The Journals

i) firsthand observations from your sitting spot

Its quite windy so no mosquitos. I see the ospreys nest is starting to disappear behind trees that are really greening up. A crow flies overhead and I worry a bit about it ravaging some of the Redwing nests. The regular crew is there, Red-wings, a cat bird, some yellow finch types and tons of toads and frogs. The Merlin app has picked up more birds with two that are rare for the area; The Magnolia warbler and a Sandhill Crane are visiting this lovely clean smelling swamp. There are little amber snails doing snail things. The swamp smells fresh. The cattails are starting to grow now with green shooting up through last years dead growth. There is snake grass growing all around the edge of the swamp. It had been raining so the water was high and clear. There is a tiny spider in a pretty web. The path I take in is slightly used and I wonder if it is a deer that uses it. I find a piece of hornets nest near where I sit and a bit more in the cedar. I think the wind took it out of my space and I am grateful for that.

 

ii) connections between your sitting spot experiences and the relevant chapters by Peterborough field naturalist Drew Monkman: May

Monkman (2013) says this month will have hundreds of millions of migrant birds pouring in from the neotropics. Apparently most of them travel at night. My sitting spot reflected this with at least two rare birds the Magnolia Warbler and the Sand Crane. I am thinking about how the migrants from Brittan came pouring into Canada by the hundreds then thousands then hundreds of thousands for much the same reason as these birds: They were seeking a more plentiful place to raise their young. But when settlers came they came to stay. I am watching from my sitspot how all of these animals, plants, birds and bugs are symbiotic to each others survival and I am struck by how that doesn’t happen with humans. Humans are an invasive species in their own lands and then move on to invade lands that they are not naturally from. I wonder if we can ever become sustainable like the species that the land sustains. I assume that the land will shrug one day and kick most of us off. I wonder if then we will learn or just create imbalance again.

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iii) a one-paragraph discussion "quote of the day"

“Home! The word had ceased to belong to my present – it was doomed to live for ever in the past; for what emigrant ever regarded the country of his exile as his home? To the land he has left, that name belongs for ever, and in no instance does he bestow it upon another. ‘I have got a letter from home!’ ’I have seen a friend from home!’ ‘I dreamed last night that I was at home!’ are expressions of everyday occurrence, to prove that the heart acknowledges no other home than the land of its birth.”

In class we talked about the Moodies and Par Trails arriving in Canada from Brittan. We talked about how they struggled; The sickness, the weather, the fact that they came from very "civilized" space and how difficult it must have been to come to wild land. Mark had us stand up and asked each person to sit down at the age he called out if they had ever needed medical care to that point. There was one girl who would have made it to 20ish. We talked about how many of their children would have died. The hardship that these people went through to establish the grid was really awful. The Moodies and Par Trails came to Canada to escape the hardship they faced at "home." They were told lies that would make them believe that with a little hard work they would live well. The reality of their new home was incredibly harsh. As the settlers came to claim their new home, the Indigenous were displaced. I think about how that feels in my own life to be homeless. I left home when I was 13 years old and have moved a lot or been moved on ever since. In the last 20 years my home-base is Peterborough but I have spent years of that time in other countries particularly in the US where I can live comfortably in a vehicle. I understand the excitement the settlers must have felt at times travelling to a destination full of hope for a better future for I have done so myself a good number of times. I also identify with the loneliness of  wishing to be "home." I think that the Susana and definitely Catharine eventually felt like Canada was their home but I imagine that feeling fluctuated. When I am living close to the earth I feel at home but if I get too far away from it I feel disconnected from everything. The land is my home-base. But as a descendant of settlers I feel I have wandering in my bones and sometimes I think I should visit Ireland to see if I feel like I am home there. I went to England and did not connect to the land, probably because I was in the city…I really cant imagine how the Indigenous feel being exiled from their own land and home. But of course, it is my privilege to not know how that feels.

 

iv) a one-paragraph description of the "Ontological Exercise" you are to carry out at your sitting spot once per course meeting;

Following Catharine Parr Traill’s lead, it is time to turn our attention to wildflowers. Some of the ones that she identified are now in bloom (White Trillium, Trout Lily, Bellwort, Wood Anemone, Spring Beauty). Your task for this ontological exercise is to identify five species of wildflower that you didn’t already know, including any two mentioned in the previous slides. Include photographs of your discoveries along with a short description of each written in your own idiosyncratic way of remembering who they are.

The only flower I could find from the previous slides was a kind of Anemone but I found a few others…Click on slide deck for names of flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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v) Three pages reflecting critically on weekly course readings that appear on the syllabus:

Gray, Charlotte. Sisters in the Wilderness. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008.

Sisters in the Wilderness, written by Charlotte Gray (1999), explores the lives of Catharine Parr Trail and Susanna Moodie, two British-Canadian pioneer women who settled in the Canadian wilderness in the 19th century. Writers from a very literate family, they find their literary skills to be practically useless for the first years of their landing. Their writing however sustains them by keeping them connected to their family and friends and also provides a mental and emotional  coping mechanism to deal with the hardship inherent in the lives of settlers at that time. Post-mortem for Susana and in Catharine's octogenarian years, their books and drawings are revered as testaments to the beginnings of the land called Canada. A central theme of the novel, along with the need for human connection is the profound relationship these women develop with the land they inhabit. Particularly, Catharine Parr Trail's connection to the land is portrayed as multifaceted, encompassing both the practical aspects of survival and a deep emotional and spiritual bond with the natural beauty of the land.

