Mikmaw Myths & Canadian Lore Transcript

Kate Jaimet
Welcome to Canada’s History Stories Behind the History Podcast. I’m Kate Jaimet, senior editor of Canada’s History magazine. And in this podcast, we take a deeper look at some of the stories in our award-winning print publication in our December 2023 issue. Amir Aziz takes a dive into the supernatural with spooky stories of myths and monsters from across Canada. Amir is a writer based in Toronto whose work has also appeared in The Walrus and in Asparagus magazine. Amir, welcome to the podcast.

00:00:35:21 – 00:00:37:15
Amir Aziz
Thank you so much for having me here, Kate.

00:00:38:00 – 00:00:50:14
Kate
And I’d also like to welcome Julie Pellissier-Lush. Julie is a Mi’kmaq poet, author, actor and storyteller, and she’s here to share some of my legends with us today. Julie, welcome to the podcast.

00:00:50:16 – 00:00:53:13
Julie Pellissier-Lush
Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be fun.

00:00:53:22 – 00:01:09:26
Kate
Yes, it is. And it is already as we record this heading toward winter, the leaves are changing here in Ottawa. Summer is waving goodbye. The nights are getting longer. Julie, this is the time for storytelling, right?

00:01:10:15 – 00:01:20:01
Julie 
It definitely is a time where we gather by the fire at night and entertain ourselves and pass on our history and culture through the use of storytelling.

00:01:20:18 – 00:01:25:11
Kate
And, you know, a lot of Mi'kmaw stories, so why don’t you just start us off with one and tell us a story?

00:01:25:29 – 00:01:51:08
Julie 
All right. Well, we’ll start with a story that is a little bit creepier than most, but I love it just as well. But this is the story of a beautiful young maiden who lived with her mother and father. And in that same village, there was a magician. Now, that is the current name for it, but he would have been a healer at some point in time.

But he learned some of the darker arts and decided that, you know, he would learn a little bit more. And he fell in love with that beautiful young maiden. And he went to her. He went to go in and talk to her and try to woo her and get her to agree to marry him. But she did not want anything to do with them.

She had heard the whispers and rumours. That is, his healing. Talents are slowly turning dark and it scared her. So she dismissed him and went back to her lodge with their parents. Now he was so angry. Everybody in the community had looked up to him. Everybody in the community had gone to him when he was in need, when they were in need, and he knew that he should have a position of somewhat of more authority and should be able to find the love that he wanted in his own community.

So this made him really angry. He decided to go out and use some of those dark arts that he had been looking for. And when he went out, he found the horrendous plant that created horrible things to the Mi’kmaq people. So he collected it, gathered it, dried it, and added it into a tea and he left it by her house.

And so she went to thinking her mother and father had made her a tea. So she drank this tea down and very soon her heart started to harden. She could feel her body going chill inside, and she knew that she was changing into something that wasn’t human anymore. And of course, the magician and the one who was a past healer watched in horror that what he was creating because her her hair started to fall out, her teeth started to followed, chunks of skin started to fall off of her. 

And within this whole process, she was crying and her parents came back and held her and they realized that, you know, they were going to have to let her go before she transformed completely into this creature. And they didn’t know how to fix it, but the magician magician was at least had enough heart for her left to tell the parents that the only way that they could end this creature’s life that she was becoming was to shoot seven arrows into her heart. 

And she begged her parents to do this. And they did. And then after they had to take the heart out, and it was a big chunk of ice, and they had to put that heart into a fire that would go on for seven days and then finally the heart would melt and disintegrate. And that was the only way she was released from that horrible, horrible curse that was changing her into what would later be called the chimney, because the knew soon evolved and transformed because of that very first curse, it started to spread. 

People heard about this plant and they started to cultivate it for when they had an anger or issue with somebody. So there was more chimneys that were created after this whole story took place.

