was really where it all started for me because I wasn’t really into it in grade school but as soon as high school hit I went and auditioned for the school show. I got in and it was really great. Some of our music, the Ellie Greenwich music, is from that musical that I did in Grade 9. Ever since it’s just been my thing.
I remember going to an audition in February. There were two sets of auditions. Lindsay and I were in the same audition as well as Doug Price, our director, he was in there. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy is really good.’ We were chosen and we got together and practiced for a few weeks. It was about eight hours of practicing a day so it was very intense but it went really well. It’s been a very enjoyable experience.
When we first started, we did a show in a restaurant. It was raining that day and we only had three people show up. The second show was not well advertised so we only had five people but ever since we’ve had a least 20 people or more. We did a few shows at the Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia and for our first one we probably had about 150 people. It went really well.
I can’t wait (to perform on the beach and at the Playhouse) because I’m from Grand Bend and there’s a lot of people I know in Grand Bend. I think it will be really fun.
I think that this is definitely a big leap of faith kind of career. I’ve heard from the other guys that go to the school already that they teach you a lot about that. It’s all self-promotion and self-advertisement and really getting out there and giving out your résumé. It’s also a lot about the people that you know. This job is really good for that.
I know a lot of people in Lambton county so you get to go out and show the people that you know what you love to do. It’s really awesome for me. You get to get out there and all those people from Lambton county get to see you. And you never know who could be watching. It’s all really good publicity for the people involved.
I would say that our show is most definitely a family show. Everybody from kids to grandparents can come out. It won’t make anyone uncomfortable. It’s really a lot of fun. We get the audience involved and it’s just fun for everybody to watch. Everybody knows the music.

The Lambton Main Street Players are co-directed by Thomas Alderson (grandson of the late Bill and Hazel Blewett of Grand Bend) and Doug Price.
“We wanted to create a show that would appeal to everybody,” says Price. “We wanted popular music. We wanted songs that everybody would know. Everybody knows the words. Everybody can sing along. It’s all feel good music.”
“The response has been overwhelming,” Mary Alderson says. “I’m getting phone calls and e-mails everyday saying, ‘Can we get them into our town?’ It’s been a wonderful experience and the kids have just been fantastic.”

Three-time world champion addicted to drag rush

MOPAR Canadian Nationals
Grand Bend Motorplex
July 20 to 22
Tickets: 519-238-7223 or
http://www.grandbendmotorplex.com

As told to Casey Lessard

Rob Atchison is a three-time (2003-2005) IHRA world champion alcohol funny-car drag racer. The Londoner placed second last year and is currently ranked third in IHRA standings after four of 12 races. Atchison is one of a handful of Canadians on the North American circuit.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to do the quarter-mile. It’s thoroughly enjoyable. The car is so fast and unpredictable that it’s all business all the time. I’m always able to play it back in my head. Time stands still because you’re so focused. You can’t enjoy it like a roller coaster or a Sunday drive because it’s so dangerous.
The acceleration is so huge that you get blurred vision for the first 150 feet. The human body adapts so well to the G-force that you don’t realize how fast you’re traveling. Sometimes you get out and the crew says you were close to the wall or all over the place. The car beside you is going the same speed so you don’t get a feeling for it until you have to do evasive action or if your chute doesn’t go off.
I was 19 when I made my first pass in a drag car. It’s a great rush. You get addicted to it.
The first time I did IHRA, I never thought I’d be doing alcohol funny-car full time. We never dreamed I’d win a world championship. You don’t go in thinking that, but it changed our world.
I’ve been in accidents and caught on fire. Those things happen. In this sport, there are the guys who have and the guys who will.
I’ve always been into cars. We have a machine shop and my dad drag raced in the 50s and 60s. I just tried it out. It wasn’t my goal when I was growing up. I didn’t live at the racetrack. But it was something I was fortunate to fall in love with and have that enjoyment fulfilled.
Grand Bend Motorplex is where I got my first win and where everything started for me. It was the first track I raced on at 19. It’s home.
Actually, I met my wife Julie at the Motorplex, actually. She was doing a summer cruiser hit for the TV station (Julie’s now a weather announcer for London’s A-Channel) at the track. I tried to get her number, but she shot me down. We met later on and it was off and on for a few years. We were both career-focused. Then we came back together. Sometimes you have to sort those things out before you come together. But Julie’s been with me for all the successes I’ve had.
There have been failures and trials, too. I’ve always tried to push the envelope. We set the world record in elapsed time (5.685 seconds in Toronto) and miles per hour (249.09 in Epping). I’m really struggling after last year. I’ve torn the envelope. I’m trying to get back into it – we consistently qualify first. I’m very close to solving the puzzle of why I’m not winning.
It’s a great privilege for me to be a drag racer, which I am 50 per cent of the time. There’s nothing better than being able to compete and to do it with my family. My parents, cousins, uncles and friends are part of the team. I work at the Atchison machine shop as well, and I’m here (in the race shop) most of the time in the summer.
A successful team does everything to perfection. You can’t predict what the machine will do, but you if you prepare it, you’ll be successful. Eighty per cent of the car is safety before speed. Everything’s designed for that sort of speed. It’s the same at the track. It’s more dangerous to be on the 401, to be honest. I’m always driving toward help if I need it.
It’s tough to get rid of the bad rap our sport gets. If kids are racing on the streets, they refer to it as drag racing. They never call it NASCAR racing. NASCAR has done a good job of making their drivers look like heroes. But tracks have opportunities to try it out, even in a streetcar. Just the simplest form of drag racing gets your heart pumping. We put a lot on the table each time we do a pass. You can win or lose in the blink of an eye.

