For a few minutes I thought I had accidentally recycled my notes from our North-themed January meeting. It felt meaningful to lose the North, like losing my way, like losing winter. At times it has felt like winter never really arrived, I am indeed disoriented as snow disappears in rainstorms that go high up the mountain, when we’d normally be receiving mounds of the white stuff. But all is relative, and that was a major theme of our conversation. Our imaginations of the North are each influenced by the experiences we’ve had as individuals, but expanded by each others stories.
We honoured glimpses of Northern history and experience provided by Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s Right to be Cold, grieving how quickly traditional ways were overtaken, with colonialism forcing such vast change within one lifetime. One person shared about Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth, and the learning it brought regarding deep reverence for aspects of life we so easily take for granted. We celebrated the memory of witnessing PIQSIQ perform in Nelson, imagining how the art form developed with joy and connection, supported by the land and the intimate family lifestyle it fosters in the dark and cold.
Even as we thought about the darkness, we were reminded of balance with the light, as it seemed like a good thing to do to have a storytime interlude with the The Origin of Day and Night, a beautifully designed children’s book by Paula Ikuutaq Rumbolt, illustrated by Lenny Lishchenko. On the topic of balance, one participant shared a story from being present while The Snotty Nosed Rez Kids taught high school students that although music helped them get through hard times and figure out who they are, but emphasized that their “best creations have come through joy.” So we leaned into joy, and we dwelt in laughter, and there was plenty.
Thank you to Anna for another beautiful artistic memory and artifact to add visual presence to this post. Thank you to everyone for all the gems of wisdom as always. I’m recording here, because it might not be recorded anywhere else, that one of the magical properties of ice is that it allows us to “smell back in time,” since it captures some of the air that was with it as it froze. I love the wide-wandering delights of our unpredictable conversations!
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