00:05:26:15 – 00:05:50:12
Kate
Well, that is a wonderful story and very creepy. I would like to talk more about it and more of it, more Mi’kmaqs stories that maybe a mirror. I wonder if you could tell me when I asked you to write about this for Canada’s History, you were very enthusiastic. And it turned out you told me that you have been fascinated with spooky, scary stories for quite a long time. 

So can you either tell me, either tell us a story or tell us about why you’re fascinated with them? And what’s what is it that holds these stories for you?

00:06:01:11 – 00:06:21:10
Amir 
I can do both, but let’s do it the do it in the reverse direction. So I do have a story for us today that did not make it into the article because it’s not related to a being or a figure per se, but rather it’s a grizzly, urban legend about a lighthouse in the Toronto area and why you might not want to hang around that lighthouse for too long. 

So Toronto, of course, sits on the shores of Lake Ontario. But that city is girded by about 15 little islands that kind of make a crescent shape around the city. You could say that the islands shield the city from the larger world, or maybe they shield the larger world from Toronto. You know, who knows? However you want to put it, the largest one of these islands is Center Island, and it’s a nice place to go. 

You’ve got ride some bike trails. There’s a clothing optional beach if you’re into that sort of thing. And there’s also a lighthouse on the southern edge of the island. That’s a place called Gibraltar Point. And this lighthouse was constructed in 1809, to my knowledge, and it’s one of the oldest buildings in the city. So every lighthouse has a keeper. 

And this lighthouse is first keeper was a gentleman named John Paul Radelmueller is, I believe, how you pronounce it from the German. So Radelmueller allegedly kept a stock of bootlegged beer on the premises, which he sold to soldiers garrisoned at Fort York. That’s a military fortification on the mainland, but a five minute ferry ride over, it’s still there to this day. 

You can go see it if you like. So for years, soldiers at Fort York would row out to the island and meet up with Radelmueller to purchase his beer. However, one night, a group of soldiers partying on the island with their with their bootleg beer accused Radelmueller of watering down his product. A drunken fight occurred and in the brawl, the soldiers accidentally killed him. 

So sobering up, they decided to hide their crime by chopping his body to pieces and scattering it around the lighthouse. They then rode back to the fort, keeping that terrible secret in their hearts. Now, the second lighthouse keeper might have been the one to actually figure out that it had been an actual murder and that this first lighthouse keeper, Radelmueller, had and just up and left, because allegedly, according to the legend, the second lighthouse keeper arrives. 

He’s new on the job. And as he’s walking around his his new lighthouse, he finds a piece of human jawbone. And that is why, to this day, according to the legend, the other pieces of Radelmueller are still out there. And if you hang around too long, you might be the unfortunate person who finds another bit of.

00:08:36:12 – 00:09:13:12
Kate
Amir that is so gruesome. And I love it. Okay. Before we talk about stories in general, I want to tell you something that happened to me. And this is a true story. It happened in Lake Superior. So there is a legend that in Lake Superior there is a great lynx, which I believe the Ojibwe call michi passu and that this great lynx monster lives in the depths of Lake Superior and it can exert its influence even if you don’t see it. 

So it’s not necessarily that it’s going to come up and attack you per say, but it’s very powerful. And I think it’s possible that I might have had an encounter with Mishipeshu. So I’ll tell you this story, and this is a true story. I was doing a kayaking trip on Lake Superior and it was on a string of islands that were off shore. 

So we had to actually take a motorboat for about half an hour offshore. So it’s quite a ways to get out to these islands. And then we were paddling from one island to the other all along this string of islands. And when you’re out on Lake Superior there where we were, there’s not like a lot of boat traffic, there’s not a lot of people around. 

So we were just completely on our own. And so at one point, it was getting toward the late afternoon, and we had finished paddling along one island and we had to cross over this open water, about a kilometre of open water, to get to the next island, which is where we were going to camp that night. So we were doing pretty well. 