Our home and native land

Why did Dudley die?
Sam George gets some answers

As told to Casey Lessard

Maynard “Sam” George’s brother Anthony “Dudley” George was shot by Ontario Provincial Police Sergeant Kenneth Deane (who was later found criminally negligent) September 6, 1995 at Ipperwash Provincial Park.
After occupying the Camp Ipperwash military base for two years, about 35 protesters moved into neighbouring Ipperwash Provincial Park September 4 to call for the return of Stoney Point Nation lands at the camp and the park.
Dudley George was the only aboriginal person killed by police during a land claims dispute in Canada in the 20th century.

What really happened?

I look at this Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry and I wonder whether or not there’s ever been anything written like this before. From what I can see, somebody has finally said there were two sides to this story.
They obviously listened to the First Nations side as well as the other side and they came to the conclusions that resulted in this report. We had the police side of the story, the protestors’ side of the story, and my perspective for my family’s side of the story. They had political people in there, staff from the political parties, people from different departments in there. Everybody had an opportunity to come in and give their perspective on what happened. So many people had a story they wanted to tell. Not one person had the same story, not one.

One thing we can all agree on is that the night of September 6, Dudley George did lose his life. But what we need to do now is come together and make sure this never happens again.

A family history

My father was raised at the Stoney Point First Nation, which is now Ipperwash. When he moved here, he went into the armed forces. He and my mother were in the armed forces. When they came back they settled in Kettle Point and then moved to Sarnia.
In 1942, the government had come in and asked the people to surrender that piece of land so they could use it to make this army base. At that time the community members turned that down. Once they turned it down, the governments then enforced the War Measures Act, and they expropriated it through that. They came in and moved the families out of there in 1942. They just picked up their houses and moved them. This land was supposed to be given back after the war was over. That was part of what they were told. As you can see, 65 years later the land is still not in the hands of the First Nations people.
Part of that was they kept using excuses that they still weren’t done with it, that they needed it for training or for cadet camp every summer. Not really thinking too much about what was happening with the people that were originally from there, the governments looked and thought it would be cheaper to bring two bands together and put them on one piece of land. I don’t think they ever took into consideration the fact that we would grow, that our families would grow. To put them in one section of land, eventually we would start running out of land. And that’s what’s happening here.
They never looked at the growth of the First Nations people. They always took it as a declining race of people. They never looked into the future. We kind of know what their plan was but we don’t know whether they wrote down anywhere that they wanted the assimilation of the First Nations people.
Some of the people came back from the war and there was no homestead for them. They didn’t have email and the mailing system was very slow at that time. There was no communications system, especially if they were overseas. When they came home, there was no home for them. There was a fence and guards stopping them from going in. This is what our people went through.
They moved some of the houses. Some of them didn’t survive. We have one or two houses that are surviving. One is being lived in today and that’s my uncle’s house, which is partly my grandfather’s house from a long time ago. It has lots of additions on it, but the main part is still there.
On the northwest corner of the Stoney Point First Nation there was a piece of property that was surrendered to the province and that’s why the provincial government is involved in this along with the federal government. There’s that one little section in the corner. I know in 1937 there are reports from our council where the federal Indian agent had come in and said that the provincial government’s engineer had discovered remains in what was going to be the new provincial park. He asked him to come down and asked band council to pass a resolution and send it to Ottawa so they would fence off this area so they wouldn’t damage anything while they were doing construction on the park. It did go through that process, it made it through the federal government and went to the provincial government, but it was never done.

