Cold Comfort

I haven't been able to post any new entries this last week because of being in the far north of Ontario, in a remarkable aboriginal community called Sandy Lake. There was no internet or cell phone reception there, but I was glad - I needed the time to reflect.The people of Sandy Lake were once nomadic, foraging through the region in pursuit of moose, caribou, beaver and fish.  Theirs was the time- honoured way of living off the land. But that all changed when decades ago the Canadian government told the people their children required education and that the only way to accomplish it was to bring the people onto a reservation. Reluctantly the elders agreed for the sake of the children. And so Sandy Lake was built. The houses were below grade but the school was first class.With little opportunity for catching game and fish, the people were told they would be provided with welfare cheques every month from which they could now procure supplies. In hindsight, it was a deal with the devil. While the children are being educated, their parents have little or no opportunity for finding jobs - welfare is now the Sandy Lake economy.I journeyed to the region along with Adam Spence, Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, to launch a program that will assist the community in working in the old ways to acquire food. The London Food Bank has sent up fishing nets and these are presently working well. The people are being trained well in how to use them efficiently to build up the fish supplies for the community. But the needs are dire. With only one grocery store in the community of 2600, and with the cost of shipping food supplies to Sandy Lake, bread can cost $5, potatoes $25, a dozen eggs $15. Obviously unaffordable, families buy Coke for $1.50 and potato chips for $2. As a result, diabetes is now running rampant through the area and the health concerns are obvious.And so we've opted, along with assisting the elders in the teaching of the ancient ways for acquiring food, to build a food centre and an accompanying smoke house to assist Sandy Lake residents to capture and store food supplies for the long winter months.  It's a daunting challenge and will end up costing over $500,000 - half of that just for the cost for the shipping of building supplies. It will be a huge undertaking, but for the people of Sandy Lake they can't believe that outsiders are taking this kind of interest. Yet this is just the kind of work members of parliament are meant to undertake. It educates us as to how we have failed as government in the past and how we might better, under aboriginal tutelage, build communities along more traditional lines.To the west of James Bay, Sandy Lake is challenged in so many ways. It snowed hard enough on the day we left that it appeared our plane would be grounded. When we did take off I looked below and saw a community under assault - from the weather, from government neglect, from climate change, from outside ignorance and from deep and abiding poverty. I am forlorn from what I've seen, and deeply ashamed that I personally have been so neglectful. So forgive my lack of posting in this last week; I was busy learning humility all over again. It's likely this post will hold no political interest to most, but unless we get things like Sandy Lake right this time, our politics won't mean much anyway.