So we start paddling, we start having and all of a sudden there’s a sound behind us coming up from behind where we’re paddling toward. And it sounds like galloping horses like that. It sounds like this herd of horses galloping towards you. And the sky is kind of getting a bit darker. And I look around and all of a sudden this big rain squall just comes right over us, comes right over us and gallops off into the distance.- 

Just a rain squall out of nowhere. So that was that was kind of creepy. But, you know, it’s nature. Rain squalls can happen. So we keep paddling along and then all of a sudden the water starts getting bigger, like there was already waves. I mean, it’s Lake Superior, but suddenly they’re rolling and suddenly they’re huge. And suddenly you’re on these big swells and your kayaks are going up and down and up and down. 

And it’s a little bit, you know, hairy and you’re just making sure, okay, we don’t want to tip or anything because Lake Superior is very cold and you can get hypothermia. And we were not wearing wetsuits and it was still quite a distance to this other island. Now we’re in between these two islands, so we’re just managing this with these rolling swells and everything and just focusing on heading forward. 

And then all of a sudden the fog starts to roll in. And the island that’s still about, you know, quite a fair distance away disappears, can’t see it, can’t see anything. The fog is closing in and we’re trying to stay close together because we’re you can barely see beyond the tip of your boat here that these are maybe 17 foot kayaks. 

And it’s like there’s just nothing. There’s just nothing. You can’t see anything. It’s completely fogged in. So we cannot see where we’re going. And Mike, who I’m paddling with, has a GPS, so he goes, Well, don’t worry, we’ve got this GPS, we just have to follow the GPS and we’re going to be fine. We’re going to get there. 

And all of a sudden, okay, I’m not lying. This G.P.S. starts malfunctioning, and the arrow that’s pointing where we’re supposed to go is like when first it’s pointing straight ahead, then suddenly it starts pointing to the right, then suddenly it starts pointing to the left, and suddenly it starts pointing behind us. And we’re just realizing we can’t follow this GPS. 

It’s going to just spin us in circles, right? If we try to follow this and we cannot see the island and this is Lake Superior, right? And if you go out and you miss this island, you could be going. You could just keep on going. Right. And this is where you start to hear The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald like playing in your head. 

Right. So, Mike, Mike was a really experienced paddler and he had been a field biologist with the Ministry of Natural Resources, very resourceful guy, tons of experience. So he pulls out a compass and he goes, okay, the GPS isn’t working, but we can follow a compass line. And because he was a very experienced paddler, he had actually taken a compass reading before we left the previous island. 

So he knew the bearing that we needed to go to to get to this next island. So he he sets the compass line and we are literally blindly paddling through the fog on this compass line, hoping that it is going to get us to this island, because if it doesn’t, we could literally be going out into Lake Superior and we paddled and paddled and it felt like an hour, but it probably wasn’t that long.
And then gradually out of this fog, you start seeing the outline of trees and of rocks and of shoreline and yeah, huge sense of relief and gratitude when the kayaks pull up on this pebbled shore of this island. And Mike, we pull up the kayaks and Mike pulls out this pouch of tobacco and he sprinkles it on the sprinkles tobacco on the water. 

And I say, Mike, what should you do? What are you doing, Mike? And he says, We’re thanking the spirit of Lake Superior that we got here safely. Yeah. And that was one of the most nerve wracking times of my life ever. So was it nature or was it an Mishipeshu? I don’t really know what now.

Amir 
I’m sure you were not in a hurry to get back on that kayak.

Kate
Oh, my gosh. We just wanted to clear up, you know, like, just take Camp Hope.

Amir 
The next day. You’re here now. Like.

Kate
It was scary, but you know what? It made me think, and maybe we could talk about this. You know, where we’re as we’re talking at the campfire later on and Mike says, you know, when you’re out here and the forces of nature are so great and you really don’t have technology, you don’t have electric light, you don’t have you know, you’re all on your own in these great forces of nature.