Moving home

I didn’t live here until I was 14 years old. I grew up on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation (in Sarnia). That’s where my mother was from and it was closer to my dad’s work. We moved back here and that’s when I started to live in this community.
Things happened to us pretty rapidly. We lived here not very long and our house burned. My family moved to the town of Forest, and that’s the house where my brother still lives. I never saw any difference between where I lived in Sarnia. The people were all pretty good, especially for us coming back into the community at such a late age. I started to get involved in a lot of stuff that was happening in the community, like minor sports and working with the community.
When we were married (Sam is married, has three children and five grandsons), we applied for a home (on the Kettle and Stoney Point nation) and this is where we built our home and raised our children. It’s where my kids all come back to and they call it home.
Growing up, I can remember Dudley with my brothers and sisters. I remember a lot of the Christmases and birthdays. Dudley himself was a person who liked to make people laugh. He liked to be around people. He would do things when he was asked to do things.
He was a handy fellow. He worked at jobs here and at the marina at Port Franks. He enjoyed that job very much. He liked to go out fishing. You see some photos where he’s ice fishing and out on a boat.
He helped around wherever he could. Mostly he liked being around people. He liked to joke around a lot. He’d just go around and visit. He helped our younger sisters a lot. He’d watch our nephews whenever they were involved in sports.
He liked to make sure he could make people smile. He wasn’t always like that, but that was the majority of the time.
Dudley lived in Forest most of the time. I have two brothers and a sister who live in Forest. I have another sister who lives in Port Franks. I have one brother in Kettle Point here and myself. Dudley hung around here and Forest and stayed around with my younger sister quite a bit.
Dudley worked along with this community and played some minor sports here as well. He kept connected with this community through family ties and that.
When they were protesting the former Ipperwash thing, they decided they were also going to get the park back. The park was where our grandfather had lived. There were burial grounds there that were never taken care of, and they felt at that time that it was another broken promise, so they decided they would protest there as well. That’s why they were in Ipperwash Park - because of the burial grounds that were never taken care of.
Dudley saw the opportunity to help out so he moved in there to lend support. Our father had passed away by then so Dudley was probably doing it to get the land back for them. They never had the opportunity to move back there.
That happened September 4. They waited until the park was closed and the campers were gone – they didn’t want to see anyone get hurt. As a result of it, my brother was shot and killed September 6. No one will ever forget that part.

Don’t give up the fight

In the beginning, all my brothers and sisters sat down in a room and realized there was going to be an estate that had to be done and there had to be somebody appointed to do all this stuff. At that point in time, my brothers and sisters appointed me to handle that. So that’s what I did. I became executor of the estate and as we asked questions we started to figure out whether we wanted to do something about it. Do we want to find out what happened? Was it necessary for him to die? We asked for an inquiry at that time. There were allegations that the premier was involved in it and had made these statements. We decided we needed to find out what really happened that night.
We started the process of looking for lawyers. Unfortunately, because it was a political case, they’d come back with things like ‘My neighbour’s an OPP officer, my family member’s an OPP.’ They just wouldn’t touch it. We ended up going to Toronto and found a lawyer named Delia Opekokew, who decided that she could help us on this case. Once we started and found there were no reports on this case and that we had to do all our own investigations, she said it was going to be a much larger case than we ever thought it would be and that at some point we would need a litigation lawyer. And that’s where Murray Klippenstein came in.
We started to dig, we filed a statement of claim in 1996, which got national coverage because of who we were mentioning in the claim, and that was the premier of Ontario, Mike Harris. It drew a lot of attention when we were starting to go through the civil court process.
We always said we would take a public inquiry instead of a civil suit and that if they would do that we would drop the civil suit. But that became a battle in the end, too. They fought us every which way. We didn’t want to fight with anyone. We just wanted answers and unfortunately it took a long time.
There’s a lot of work in there, a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about things because once we filed a statement of claim we got more motions to have names struck out of the statement of claim. We were going back and forth like that all the time. No one was really making a move until the court ordered that there was enough evidence there to keep the premier in the statement of claim. Once that happened, everybody followed suit. It took a long time.
When you’re at the inquiry you’re always working to make sure you don’t get left behind. You’re also working to keep ahead. You know where you’re going, you know who’s coming up the next day so you try to figure out what they’re going to say, and you have to be prepared if it goes this way or that way. It was a real thinking process for us and we were on the computers a lot. Even when we had legal counsel in Toronto, we were always on MSN, talking back and forth. It was a process that kept me involved very much. Sometimes I wouldn’t get home until 10 or 11 at night and be gone again at 7 o’clock in the morning.
It was very good to hear witnesses saying that they wouldn’t like to see anything like this happen again. They didn’t like being involved in stuff like that. The people that were there didn’t want to be there either.

