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

Wed Jul 28 08:32:02 PDT 2021

Thank you Catherine, I wonder how our Prime Minister will handle another
strong, independent, truly progressive thinking Indigenous woman who will
likely challenge him as did Jody Wilson-Rayboult?  I pray for her success!

Greg

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 5:46 PM Randolph Haluza-DeLay via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> 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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