Ancestral Waters by Waubgeshig Rice
Excerpt from Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography (Forthcoming from Wolsak & Wynn)
Before I learned to walk, I floated in the cool waters of Georgian Bay under a brilliant sun in the summer heat. Adults and teenaged relatives took turns holding me up, keeping me buoyant with my head above water and my chubby infant legs kicking. My grandmothers also often took turns immersing me in the ancestral bay, sometimes at beaches and inlets on opposite shores. They were remarkable women with two very different backgrounds, but they were bound by their love for the water and for us, their grandchildren. Their illustrious hearts beat along with the lapping waves against the shoreline. The soothing rhythm reverberates in my own heart, even though they’re no longer here.
My paternal grandmother, Aileen Rice, was born in Wasauksing First Nation and spent her entire life in the Anishinaabe community. It’s a large rocky and green island on Georgian Bay, adjacent to Parry Sound, Ontario. We called her Grandma, or Nokomis. My maternal grandmother, Ruth Shipman, grew up in Kapuskasing, Ontario, and she and my grandfather moved their family to Parry Sound when my mother was a teen. We called her Grannie. Both women were beautiful and radiant constants in our lives. As formidable matriarchs, they raised us all to be kind and respectful to others, and to the land and water around us.
Their spirited legacies flow through our blood and in the currents and waves of Georgian Bay. They each died of natural causes less than a year apart. My Grannie, my mom’s mom, died in June 2017, as the summer was about to get underway. She was ninety-two. My Grandma, my dad’s mom, died the following February, at the peak of winter. She was about to turn eighty-seven. The water warmed for one’s journey and froze over for the other’s. The duality of their deaths was emblematic of their lives and the disparate communities from which they came: an Indigenous woman from the rez and a white woman from town.
Losing both of my grandmothers in such a short time was devastating. It took me a long time to properly grieve their deaths. To many, a grandmother is larger than life; a family’s grand matriarch who leads and holds everything together. I was fortunate to have two such powerful women as influential forces in my life. They taught me almost everything — from how to swim to how to love. Most importantly, they instilled in me the strongest sense of family and those around me, all connected to the land and water that nurtured us.
Their paths ran parallel in almost opposite realms, and finally intersected when my parents got together. It was a bond that became stronger upon my arrival in this world. Both families grew close thanks to celebrations and gatherings in homes on the rez and in town. My cousins on either side began calling each other cousins. Love transcended cultural, racial and socioeconomic differences because of the example set by these two powerful matriarchs. Our families regularly gathered near the summer waters of Georgian Bay, marking birthdays and other special occasions, and often just the joy of the season. Summers at either grandmother’s beach are some of my fondest memories.
As soon as the weather warmed, my Grandma stayed in a cabin near a beach on the reserve in what’s known as “Waubgeshig’s Cove” – a tiny inlet named after her father (whose name I’ve come proudly to bear). It’s where her parents took her and her ten siblings in the summertime beginning in the 1920s. She kept that family connection alive as her own children, including my father, grew up in the Anishinaabe way. It was her favourite place. She cherished the black sand of the beach and large rocks that bookended it. She revered the large pine, oak and birch trees that sheltered the beach and her cabin. She could proudly trace her lineage deep into the mainland, across the water in what is now the town of Parry Sound.
Around the point, to the east of my Grandma’s beach and across the water on the mainland, my Grannie had her own Georgian Bay refuge. They moved to the area in the early 1970s because my grandfather had bought a marina on the outskirts of Parry Sound. They eventually put a trailer on the far side of the property, where a tiny beach was similarly nestled between big grey rocks under a thick canopy of trees. She stayed there all summer long every year. It was her own favourite place. Georgian Bay wasn’t originally a part of her family’s heritage, but she made it so.
Although they shared a similar passion for the water, my grandmothers came to be on Georgian Bay via quite contrasting courses. One was born just steps from the shore, speaking a language that long predated the formation of the society eventually imposed upon her family and community. It was a ruling order that forbade that language and traditional way of life in violent ways. The other came to the area following an opportunity to plant roots in hopes of enabling subsequent generations to thrive. The water separated them physically: Grandma on the island reserve and Grannie in town. But love and dedication to family brought them together. It’s a nurturing spirit of home and kin that’s pulsed through the bay itself for millennia.
Among many of the Anishinaabeg who’ve lived on and near its shores for innumerable generations, Georgian Bay is known as “Manidoo gaming,” or “spirit lake.” It was always considered a very powerful and spiritual body of water. Tales of epic migrations, historic gatherings and ethereal phenomena connected to Manidoo gaming have echoed through Anishinaabe history. I’ve been fortunate to hear some of these stories since I was a child. They’ve connected me to the land and water in the most profound ways, bolstering the pride that was already in my DNA. My Grandma always made sure to nurture that. So did my Grannie.
The ancestral waters are still revered by the communities that currently surround them, albeit in different ways due to varying histories. The people who traditionally traversed the shorelines and paddled the inlets and open bay were forced onto smaller pockets of so-called “reserved” land by the authorities who created what is now known as Canada. The European descendants who settled towns around the bay were then able to exploit the land’s natural resources and sustain viable, thriving communities. Meanwhile, across the bay, the Anishinaabeg struggled as their traditional way of life withered. It took a long time for our community to reconnect with the medicine of the old ways, but now many people are on a path to healing.
Our families walked together on that path. Our grandmothers led the way. They cared deeply for one another until the end, each asking regularly about her counterpart when the tolls of old age rendered in-person visits impossible. Theirs was a living example of wholesome and respectful relationship-building that the ruling orders, and society in general, have long failed to accomplish or neglected outright. It’s a journey that continues even though both of them have left us.
But the lapping waves on the shores will echo their beating hearts for as long as we’re around to hear the water’s rhythmic pulse along the sand and rocks. Their spirits are in the water and in us. My grandmothers made sure we had a place in this historic and beautiful territory. We honour them by thriving here, and protecting what’s been passed down since time immemorial. The grief lingers, but softens with each freeze-up and thaw of the mighty Georgian Bay. That initial sorrow has made way for celebration and pride. My grandmothers have never left. We swim in their ancestral waters, safe in their embrace.
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, was inspired by his experiences growing up in an Anishinaabe community, and won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014. A French translation of Legacy was published in 2017. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in 2018 and quickly became a bestseller. He presently lives in Sudbury, Ontario, with his wife and son, where he works as the host of CBC Radio’s Up North afternoon program.