[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: a good piece about our new GG’s family

[Randolph Haluza-DeLay]

Catherine, do you know the source of this? It really is a fine essay about
Her Excellency.

Randy Haluza-DeLay
Toronto
Sent from tny screen thisbs

On Tue., Jul. 27, 2021, 10:29 a.m. Catherine Walther via Sundaycommunity, <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> I found this to be very interesting and thought you might too. Catherine
>
>
> Born in Kangirsualujuak (George River) in northern Quebec in 1947, *Governor
> General Mary Simon* spent much of her first 15 years moving with her
> family from camp to camp by dog team or canoe.
>
> *Mary Simon *is an Inuk from Kuujjuaq, a small hamlet on the coast of
> Ungava *Bay *in northeastern Quebec. She was born to a local Inuk woman
> Nancy and Manitoba-born Bob May, her* fur trader* *father who worked *at *Hudson's
> Bay, and was an outstanding person.*
> *Bob May: legend of the Eastern Arctic as Hudson Bay post manager by **Whit
> Fraser January 8, 2009 *
>
> *The *Hudson's Bay Company post manager was a legend of the Eastern
> Arctic. One of the last HBC apprentices, he went North at 17 and stayed
> there all his life, becoming a heroic figure among Inuit elders. He later
> founded a successful hunting and fishing camp
>
> Bob May was one of the last Hudson's Bay Co. boy apprentices. At 17, he
> left the comforts of the South to become, in the original wording of the
> company's 1670 royal charter, a "gentleman adventurer." He remained in the
> North for the rest of his life and is considered a hero among many Inuit
> elders in the Quebec Arctic.
>
> After leaving the HBC, he became an outfitter and was widely recognized
> for his contribution to tourism in northern Quebec. Visitors to Kuujjuaq,
> Que., formerly known as Fort Chimo, often stopped by hoping to hear
> adventures or view the huge trophy caribou antlers hanging on his walls. He
> was hospitable, but would remain first and foremost modest. For a man who
> once saved a community from starvation, he shared his good deeds and
> generosity only in the intimacy of his diaries – and sparse details, even
> then.
>
> The son of a park ranger, he was born in Manitoba's Riding Mountain
> National Park, where, as a boy, he so disliked his given name of Robert
> that he insisted on always being called Bob. He came by his wilderness
> interest willingly, however. His parents were both committed naturalists.
> His father, John May, was an entomologist who put together one of the
> world's most impressive collections of insects and butterflies. About 1930,
> he accompanied his parents on a long drive across the Prairies to spend a
> summer exploring the back country of Banff National Park on horseback and
> collecting mountain invertebrates.
>
> While he embraced his parents' values on nature, he was mesmerized by
> notions of the Arctic and the visions of adventure, mystery and exploration
> its vastness then suggested. No one was surprised when, at 17, he joined
> the Hudson's Bay Co. After spending 1935 training in northern Saskatchewan,
> he found himself on a ship bound for the company's mostly northerly
> outpost: Arctic Bay on northern Baffin Island. He arrived three months
> short of his 19th birthday.
>
> The HBC post contained the only permanent buildings in the community, as
> the Inuit lived a traditional hunting life in tents and igloos. Despite his
> age and being the only Qallunaq (white man) in the region, he accepted
> the responsibilities of trader, teacher, doctor and nurse.
>
> Mr. May quickly adapted to Inuit life, becoming fluent in Inuktitut and
> developing the skills necessary for Arctic survival and success. He hunted,
> trapped, handled dog teams, learned igloo building and, above all, embraced
> Inuit values and traditions.
>
> He became so skilled and dependable that the company once lent him out as
> a guide and interpreter for a McGill University research party. The team
> leader, Duncan Hodgson, later wrote to HBC officers (in the terminology of
> the day) to declare that "Bob May can out-Eskimo the Eskimo."
>
> For all that, disaster can occur at any time in the Arctic and he
> experienced a number of narrow escapes. In early winter, 1939, he and three
> Inuit hunters nearly perished when their small schooner was battered and
> tossed for 12 hours in a violent storm about 30 kilometres off the
> east coast of Hudson Bay. They lashed themselves to the deck and prayed the
> engine would continue running, as Bob later wrote in the Hudson's Bay Co.
> publication The Beaver.
>
> "The small engine room was constantly awash, and the bilge pump barely big
> enough to pump out the seawater that was constantly breaking across the
> deck," he said. "At one moment the craft was half submerged, but a moment
> later it was at the crest of wave where the wind would catch her and tilt
> us on a precarious angle."
