It’s been about a week since we arrived in Canada, and things are just starting to settle down a bit, including the kids. (Except that as I write this we are being attacked by Nerf darts.) Traveling We survived the drive remarkably well. We left Pennsylvania at 5 am Saturday the 3rd of July and…
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One of the questions we are asked most when we share our plans is, “what about your kids?” Sometimes the question seems to go deeper than “what about school?” or “do they want to go?” Sometimes it sounds more like, “why would you take your family THERE?” To which we would say, “what about…
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This painting, which shares its name with a book by Tanya Talaga, is by the Ojibwe artist Christian Morrisseau. His son Kyle is among the Seven Fallen Feathers, seven indigenous high school students who lost their lives in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011. The public schools in many remote communities do not go past…
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Last night I stood in the basement, organizing things and deciding what to keep. I looked around at the room that had at one time been finished (probably in the 60’s) and thought about how we’re leaving and we would not have the chance to finish so many house projects that we had started…
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When Mennonite missionaries began reaching out into First Nation communities in the 1950s, Red Lake was the literal end of the road. There were trails to northern communities but no roads. Float planes were often used for transportation. Today, some places have all weather roads while some are only connected by ice roads for about…
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