You can see how beliefs and spirits and beliefs in creatures and beliefs and the supernatural really can just really seem so, so real to you at that time. And I wonder, it made me feel like this is maybe why we have these old, old legends. They come from that kind of a place. Julie I don’t know. What do you what do you think about where these legends come from and the forces of nature?

Julie 
Oh, my goodness. We are so connected. And I know I have so many stories that I have friends of mine who study our legends, who study our stories, and they find the kernel of truth that is being passed down from generation to generation. And because that’s how we connected who we were to who we are through our stories, they they give us warnings.

They give us our creation stories, how things all came to be. They gave us we used to believe in ourselves, even when things were where we’re desolate and they give us ways to save ourselves when we’re on waterways that are usually quite familiar and safe. And those stories are passed down to protect us and to help us and to help us make sure that our generations will continue to thrive.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I have a one that isn’t quite a creation story, but it’s why things are the way they are, which is sort of a creation story, because that’s how it comes to be. But it starts off with a little real story which happened probably about 30 years ago over in Cape Breton. They found a wax cylinder and nobody really knew what to do with it.

And it was in the it was in around the Indigenous community. So they gave it to them and they found a machine that could play, said wax cylinder. And on that cylinder they discovered that there is about 26 enigma chants that had been recorded in the late 1800s and they had to figure out the pace of which to play this machine, because if they play it too fast, you sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, and if you play it too slow, they sound really it’s not the same.

So they had to figure out the tempo and then they had to figure out some of the really old big mud that had been recorded on these rock cylinders. So one of the elders that had been working with it and translating, he found one of the songs and he literally fell in love with it. And he called it the Mi’kmaw Love Song because when he heard it, he felt a rhythm in there that that encompassed so much of who we were.

And in his mind, I as he heard it, he envisioned a handsome, brave, gliding in a canoe and paddling and singing the song out into the universe, looking for love. Because when a young man comes of age, they have to start deciding who they want to spend the rest of their life with. And so this song, The Elder I talked to, said it reminded him of those traditions.

So he thought in his mind’s eye, that is this song was playing, that it was an elder or a young person singing and calling it for love and hoping that somebody on the shore would sing it back and they would start dating. And then after a year of courtship and proving that they would not die if they got married because one had to hunt and one had to cook, and without those two skills, they would die.

So they had to prove that they would be able to survive together. Then they would be married and they would sing the third verse. Now the song goes like this My heart. I know that it was my leg. Now me the way down my tongue. I know. And then hopefully somebody on the shore or somebody nearby would sing that song back and you start their courtship.

Now, that was a story that has a newer version, but in one of the older stories called The Boy and the Whale, it starts off with an older couple that never, ever been blessed with children. And that’s okay. They had each other, they loved each other. They woke up to each other every day. They went to bed with each other every day.

And they were so deeply in love and so connected that they lived their whole lives together without even missing having a child or children. So every every season they would go around the different parts of P.E.I., they they would go and collect walrus at one pirate and they would collect eel, one pirate, and they would collect the berries that they needed to have for the winter.

And another part. So they traveled all the way around here, there and everywhere together. But after many, many years, age started to catch up and the old man started to cripple up a little bit. And the old woman started to lose her eyesight. And together they hobbled through the woods to to keep going through their migration pattern. And they had to make a lot of sacrifice because a lot of times when they were hunting, the husband couldn’t catch the food.

And a lot of times the woman wouldn’t be able to see how to cook it. And so the food would be destroyed. So between the two of them, they were hungry very, very often. But spring came to this beautiful land of Nick Magee, and it was time for them to go to the shore where they could dig clams.

And as most people know, clams have a hard time running away. So the couple was guaranteed to have an amazing feed of clams. So they started digging, and as they were digging, they could hear a noise. It sounded like a loud howling. And they looked at the shore and down the shore and there’s nobody else on their shore.