Twelve years later, answers

I was satisfied with the inquiry report. It talked a lot about where we were going. The parties that were involved in this did get recommendations to take back and implement to change the way they do things. We need to make sure these recommendations get followed and that the report doesn’t sit on a shelf somewhere. What we want is that this never happens again to another person. That’s what this report has done.
The inquiry didn’t give any recommendations to help with any of the costs over the years. Me and my wife prepared ourselves for stuff like that. Sure, we had to sell some stuff and there were times when it was very, very tough on us. I have a lot of money tied up in this personally. It’s something where if you believe in what you’re doing and you have the support there when you’re doing it, then that part becomes a lot easier. We have a lot of bills now we have pay, but we’ll work out how we’re going to do it.
It cost a lot more than I imagined it would. I really didn’t think asking for someone to tell me what happened that night - to tell me whether or not it was really necessary that he died - I didn’t think it would be so costly and so timely just to try to get answers of that nature.

How Sam survived

My Chevelle (Sam is a Chevelle aficionado, and collects models as well as owning a classic car) is an interesting story because I had one other car that I had to sell in the beginning of this process because I needed money. Later on, my wife said, ‘You should buy yourself another car.’ I bought another car and when I started to fix it, I really didn’t have the time so my oldest brother Reggie did a lot of the work on it for me. He actually had to keep it for me for a while. Eventually we got it done and I have it in the garage.
We needed some kind of entertainment in our lives. We can’t always go and continuously do this type of work. Every now and then you have to give your mind a break. As soon as you get home, your phone starts ringing. I carry a cell phone. I have it on most of the time. That’s just a habit now. Before I needed it for decision making because my lawyers gave it all they had and they did a good job at it. You can see the results. But that’s why I have the car – to give me a change and relax a little bit.
My band supported me a lot in what I was trying to do, so when I needed to be gone or when I had time waiting for judge’s decision, I’d be “in the office.” (Sam was a youth worker for Family and Children’s Services for the band). Whenever I could be there I was there. Over the period of the inquiry, I was at the inquiry every day. That took all of my time at the time.
I haven’t even thought about (getting back to work) right now. I’m still pretty busy. People call me from all over right now – Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa. Their favourite question is how did I survive all of this. Well, I don’t know. That’s something I’ll have to sit down and figure out.
I counted on my elders quite a bit and they would keep track of me as well. Even the morning after the inquiry, they contacted me and said, ‘You need to do some stuff now. You need to get yourself up and look at getting yourself better.’ I did get run down pretty good in the end there. I did get sugar diabetes and that’s been a real battle. I’m now trying to get that settled down right now.
Not only because of my eating habits, but it’s also stress. There were days the blood pressure would go up and stress would go up. You couldn’t predict what your day would be like. You’re asking someone to tell the truth and you don’t know what’s going to come out.

A peaceful solution

To me, if someone would have sat us down in the beginning and said, ‘This is this person, this is that person. They’re responsible for this; they’re responsible for that.’ If we could have sat at a table and talked about that stuff in the beginning, we could have probably settled this soon after Dudley died. Unfortunately, they chose to take us down a different path. Because they took us down that path, it became very difficult and very costly for us. But we survived all of that and now we’re looking at a report and looking at getting it implemented.
It would help people if they came down and listened to some of the stories. Anybody can phone me or visit me any time. They can ask me questions if they want. They would learn that it wasn’t an easy way to go. In the system that you have to go and follow through, it sometimes becomes very harsh on you. They just don’t have any idea what it’s like.
People call you and tell you they have something that might be helpful to you. I always took that time to listen. I don’t care who it was that phoned me. I have people now calling me, ‘Can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?’ I try the best I can to help because people helped me.

What would Dudley think?

