Halfbreed Page 9

  Another man whom I remember, not as a politician but as a lawyer, was John Diefenbaker from Prince Albert. He was not just a lawyer to us, as that did not mean much, he was also colourful, dashing and exciting and he would represent anyone, rich or poor, red or white. If they had a case and had no money he would help. If John was representing someone we knew, our people would come for miles in rain or snow to watch him. Then they would go home and repeat what had happened, and by the second repetition John was ten feet taller.

  He helped us, and the important thing was that he did so when no one else would. And he did it with the style and colour my people loved. Cheechum never said anything good about him but she never said anything bad either.

  My people have always been very political. They get involved in political campaigns for local white politicians. As a child I remember listening to them talk and argue far into the night about why this party or that was the best. They talked about better education, a better way of life, but mostly about land for our people. However, when one of our own people said to hell with white politicians—let’s get our own men in, or organize our own people into a strong association—that was something else. Uncle Miles used to say often that we had to do it ourselves, because no one would do it for us, and then he’d explain why, but no one really listened until Jim Brady and Malcolm Morris came to our country.

  They were from Alberta and they told our people how the Halfbreeds in Alberta had organized an association and had gotten colony lands through one united voice. We could do it here too, if we organized a strong body and elected a man to speak for us. Daddy started going to the meetings to listen to these men. He became a strong supporter of Jim Brady and he spent hours and days talking to our people, and taking them to meetings. Everyone was excited. The government was finally going to give the Halfbreeds land.

  Cheechum was excited for the first time and would pace the floor until Daddy got home from his meetings and tell Mom and Cheechum and Grannie all that had happened. Grannie Campbell was against what Daddy was getting involved in and tried to get him to stay home and forget about the meetings. She told Daddy he would only get hurt, the government wouldn’t give us anything, and he’d probably end up in jail for his trouble. Cheechum would get angry and tell her to leave Daddy alone. She said it was his duty as head of our family to do what had to be done, that we’d never get past our mud shacks if he just sat and waited. Even if nothing happened and he did go to jail, he at least tried, and he could give his children no greater gift.

  How proud I was of my Dad! I wanted to help but all I could do was brush and curry Daddy’s horse so that it would look good when he rode to the meetings. Then one night Dad said we could go with him. We arrived about eight-thirty and I followed Daddy around and listened while the men visited and talked about what was happening. I grew tingly all over with excitement. The meeting finally started with Miles Isbister as the chairman and Jim Brady as the speaker. Jim said almost word for word what I have heard our leaders discuss today: the poverty, the death of trapping as our livelihood, the education of our children, the loss of land, and the attitude of both governments towards our plight. He talked about a strong united voice that would demand justice for our people—an organization that government couldn’t ignore. He said many people were poor, not just us, and maybe someday we could put all our differences aside and walk together and build a better country for all our children.

  After the meeting was over, people visited and talked some more. Daddy brought Jim over and introduced him to us. He started to say something to Mom, but before he finished I told him I thought he was wonderful and that Cheechum had already told me all the things he’d said. When I saw all the grown-ups looking at me I hid my face in Cheechum’s apron. He reached down and gave me a hug and from that night on Jim Brady was my hero and I loved him as I loved no man but my Dad.

  On the way home I lay in the back of the wagon with my head on Cheechum’s knee and while she stroked my hair I thought of all I’d heard that night. Cheechum had told me that someday a man like Jim Brady would come, and she said when he came many more would follow. I felt something new inside me. It was an emotion that is hard to describe—almost like happiness, pride and hurt all at once. The feeling was all knotted up in my guts and made me feel very lonely for something I couldn’t see or understand. That night was the first time the feeling ever came; it was a feeling I was to get often in my life.

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  Daddy went to meetings all that year. He didn’t go trapping and so we were very poor. He was gone nearly all the time, and when he was home he would be very moody, either so happy that he was singing, or else very quiet. We all suffered these times with him. It seemed that the Mounties and wardens were always at our house now. We were treated badly at school, even our teacher would make jokes about Dad, like, “Saskatchewan has a new Riel. Campbells have quit poaching to take up the new rebellion.” That year I think I fought every white kid in that school and then failed my grade besides. Some of our relatives wouldn’t visit or talk to us. Like the whites, they laughed and made jokes about Dad. The whites didn’t matter; I could accept their ridicule, but our own people I could not understand. Cheechum talked to me and tried to make me realize why people did this. She would tell me, “Ignore them, they are nothing, only frightened people. They laugh with the whites because it is the first time in their lives that the white man has talked to them like men.” It was so true. For the first time I saw whites inviting Halfbreeds to their homes. Some days I saw them riding home together in cars, laughing and drinking like brothers. I hated those men! How could they be so fooled!

  Soon people were saying that Daddy didn’t trap because he was getting paid by Communists, and more people turned against us. We never saw money and lived on gophers and bannock nearly all the time. Our home life also changed, and often I heard Momma crying. Only Cheechum did not change; she encouraged Dad and did all she could to help him. Momma loved Daddy but could not take what was being said about him. She begged him to quit. Then one night, he did just that. Something inside him died, and he became another defeated man.