They heard it again. But this time, when they heard it, it was coming from under the ground. So they moved all the sand as fast as they could, and there was a wooden box buried under the ground. So they pulled the box up and they opened up the box. And inside the box was a beautiful, healthy, giggling, smiling little baby boy.

Oh, wow. A baby. They both thought that neither one of them would be able to take care of a baby. They were far too old and they weren’t able to go and and hunt and fish and provide for this baby. But knowing that there was nobody else there, they knew it was their prerogative to go and look after this baby.

So they committed to that baby. They said they would sacrifice even more to make sure that that boy that did grow up to be the man that the creator intended him to be, that the creator, I think, heard this commitment they made and sprinkled a little magic onto this story. And that baby started to grow. And within a week that young baby was looked like he was 15 years old.

He could hunt, he could fish and the trap, and he could bring food to his mother and father. And they loved each other. So dearly. Now, one day the boy came running into the lodge and said, Mother, father, I have caught a whale. And they raced down to the shore with them, but they could only see a great big pile of oysters.

So they took out their bone knife and started to crack them open. Now, mother, as she was eating them, felt really funny in her stomach. So it made her giggle and she got up and she started to dance around this huge pile of oysters. And soon enough they looked at the shore and one of those oysters started to grow and grow and grow.

And pretty soon he was the size of a whale. Now, mother and father knew that they would have enough food for the whole winter long, and that made them so happy. And of course, the son was getting to that age where it was time for him to start looking for love and knowing that his mother and father would be looked after.

He started off on his own adventure, promising to return as soon as he can. So off they went and they made their winter camp. And very soon, sadly, the mother in the middle of winter passed away in her sleep with the father all alone for the very first time and forever devastated him. But he knew the protocols, so he wrapped her body in beaver pelts and tied it with mother string and then wrapped it again in birch.

But now the ground was too hard for him to bury his beautiful wife. So he found a cave. They slid her body in and covered the most of the cave with the rocks, and nothing would disturb her through the winter. And he continued on his migration pattern all by himself and within a twinkle of an eye. It was time for him to get back to his winter lodge.

So he raced to the cave. He moved the rock, he pulled her body out, and in the story it says he ended the leather wraps, he ended the beaver pelts, and he pulled them away to look with this big smile at the beautiful face that he had missed all winter long. And then he buried her after singing this song, 

[Julie sings Mi’kmaw song] 

And I’m sure in the spirit world she answered him: 

[Julie sings Mi’kmaw song]

Now, the elders have told me that this story is one of the deeper stories, because here in Mi’kimaki, we were here with Acadian partners, our allies, and we created a story that would represent the sacrifices that the make my people made to create an ally with the Acadians.

Because the Acadians were just like that little baby when they first came here to Mi’kimaki. They didn’t know how hard the winters would be. They didn’t know what foods were safe to eat. And we looked after them like we would a small child. We took care of them, and in return they grew and got stronger very, very fast. And they helped us and we created a partnership that lasts even to this day, too.

00:27:02:05 – 00:27:28:29
Kate
I could sit here and listen to you for hours. That was beautiful. That was really beautiful. It’s really beautiful. I love the way your stories connect, you know, your history and your people’s history and and to Canadian history and to other people’s history. It’s beautiful. Amir, when you look into stories, for Julie, it’s, you know, connecting to history for you; what is the fascination of these stories and tales?

00:27:33:23 – 00:27:55:03
Amir 
Well, I think Julie already said it best, but I’ll try to repeat what she said in my own if my own words, if that’s okay. Is that I feel like stories of the original human technology, aren’t they? Like they are the, they’re the tools that we use and they have an infinite set of uses in the relation to our own being human. 

That makes, it also makes them complicated to talk about because unlike a hammer, screwdriver, iPhone, a story is never just one thing, right? A scary story or any story at all. Like it can be used to enforce a community norm for one of the reasons that I love the story so much as Julie, correct me if I’m wrong, but to me I feel like that explores the horror not just of of this monster that can come and eat you, but about what the human being is capable of when they are. 