>
> Almost miraculously, they saw the snow-covered cliffs of an island not 50
> metres away, and were able to steer the ship to an anchorage on the lee
> side.
>
> Two months later, May was hunting caribou with two Inuit friends and 10
> dogs some distance inland from the settlement of Puvirnituq on Hudson Bay.
> They had provisions for 14 days, but surprisingly, found no caribou. They
> ran out of food and were soon close to starvation. Bob was not well. His
> skin had broken out in painful boils and, fearing infection, it was decided
> that he would stay with the exhausted dogs while the others continued the
> hunt on foot.
>
> Left alone, his prospects seemed poor. The starving dogs had to be untied
> because they were eating their walrus-hide harness traces. Later, he spent
> half a day chopping through more than a metre of ice with a butcher knife
> in a desperate effort to hook a fish. The yield was one small trout. It
> was the "best meal he had ever had," he wrote.
>
> Three days later, four caribou came within range. Meat, at last. However,
> the dogs, hungry and loose, immediately tore after them. The caribou
> scattered and ran, and Mr. May managed to get off four shots. He brought
> down two, but had to fight off the ravenous dogs. Eventually, he prevailed
> and fed both himself and the huskies, storing the remainder of the meat
> under hefty snow blocks.
>
> The next day, one of his Inuit companions returned after walking about 15
> kilometres with meat and the news that they had shot seven caribou. With
> new provisions, and revived by food, they were able to undertake the return
> journey to Puvirnituq. Not once in his account did Mr. May mention
> the cold, which must have been about -35 Celsius with constant winds.
>
> Besides writing for The Beaver, he also kept a series of notebooks. His
> handwritten ledgers provide more than one account of long trips by canoe or
> dog team in severe conditions with the sick or injured. A number of times,
> he travelled hundreds of kilometres across Ungava Bay to get help at the
> old Fort Chimo airbase in what is now Kuujjuaq. In the early 1950s, he took
> an Inuit child suffering from appendicitis 230 kilometres by dog team
> across the Ungava Peninsula in bitter cold and heavy snow to rendezvous
> with a Royal Canadian Air Force crew. Reaching Fort Chimo, they were put
> aboard and flown to Halifax, where surgeons saved the boy's life.
>
> In Kangirsualujjuaq and Inukjuaq on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay, he
> is credited with saving entire communities. Elders there still recall how
> more than a half century ago, Mr. May provided rations when the population
> was facing starvation and illness. As manager of the company post, he had
> broken open the store's inventories of food.
>
> He also served as part of the military. As an original member of the
> Canadian Rangers, the Arctic militia unit
> established during the Second World War, he helped provide information on
> air or sea movements as well as weather observations. Northern weather
> information was vital for transatlantic military flights and he was
> officially rated as essential to the war effort.
>
> *Around that time, Mr. May fell in love with a beautiful young Inuit woman
> named Nancy*. Their first encounter had occurred years earlier, on one
> his first Arctic voyages, when his ship had stopped at Port Burwell on the
> northern tip of Quebec. Among the youngsters who greeted the visitors was a
> young girl whom he thought very striking. He offered what would have been a
> big treat in that time and place – a stick of gum.
>
> Several years later, he moved to the post at Kangirsualujjuaq, where he
> asked around for a reliable cook.
> Arrangements were made to hire Jeannie Annanak, and she arrived with her
> daughter. It was the same beautiful girl he had given the gum to so many
> years before. It was love at second sight.
>
> At the time, HBC rules forbade employees from marrying Inuit, but he was
> defiant. Mr. May stood his ground and said he would marry Nancy or quit. He
> got his way and, over the years, they lived at a series of HBC posts in the
> Eastern Arctic, all the while raising eight children.
>
> Life could be dangerous, even for the family of an HBC manager. Twice, Mr.
> May had to cross Ungava Bay by boat to save the lives of his own children.
>
> In 1950, four-year-old Johnny developed a severe infection from a
> dislocated shoulder. The crossing took two days through early winter ice,
> in a small fishing boat with a single-cylinder engine. Reaching the other
> side, they found a U.S. Air Force plane that rushed the boy first to
> Goose Bay, Labrador, and then to Montreal for surgery.
>
> *In 1959, his oldest daughter, Mary, was hit in the jaw by ricocheting
> shotgun pellets. Mr. May bundled her in*
> *blankets, placed her in the bow of a canoe powered by a small outboard
> motor and again set off across Ungava Bay in* *rough water and stiff
> winds. The trip to the hospital at Kuujjuaq took 11 hours. Mary was given
> immediate attention* *and soon fully recovered.*
>
> All the while, Mr. May hunted and trapped to supplement the family larder.