  One night I was awake waiting for him to come home from a meeting. Mom and Cheechum were sitting at the table sewing. As soon as I heard his step I ran to the bedroom door so I could listen. Daddy’s shoulders were all stooped; he looked like an old man. He sat down and put his head on the table and began to cry. It was the first time I’d ever heard my father cry. Mom put her arms around him and held him, while Cheechum just sat there and said nothing. Finally Daddy said to her, “Grannie, we’ve failed. We can’t do it.” I crept back to bed and later, when I heard Cheechum go outside, I followed her. We said nothing for a long time—just sat there beside the slough and listened to the frogs sing. Finally Cheechum put her arms around me, and holding me close, said, “It will come, my girl, someday it will come.” She told me then that some of the men had been hired by the government, and that this had caused much fighting among our people, and had divided them.

  Daddy started to drink that summer and I began to grow up. Our whole lives, and those of our people, started to go downhill. We had always been poor, but we’d had love and laughter and warmth to share with each other. We didn’t have even that anymore, and we were poorer than ever. Daddy still trapped, but only because it was an escape for him. He would be gone for long periods at a time, then when he was home he drank and often brought white men home with him. Sometimes he’d hit Mom, and she would take the baby and run away until he was sober. He seldom smiled and he hardly ever talked to us unless it was to yell. When he sobered up he’d try to make up, but it never lasted long. Once he even slapped Cheechum.

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  We never saw any of the men again who had come to lead our people. They had found government jobs and didn’t have time for us anymore. Jim Brady went far into the north and I never saw him again either.

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  Grannie Campbell was dying of cancer that summer and when she asked for Dad no one could find him. He came home the day before the funeral and for months after he would cry and call her name when he was drunk. Have you ever watched a man die inside? Children who have grow up fast. Jamie and Robbie and I had to take over the responsibility of helping to raise our family. There were seven children, even though Momma lost three babies in three years. We cut pickets and dragged them to the store, as many as twenty at a time, and sold them for five cents a post. We cut pulpwood, peeled it, and when we had enough we hired a man and wagon to take it to the store. We got eight or ten dollars for each load. We set snares for rabbits and sold the fur for five cents each and ate the meat. Gopher’s tails were a penny apiece. Jamie and I would go to the store for flour and lard and stand at the counter longing for the things on display. I was full of bitterness over what had happened that year and was angry at my father, but above all I hated the men who had fought him. I told Mom that he was no better for quitting than the Breeds who laughed at him, that he did not have to give up and start drinking. But she just told me to love Daddy, that he would come out of it and soon everything would be all right; as for him quitting, if he had listened to Grannie Campbell this would never have happened, that it was all useless and the only way we would get ahead was to forget about the meetings and just do our best each day. I felt that in a way she too betrayed Dad by not understanding what he had to do. Her concerns were for her family. She didn’t realize that what happened outside was important too.

  Cheechum listened to me when I told her how I felt, and cursed our men for being weak. She would tell me, “Wait my girl. It will come. I’ve waited for ninety years and listened to many men. I have seen men quit and have felt as you do, but we have to keep waiting and as each man stands unafraid we have to believe he is the one and encourage him. You’ll feel discouraged like this many times in your life but, like me, you’ll wait.”

  Mom was often sick through that year and spent three months in hospital after an operation on her throat. She became pregnant shortly afterwards and was ill most of the time she carried that baby. Dad finally realized that what he was doing was not only destroying himself but his family as well. He quit his drinking and tried to pick up where he had left off, but it was never the same again.

  I had bad dreams for six months before Momma went to the hospital to have the baby. Often I woke up screaming for her not to go. I would dream that she was making a coat for herself from one of Uncle Frank’s old army overcoats. She would finish it and then take the shiny buttons to sew them on. She would start from the bottom and when she had sewn on the sixth and last button she would die and leave us alone. Then one day I came home from school and Mom was sewing that coat. I tried to tell her, but she said it was only a dream—that I was too full of ghost stories and superstitions and should forget that nonsense. So I told Cheechum and she tried to stop her also.

  Momma went to the hospital early in the morning of May the first. Daddy borrowed a buggy and they went as far as St. Michele and took the train to Prince Albert. I knew that day I would never see her again. She kissed us all good-bye, climbed into the buggy, fastened the last button on that coat, and they drove away. Cheechum and I cried, and when we were alone she told me that now I had become a woman. I would be responsible for the little ones and for Daddy. She said she would stay and help me but that she was getting old and could do little work. She held me for a long time. That night I put the younger ones to bed and we said our prayers like Momma always told us to do. Cheechum and I waited for Daddy to come home with news. The frogs were singing and while she and I drank tea we listened to them. I was so empty that night, not lonely, just empty. I fell asleep shortly after midnight but woke when Daddy drove in. He came and knelt down beside me and said, “Maria, you are the oldest one and now you have to help me. Momma died this afternoon.” He put his head on my knee and held me. We just stayed there for a long time.