If he were alive to see this report, I think Dudley would say it was about time people started to listen to what we were saying. A lot of things that are in here are things he was standing up for. Burial grounds, treaty lands, a homeland. He was not only standing up for himself, but for his family, community and the First Nations people, saying ‘Somebody listen to us.’ That’s all we wanted – somebody to listen. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way. If you look at the recommendations, you’ll see where every little thing went wrong, who was involved, how things could have been done better. You see lots of those things in the report.
I would have rather had him around today. But one thing we do know is he did start something that night. He stood up for our rights, and he paid the ultimate price – he paid with his life.
When you look at it now, everything he was starting to do has come out in this book. I was allowed to do closing statements at the inquiry, and I said, ‘Now he can rest in peace.’ The work he started to do is now going to be divided up and given to the various parties and now it’s up to us to work together in a good way and make sure these recommendations are followed and implemented.
This is important not only to First Nations people, but to any person because we do have that right to speak up when we see something wrong. We don’t have to have that fear that if we do speak up that we will be put down the way he was. He was only speaking up.

We will start to forgive, but we can never forget the night of September 6.

Canada: land of opportunity

Jamaican Shirley Wright’s summer destination - southwestern Ontario - makes him a snowbird of a different feather

Forty-nine year old Kingston, Jamaica resident Shirley Wright has been coming to Canada every summer for the last 20 years to work at the Masfrankc farm, now the Strawberry Place (338 Elginfield Road, between Sylvan and Thedford - (519) 294-0070). Norm Masfrankc keeps bringing Shirley back for six-month terms: “Shirley works at the job as if it were his own. He’s very versatile. He’s a good gardener, carpenter. He can fix things; he’s mechanically motivated. He’s great in general to have around. If he can, he’ll motivate the other workers and keep them going. The main thing, he can be trusted.”

As told to Casey Lessard

I had never been on a plane or to Canada. We had a big storm in Jamaica the first year I was here in 1988 and I go home and my roof was blown off. It was a surprise. You got to put it back together because you need something to live in.
This was the first place I came. I didn’t know where I was going. At first, everything was strange. You’re going to a strange place where you don’t know anybody. Nobody tells you anything. You only see a contract sheet, which you sign that you will work for an individual. You don’t know the individual and the first time I came it was flue tobacco. From there we moved on to black tobacco and now it’s strawberries.
I came through a program that goes on in Jamaica. The government started it to try to help the poorer class of people. If you want it, you take it; if you don’t want it, you leave it. They put out a lot of cards and you take a test. They test your urine, your eyes; stuff like that. If you fail the test, then you can’t come.
I never even looked at the money. Most guys look at the money and say it’s really small. I never think of that. I never prepare myself to stick at a job in Jamaica – a handyman or carpenter – because I like to come back and be with Norm and Marg and especially Deb (their daughter). She built up my speed at work. I love to see her work.
Sometimes making a living in Jamaica is rough and sometimes it goes and comes. If I say I’m going to stick a job in Jamaica, then I can’t come here. It’s on and off. I will do something back there, but not long-term things. Then I come back.
When I’m there, I like to be by myself. I like to go fishing and be by myself. I enjoy that. Not go to dances or stuff like that.
I have (adult) children but I’m separated from my wife. I would come here every year and she felt lonely so she took off. I didn’t bother and kept going. I have kids with another girlfriend, but she died. They live in New York.
I like the boss. I love the family. They are there for me. If I do something wrong, they will say, Shirley, you’re wrong. I can see that. So I try to do the things that are necessary.
Norm told me that he would put me on to somewhere else when he retires. If he wants to do that, I would appreciate it and take it.
I don’t think I’m ready to retire. I don’t know yet. It’s a way back. I see a lot more work and getting a lot more experience.
The favourite thing about Canada: I like the people. I have a couple friends around, especially in Parkhill and Thedford. It’s a nice country, very clean and cool. I get along with the people. That’s the reason I like Canada.
Me and Norm, we have our little ride to Kettle Point. He shows me around the beach. I like the place. The only difference is the water is cold. In Jamaica, the water is a little bit different because it’s salt water. At midnight you can go in the water, but here you can’t do that.
I love Jamaica. It’s my homeland. It’s a warm country; you don’t have winter. It’s a nice country. But I like Canada because coming here, the first time and working, it granted me a lot of opportunities and experience.
I just want to come and work and when it’s time to go, I go. To live here, well, if the opportunity came, I’d take it.

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