> His diaries concentrate mostly on insights into daily life and record such
> events as the freeze and breakup of the George River each season between
> 1943 and 1953. He also jotted down the number and species of
> animals trapped or shot to feed the family and his sled dogs: "153 seals;
> 96 caribou and more than 5,000 ptarmigan." He paid careful attention to
> weather, and noted whether the children played outdoors. Generally, they
> did – even at -30.
>
> Most of his accounts were brief: "Shot three seals – three foxes in the
> traps ... new addition to the family – a girl. Nancy is fine."
>
> Eventually, however, the HBC sought to transfer the family south into what
> Mr. May called "Indian country," which he knew would not be the life for
> Nancy. He decided to leave the company, although the parting was on
> excellent terms.
>
> All at once, he had to find some other way to support his family. By then
> it was the early 1960s, and demand had developed for tourist outfitters and
> facilities. The Mays built Pyramid Mountain Fishing and Hunting Camp about
> 150 kilometres upstream from Ungava Bay on the spectacular George River.
>
> Beginning in the spring of 1960, the family spent a year in the bush
> living on their land and preparing the lodge. Mr. May built a small log
> cabin for Nancy, himself and the younger children. The older children and
> their grandmother lived alongside in a tent.
>
> It was a lonely Christmas that year, "so far away from civilization that
> even Santa couldn't find us," daughter Mary recalled. Christmas morning
> arrived without presents, but her father strangely insisted on going out
> about once an hour to walk in a big circle on the frozen river.
>
> Finally, around noon, he said: "Listen, do you hear it?" They rushed
> outside in the cold and looked skyward to see a small single-engine bush
> plane. It circled and then landed. To the children's joy and surprise, the
> pilot was Phil LaRiviere, an old family friend. He stepped out of the plane
> laden with presents, fresh oranges and candy for all. Mr. May had made the
> arrangements months earlier; his hourly treks in the snow were to show his
> friend where to land.
>
> In the 1950s and 1960s, schooling presented unique northern challenges for
> the Mays. At one point, they moved the family to Kuujjuaq so that the
> children could attend primary school. Beyond Grade 7, however, there were
> only boarding schools and, because he was white, the government
> excluded his children from the education system of the day – the
> now-controversial residential schools.
>
> Instead, the Mays relied on home schooling and correspondence courses.
> Although money was tight, Mr. May
> managed to send each child to high school in Colorado for one or two
> years. His parents had relocated there with their insect collection in the
> 1940s and opened the May Natural History Museum, which is still a major
> attraction in Colorado Springs.
>
> Through the years, the Mays instilled both Inuit and Qallunaq cultures
> into the children. He always spoke English to them; Nancy spoke only
> Inuktitut. Occasions were always observed in the proper cultural context.
> Thanksgiving and Christmas were turkey dinners, with all proper
> etiquette honoured. Inuit traditions, such as eating a seal – correct only
> when done sitting on the floor – were equally respected.
>
> The children all became successful in their own fields. Johnny and Billy
> are well-known bush pilots. Peter is a
> biological technician, guide and businessman. Bobby is a video producer
> and director. Madge Pomerleau is the
> executive director of the regional hospital in Kuujjuaq. Sarah Tagoona is
> executive director of the women's shelter in Kuujjuaq. Annie Probert is a
> consultant and former executive director of the regional school board in
> northern Quebec. And oldest daughter Mary Simon is a former
> Canadian ambassador to Denmark and current president of Inuit Tapiiriit
> Kanatami, the national organization representing Inuit people.
>
> *By 2002, Pyramid Mountain had become a thriving concern* and the Mays
> decided to turn it over to Peter. They retired to Kuujjuaq where Nancy
> became ill and died the following year.
>
> Characteristically, Mr. May carried on alone. Until he was hospitalized a
> year ago after losing the use of his legs, he was still working on his
> woodpile – if only with the aid of a walker.
>
> In Inuit terminology, he was a Qallunaq, yet the preachers who said his
> deathbed prayer and presided over his funeral spoke only in Inuktitut, the
> language of the Inuit.
>
> *BOB MAY OBITUARY*
>
> *Robert Mardon May was born Sept. 7, 1918, in Sandy Lake, Man. He died
> Nov. 11, 2008, in Kuujjuaq, Que. He was 90. He*
> *is survived by daughters Madge, Sarah, Annie and Mary, and by sons
> Johnny, Billy, Bobby and Peter. He also leaves 94* *grandchildren, 49
> great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. He was predeceased
> by his wife, Nancy, who died in March, 2003.*
>
>
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