Keep everything up here. But they missed the real human element, which is which is what we keep over here, isn’t it? And there is more and there’s more beyond that, right? Like there’s also a I think I referenced stories like the wriggle crew and the chef’s gallery, if that’s in the article, which can you can kind of view those stories as an attempt to bring two communities together and to say through our stories, we are one people now. 

And what interests me about scary stories, because I think that this is where it pops up the most, is that they try to explain or make sense of or reconcile the unknown, because I believe that something that we don’t understand as a species is somehow more scary to us than an actual existential threat.

00:29:19:28 – 00:29:42:12
Kate
I love it because I love these stories and I love listening to Julie because I spend my life immersed in journalism. Right. Which is fact, fact checking, fact checking. Fact checking has to be logical, has to make sense, you know. But these stories don’t write like all of a sudden there’s a sound and you dig up the sand and there’s a baby buried in a box. 

Like there’s this miraculous stuff that happens. Right? And I think for me, especially with the world becoming so technologically advanced, if sometimes I feel like I wish I could, especially when I’m going canoe camping, that says something for me. I wish I could strip away all the technology, all the built environment, all the the gadgets and the electronics and everything. 

And just is it there’s something essential that’s there, you know, in nature. And that’s I have that feeling myself. And then when I hear these stories, I feel like there’s they’re talking about something primordial, all right. Like something essential in nature that’s there. And and that can still that we don’t know. Right. Is still unknown to us. For me, that’s a big attraction.

00:30:33:18 – 00:30:42:00
Amir 
And if I could interject, Kate, one could also argue that, like when you’re pondering that or pondering the difference between fact and reality, because you know, which.

00:30:44:00 – 00:31:06:03
Kate
It’s true, you know. Okay. And I love the story of the Toronto tunnel monsters. And maybe I’m going to get you to tell that story. I mean, for people who haven’t read the your article, because I love this story, and partly it’s because of that this feeling of what could be going on beneath the surface in both a metaphorical and a physical way. 

Can you tell us the Toronto Tunnel Monster story? I love this story.

00:31:09:07 – 00:31:42:29
Amir 
I absolutely can. So again, if you spend any time in the city, you’ll know. We’re very proud of our ravine system. It’s one of the one of the nice parts about about living here. So we have a ton of ravines, we have a bunch of rivers, we have creeks. And as the city of York, which was a was originally here before Toronto, as it became the city of Toronto, we had to divert a lot of those waterways into to drain the lake so that people’s houses wouldn’t get flooded. 

They still get flooded, by the way, because when you dig up a river and dry it up, the river doesn’t. The river is still there. It just doesn’t have water in it. As people find out in their basements every year when it gets especially rainy. Regardless, when the city began, it’s reclamation from the from the waterways. It built these elaborate tunnel systems. 

And if you see pictures of them, they’re actually quite beautiful because they were built back in the days when everything had to be beautiful. Like it wasn’t like bare walls or anything. We’re talking the vaulted ceilings, like esthetically pleasing arches and everything in these large tunnel systems, these large sewer systems. And these are still part of the city’s water treatment system to this day. 

If I remember correctly, that’s just to set the story and to say that we have a bunch of aside from our modern sewage system, which is, you know, just a bunch of boring concrete tubes running underneath us. We also have some far more interesting, far more old pathways that are cut underneath us that might be just host to something who knows something. 

So this is a story from 1979, a 51 year old man, his name was Ernest. He was looking for a missing kitten. Of course, he’s looking around his apartment, which I believe is around Parliament Street or was Cabbagetown or somewhere. And as he’s crawling down, he actually goes down a fire escape, just thinking like, if I were a kitten, where would I go? 