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One thing that struck me about the novel and the lives of Catharine Par Trail and Susana Moodie was the hardship they endured pioneering Canada while trying to escape hardship in England. They seemingly went from bad to worse. The irony of this is astounding. These two women and their husbands were sold a false dream. Catharine, leaving Montreal was met by a man going back to Brittan and who told her that the dream was a lie--that they had been "vilely deceived". But as Catharine rode along in a stagecoach she connected with the land. She could name some of the fruit trees and other plants. This gave her hope that all would be well.

 

Both sisters were skilled writers so I fathom had they stayed in England, they probably would have done well competing with their older sister, Agnes, for notoriety although I believe Catharine’s character would have steered her away from this sort of competition. Rather, they both married men who were not really cut out for the task of pioneering, embarking on a journey that would keep them from their homeland for the rest of their days. Particularly, Catharine’s husband Thomas would prove unable to cope with living in survival mode which is the cost of “taming” the Canadian wilderness. 

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The fact that Susana’s husband John Moodie had already tried pioneering in South Africa and failed foreshadowed what was to come for Susana in the backwoods of Canada. Susana had almost backed out of this marriage because of John's "braggadocio" around shooting animals in South Africa. His character seems to always take up a role in his life that is difficult which in turn, makes it difficult for Susana because in the 18oo's one did not leave her husband; one strove to be a "good wife." In spite of John's ability to pick difficult jobs and circumstances, he was very emotionally supportive of Susana and their love for each other prevailed. In her later years, after John passes away, Susana seems paralyzed without him and reports being unable to organize her work. Luckily for Susana, she gets help from family to continue on. 

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As for Catharine’s husband’s propensity for depression, it is no wonder that Catharine connected emotionally to the land for she would have needed something to buoy her as she had to take care of her husband emotionally their whole lives together. His ability to garner debt and unfortunate business dealings are like a constant bane to Catharine throughout the novel. Unlike her sister, Susana, when Thomas passes away she moves on seemingly without grief. Catharine moves in with her daughter (Agnes) and is finally free to pursue her writing and communing with the land without having to worry about his instability. It is Catharines connection with the land as opposed to Susana's dependency on another human (her husband) that I identified with the most.

 

Catharine was able to be a successful pioneer in spirit (if not practically) by allowing the land to guide her thoughts and emotions. Catharine was able to write and draw inspirations from the Canadian landscape and spent the rest of her life honing this ability.  

Susana, a writer in her own right also gained inspiration from the land but was not near as charmed as Catharine. In her book, "Roughing it in the Bush," (1852) Susana focused on the hardships of Canadian settlers in a way that embarrassed her well to do sister, Agnes, back in England. Agnes was a polished and celebrated author, writing about royalty, which gave her an esteemed place in high society. When Susana's book arrived in England, dedicated to Agnes, Agnes was horrified by the association. Rather than see her sisters as champions of the New World, Agnes saw their survival as destitution and a blight upon the family name.  

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For all intents and purposes, Agnes was not wrong about one thing; the two sisters did spend much of their lives in relative destitution with Catharine having the most difficulty maintaining. I find it interesting that she was closest to the land and had the most material difficulty, yet she was the cheerier and most hopeful of the two. Catharine was also religious, and it seems for Catharine, piety goes a long way. Catharine did speak of God creating nature, so I believe the connection between the two were inseparable for her and this infusion of physical and spiritual is what sustained her through the constant loss that she endured throughout her lifetime. 

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The theme of human connection, underpins their story of survival as both sisters are helped by different family members throughout the book. They are sent clothing and money from their sister Agnes in England and their brother Sam helps build their cabins in Lakefield. Later, Susana’s daughter Agnes co-writes with her which helps them both financially. This indicates that without human connections and bonds people living in the wilderness, having not been born there, and who were so removed as those in Brittan with their high society and genteel upbringings, likely would not survive on their own. While there is very little talk of the Indigenous in the book, both sisters are helped by local Indians and Catharine develops friendships and connections until the end of her life saying that she is quilting for the Indian reservation.  

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Towards the end of the novel, James Ewing Ritchie wrote of Ottawa that he was,

 

"astonished by the medley of characters who congregated in the Canadian capital:" "I met there statesman,

adventurers, wild men of the woods or prairie, deputies from Manitoba, lawyers from Quebec, sharpers and

honest men, all staying in one motel; and it seemed strange to sit at dinner and see great rough fellows, with

the manners of ploughmen, quaffing their costly champaign, and fancying themselves patterns of gentility

and taste" (pg 4934). 

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This shows that the Canadian wilderness was a great leveler of both man and breeding. The "rough men" could do well in this landscape paid for their skills and ability to live rough while adopting a taste for the finer things in life that the Brits would be trying to replicate from home. They needed each other to survive and because of this all eventually to thrive. In Canada during the late 1800s, unlike the earlier part of the century, for those who were established by their forebearers and for those still emigrating, it may finally, for some, have become a land of plenty.  

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Catharine’s writing and love for nature not only sustained her spiritually but towards the end of her life gave her the notoriety that she much deserved and  may have received much earlier had she stayed in England. Again I am struck by the irony of the two sisters who fled economic hardship in Brittan to find a devastatingly difficult existence in Canada, one that they were very fortunate to survive into old age and then for Catharine, at least, to be put into her deserving place as a great writer and historian in her 80's and 90's. Coming full spiral, Catharine's story creates a sense of hope and faith for any who might be going through material difficulty and who still maintain their dreams.

 

vi) one paragraph per entry applying Jon Young's so-called "sacred question" ("What did you observe? What is this telling you? What is this teaching you?") either in relation to something you have observed at your sitting spot or encountered in the readings

I observed two worlds colliding--the settlers and the Indigenous. I saw that the collision was bloody on both sides. It is telling me that I have to keep an open mind and heart for the struggles of all people and things. It is teaching me empathy.