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

Wed Jul 28 10:05:08 PDT 2021

Indeed!

On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 11:32 AM Mr. Gillis via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> 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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