And he happens to come across an entrance into one into one of these narrow passageways that leads into the antique tunnels. As he crept through the tunnel, he saw something that was not a kitten in said this was a creature. It stood about a meter tall. So kind of kind of short for a human with long, skinny limbs. 

And it was covered with gray fur and it glared at him with these big red eyes. Now, apparently, this creature had some language ability because apparently in his sort of clay and then it bolted down the tunnel far away from her and is so earnest smart man decides. Yeah, that’s good advice. I’m going out of here. And he left that tunnel as fast as he could. 

Can’t believe I’m good. Good move. So since this sighting, the city has never again seen this creature, at least not by anyone to tell the story. Or maybe not by anyone who remains who has seen it. But what I find really interesting is that some tunnel monster enthusiasts have suggested that given the buried streams flowing within the city, this sewer dwelling, sewer, dwelling sprite might be an urbanized version of the city, which is, I believe, a small Harry River spirit found in Ojibwa for so perhaps like going to when the city was diverting all of these rivers. 

There were some residents there at the time that just decided, hey, I don’t care, I’m going to keep on living here.

00:34:49:26 – 00:35:21:06
Kate
Instance Yeah, it’s, it’s fascinating, this idea of layers upon layers upon layers, you know, layers of history, layers of architecture, layers of supernatural. The mimic we see could still be there. It makes me think a lot about all the attempts of the Jesuits and all these priests and everything coming over to Canada and bringing their religion. But I don’t think that the original religions and the original spirits and what is there is there. 

Right. It does. It’s not going to go away. Human, human time and human power is in no way a match for any of these big things. Right. That either the geography or the power nature or the spirits that may inhabit. And on that note, Julie, maybe can you share a bit further for us about something you’ve learned in your looking into stories? 

Because you mentioned before before we started recording the podcast, you mentioned that you don’t speak Mi’kmaq because your grandfather went to residential school. And as we know in the residential schools, the children were not allowed to speak their language and they were taken away from their parents in their culture. So Julie, maybe can you tell us a little bit about how you got into learning to make my stories and what they mean for you in terms of reclaiming your own culture and language?

00:36:19:15 – 00:37:03:11
Julie 
When you have a culture that has been through as much trauma as Indigenous culture all over Turtle Island, it was hard to to find a pride in who you are and give days. Now I see the tide changing. I see people who are stepping up and being role models that our young people can look up to. I our stories being told again by our elders and I know that it is a way for us to reconnect to who we are in the traditional form, in the traditional way of learning of the groups gap and the creator and how how we all came to be. 

All of that is, in essence, a way for us to find out is Chief Justice Mary Sinclair always says every child, every person deserves to know who they are and where they come from. And sharing stories, sharing that knowledge, sharing those teachings helps to bring a sense of pride. And, you know, being able to show our children who they are is so important. 

And using stories is such a gentle way to be able to do it, because they don’t need to take every single part of the story. They can take the part that resonates in their heart and they can use it and and be able to get stronger. And then each and every time they listen to it, they’ll learn a little more. 

And that’s the benefit. And the bonus of stories is that it’s just exactly what we need to be able to move forward together in reconciliation.

00:37:58:23 – 00:38:13:23
Kate
Thank you, Julie, for those thoughts. We’re going to end on that. Thank you so much both of you, for coming for sharing your stories, for writing the article. And hopefully we’ll talk again on a future podcast.

00:38:13:23 – 00:38:15:08
Julie 
Yes, thank you.

00:38:15:29 – 00:38:17:14
Amir 
I’d like that. Thank you both.

00:38:17:25 – 00:38:21:11
Canada’s History’s Stories Behind the History podcast is produced by Canada’s History Society. If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe to Canada’s History magazine? To subscribe or simply to find out more about Canada’s History Society, visit us at CanadasHistory.ca. Our theme music is the Red River Jig performed by Alex Kusturok from his album Métis Fiddling for Dancing. I’m Kate Jaimet, thanks for joining me.