Moose Meat

We went to Fort Mackay about a week and a half ago and stayed with Edward and Celina, people that Macdonald met at a water conference a few weeks ago. They are the most hospitable, most authentic people that I’ve met in a long time. Members of the community of elders here in town, and married forty years, they both grew up in the bush and were raised strictly observing the traditional ways of their communities, from trapping, to cooking, to sewing. They are sad to see respect and discipline dissipating with the younger native generation. They told us countless stories of the past, from Edward’s fifty years of back-breaking work for the oil companies to Celina’s pro-cooking days, when she cooked for 200+ hungry oil-workers, or the years when she worked as a community health nurse. They’ve told us stories of their own personal hardships and life tragedies, from the deaths of loved ones to surviving days of extreme poverty. It’s not hard to see from their faces and mannerisms the paths along which their experience turned to resourcefulness, frugality, and open-hearted honesty.

They’re both opposed to the tar sands operations that surround their community. Celina talked about how, in her 27 years as a community health nurse, she never saw the rate of sickness, namely cancer, that she’s been witness to in recent years. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. Person after person that she knows, most of them in their thirties or forties, are dying of cancer. She attributes the apparently dramatic increase of carcinogenic matter to the Syncrude and Suncor plants that, side by side, stifle the Athabasca so close to her home. While talking me through a stack of photos of friends and family members, she was able to point out a person who had passed on in nearly every one, most often a young person, most often of cancer.

We went for a ride on the river with Edward’s prized possession: his mighty jet boat. His son Murray and Murray’s girlfriend Janet came along as well. We rode along the river all the way from Fort Mackay to Fort McMurray and got a real clear view of the same operation that we’d seen just a day before from above. As Dru has pointed out, this entire experience (seeing the tar sands up- close, first hand, and from various vantage points, as well as talking to people implicated in the tar sands operation in any number of ways) is a paradox of the highest order. Macdonald commented, post boat-trip, on the absolute feel of death and darkness that our little trek down the river had imbued him with. And yet, despite the fact that the more knowledge I accrue, the more I’m convinced that the tar sands operation is undoubtedly a counter-approach to all things living, I still can’t help but take note of the breadth of life around me. Floating past the intakes that suck water from the river, the smoke stacks, the constant flaring, and the over-sized machinery, I couldn’t ignore the gorgeous day, the eagle’s nest, or the company of the people around me, most of who see things similarly. Some members of the native population here at Fort Mackay hold the opinion that their community was worse off before the tar sands plants, on account of the money that’s come into their lives (a small number of people with power being paid off by companies, jobs for many others). What I’m learning the most about is the complexity of the issues; expressing absolutes kills dialogue. On the other hand, it’s important to know where you stand on the issues. So far, I know that my rejection of the tar sands is a guttural one; it is not something I need to weigh.

On the second morning spent at Edward and Celina’s we woke up to find that we had slept in, that it was past noon. Despite the fact that our hosts themselves were up most days till 1 or 2 in the morning, they are consistently up at 7, or rather, Celina is, making breakfast. This morning though, or afternoon, rather, Murray and Janet had prepared moose meat, a treat, for our benefit. Macdonald, a self-proclaimed moose meat fiend, was happy, but confessed that he found it a bit heavy to start the day. That’s exactly what it was: delicious, nourishing, thanks-inducing, and yet heavy as a hammer first thing in the morning. By far the most fitting meal we’ve had this trip: our hosts were no strangers to personal loss and hard work in spite of that loss. Their hospitality felt undeserved at moments, but they held no reservations and did not hesitate to ask for help with minor chores, nor did they hold back tears or the sharp edges of their stories. I left feeling heavy, but full of thanks.