  My aunts and uncles and friends started to arrive. All the grown-ups were crying and the little ones woke up. I went into the bedroom and gathered them around me and told them. Only Jamie and Robbie understood, so I asked them to help me put the little ones to bed again. When the youngest were asleep, we three went outside. We walked and walked and finally sat down and cried. Cheechum found us and took us in. Mom’s body was brought home for the wake and for the first time in her life she had something brand new—a coffin all done in black and silver. When the casket was opened, I was horrified. Momma had on lipstick and rouge and her hair was curled. Cheechum asked everyone to leave the two of us alone. When they had left the room, we washed Momma’s face, braided her hair and wrapped it around her head the way she had worn it for years.

  Funeral services were to be held in the Roman Catholic church. On the day of the funeral, Father Cardinal came over and told Daddy that he would not hold services for Mom because Daddy had not called a priest in to administer the Last Sacrament before she died. We could, however, bury her in the cemetery. Daddy said nothing. Momma’s death had been so sudden he hadn’t thought of calling in a priest. My uncle left then and came back with an Anglican minister from the nearby reserve. Father Cardinal stood at the door of the church the whole time the service was being held and made sure no one tried to ring the bells for her. While she lived Momma never missed church and many times the last of our money went to the collection rather than to buy food. She always said, “Hush, it’s for God.” But the bells could not even ring for her funeral. For years after, I felt as if it were my fault—that Father had refused to give Momma a Mass because of all the torment I’d caused him.

  Chapter 9

  EVERYTHING SEEMED TO GO WRONG after Momma left us. We never realized before what a pillar of strength she was, and how she had kept our lives running smoothly. There was very little money around. Fur was poor, which meant that trapping was finished. All the rocks and roots had been picked in nearby settlements. All our people were having hard times and had nothing to share with us or each other. Relief was unheard of then, unless for the crippled or aged. Dad was in a world of his own and we rarely saw him for the first few months after Mom’s death. He would disappear for days or weeks on end. I don’t know what I would have done during that time if it had not been for Cheechum. She gave me strength to carry on my work—I was only twelve and with Momma gone and Dad away, I had to take over not only as mother but father as well. Jamie worked that summer for the first time; he was eleven years old. He did summer fallow and general farm chores for a farmer who lived near us. For this he was paid sixty dollars a month plus his room and board, which was a fortune to us. He was up at four-thirty and worked until ten o’clock at night. And because the farmer was a Seventh-Day Adventist, Jamie had to work on Sunday instead of Saturday, but it didn’t matter because we didn’t go to church any more.

  Dad came home one day after having been gone for a long time, and Cheechum talked to him for hours. He seemed to realize then that Momma really was gone and he had to do something about us, or the relief people would come and we would be gone too. He changed after that, but we still had a difficult time; I get tired just thinking of those years.

  How hard it must have been for him! He had to mother us, love us, feed and clothe us besides working. In spite of the problems Dad and Momma had before Momma died, they were very close and always shared in everything. Now he had only Cheechum to talk to. Many times after we had all gone to bed, I heard Dad cry and call for Momma in his sleep. Cheechum would wake him and talk with him far into the night. I started to fail in my studies at school because I spent so much time worrying about what was happening at home. I often begged Daddy to let me quit school, but he would tell me that I needed education and that it was the most important thing in my life.

  Daddy spent a great deal of time with us that year. In the evenings we read to him just as we did when Mom was alive, or talked or just cudd
led up to him. This was also the time for mending or whatever else had to be done. Then at nine o’clock we would kneel together and say our rosary. I resented the Church and God during this half hour, and hated every minute of it, but felt I could endure it if it made Dad feel better. He told me a long time afterwards that Mom had made him promise we would pray before bedtime, and after a while he found that those prayers comforted him and helped him to carry on; that it was not the Church he was praying to but to God.

  Dad is still deeply religious in his own way, but I have never found peace in a church or in prayer. Perhaps Cheechum had a lot to do with that. Her philosophy was much more practical, soothing and exciting, and in her way I found comfort. She told me not to worry about the Devil, or where God lived, or what would happen after death. She said that regardless of how hard I might pray or how many hours I spent on my knees, I had no choice in what would happen to me or when I would die. She said it was a pure waste of time that could be used more constructively.

  She taught me to see beauty in all things around me; that inside each thing a spirit lived, that it was vital too, regardless of whether it was only a leaf or a blade of grass, and by recognizing its life and beauty I was accepting God. She said that each time I did something it was a prayer, regardless of whether it was good or bad; that heaven and hell were man-made and here on earth; that there was no death, only that the body becomes old from life on earth and that the soul must be reborn, because it is young; that when my body became old my spirit would leave and I’d come back and live again. She said God lives in you and looks like you, and not to worry about him floating around in a beard and white cloak; that the Devil lives in you and all things, and that he looks like you and not like a cow. She often shook her head at the pictures I gave her of God, angels and devils and the things they did. She laughed when she saw the picture of the Devil turning people over with a fork in the depth of Hell’s fire, and remarked that it was no wonder those people looked so unhappy, if that’s what they believed in. Her explanation made much more sense than anything Christianity had ever taught me.