I would say that coming here I had no expectations, and maybe that’s a good way for people to come up here. Not to have any preconceived ideas about anything.
Ronnie K. Wesley
I came to Moose Factory on a one year contract with the federal government on October the 24th 1975. I had RCMP clearance because I was handling material, in my new position, which was confidential in nature. I only expected to be here for a year. I came up at the age of 22 and I had no expectations, but I knew whatever it was, I was going to do the job for a year.
So I was working for the Zone Director, the head of the hospital, in Moose Factory. It was a good job; it was interesting; it was never the same on any given day. I was handed a lot of confidential material: any incidents that happened in surgery. There was an autopsy that was done by a doctor at the hospital and it was highly confidential. I typed up the autopsy on the computer and it was submitted to court. It was very sensitive.
So it was an interesting job, but again, I just expected to be here for a year. I had no family around me for the first time in my life. So I volunteered to be the treasurer for the Anglican church and I also decided I was going to learn how to curl. Now I weighed 90 pounds; I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. But it was a way to socialize. The curling rink was behind a big huge coal pile, which was about 200 yards from the emergency door of the hospital. I met a lot of people there, through curling. They were very patient and they taught me how to throw a rock. I loved it because there is no status in curling, unless in regards to your skill base, which I had none of, but they all were very patient. Some people were elders and some people were middle aged, there were also a few people my age. I found it was very interesting, so I put myself down as a spare. If you ever want to curl and learn it really quickly, put your name down as a spare. Every single night of the week I was curling, sometimes for four hours at a time. I remember one weekend (it was so much fun), they called it “24 hour curling”: so you would start off and everyone would be in A group and, as you lost your games, you progressively [moved] to B and C and so on. And I thought that it was so much fun because I had just bought a Skidoo, because I had no car or truck up here and I was skidooing over to Moosonee from Moose Factory at 3 o’clock in the morning to curl at the curling rink in Moosonee. To me that was exciting, 22 years old, 3 o’clock in the morning…it was very exciting.
So the first year went by pretty quickly, it just so happened that, in the process of learning how to curl and curling that year, that’s when I met my husband.
I think if you come with an open heart, and you are open to learning, and you have no pre-conceived ideas, that’s probably a good way to start. I’m not saying I did everything perfectly – I made a lot of mistakes - but when people just laugh at them and they don’t make a big deal of them, then you don’t either. That just made me more eager to learn other things.
I was born and raised in Ottawa. My father’s French Canadian and all of his family spoke French. My mother was at the opposite end of that spectrum: she had a British background. She came over to Canada with her mum and dad when she was twelve. So I grew up with a nice mixture of both, and Ottawa is such an international city: I went to school with kids who were from all over the world. When I came up here, I knew very little about aboriginal people. I came from an international city... maybe that has something to do with [why] I think I was open to learning.
I remember in that job at the hospital, it was confidential, because I had access to files, right, and one of the studies I did, I examined the nurses’ length of stay. I did study graphs, on nurses coming to the hospital because, even then, as is today, there tends to be a shortage of nurses. They do fill the positions, but sometimes there is a dry spell. [I] studied 100 nurses over a four year period. The trends that came out of that study were most nurses stay for nine months. The first three months they’re settling in, they’re getting used to living in isolation, [which can be] a brand new experience. And living on the island [of Moose Factory] is different than living in Moosonee, because although they are both considered isolated areas, Moosonee, as you know, is more accessible to groceries, the train, and the airport. Whereas in Moose Factory, you still have to make that first initial trip over [by] chopper, or boat or skidoo taxi or something to get to [Moose Factory]. The first three months they were getting settled in, sometimes that would mean getting serious boots (your city boots aren’t going to cut it when it’s -40) and serious down parkas and what not. The first few months tended to be [an] adjustment period. The next three months, the nurses that were going to stay really settled in. The nurses who had decided this wasn’t for them spent the next three months finding a job somewhere else, and then the last three months leaving.
I didn’t miss going to the movies. I didn’t miss going to expensive restaurants. I didn’t miss happy hour after work. I stayed because of family. My husband and I went out, with the children, to Regina for three years while we both went to University. We came back here because his mother was so ill. She died the same year.
I think all and all this is a good place to live. “What makes a song beautiful is not always the quality of the voice but the distance that voice has had to travel.” [From movie Unfinished Song (2012)] And I think that’s what it’s like in Moosonee and Moose Factory. It’s not just what’s here. You stay here because you key into the magic of the land, and the people, and the area. If your life values coincide with what you find here, and you can key into that richness, then I think you can have a good life here.
When you are doing something that makes you happy, if you are keyed into your heart and soul, you’ll know. Something tells you to stay. Or be somewhere else and I think the opposite is true too. If you are unhappy, you know it, your whole being knows it. Your heart knows it, your mind knows it.
Pay attention to what your body and your mind and your soul are telling you. And go with that. Learn to trust it.
Especially for women. I mean, we far outweigh the men in intuition skills, and nature gave us that for a reason. And I think we are more sensitive to a lot of things. We’re gifted with a sensitivity to everything around us in our environment, including people, animals, everything that is good for us. I think we just need to pay more attention to that.
