J. MacDonald - Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country

Jake MacDonald

Houseboat Chronicles

Notes from a life in Shield Country

2002

Jake MacDonald was about eleven when he hooked a fish so big that he felt for the first time the awesome otherness of Nature, so powerful was the action on the other end of his fishing line. That was the beginning of his lifelong fascination with Shield Country, extending north from Canadas side of the Great Lakes. Over the years, he came to know it well, from the hardwood- covered Great Lakes region, across the vast central landscape of rivers and forest and ancient rock, to the cold northern taiga. He explored this country as a youth when, BB gun in hand, he set out to shoot gophers near his parents cottage.

He explored it when he dropped out of college. For an idyllic summer, he lived on an island in northern Ontario until a bear took over. He explored it as a fishing guide, odd job man, and finally, as a writer, gathering stories.

Partly memoir, and partly reportage, HOUSEBOAT CHRONICLES brilliantly evokes both the wilderness and the people who make a living there.

The author writes about the vibrant native culture, and the precarious existence of the guides, bush pilots, cops, and camp owners who must struggle to live in beautiful, untamable country. The author lived on a houseboat for many years, and still has one, tethered to a remote island. At night, the sky above his floating Cottage 5 filled by the glow of thousands of stars. In this funny, thoughtful book, MacDonald tells us a little about the lives of the men and women who live under those stars.

A blank landscape.

My hand, holding a Laurentien coloured pencil in Emerald Green, pauses at the lower right-hand corner of the page. What should I draw? All around me, kids are hunched over their desks. Grumbling, furtively farting, whispering to each other, humming softly as they work at their own pieces of art.

Its hard to concentrate because the teacher is somewhere in the back of the room. This is Sister George Marys Grade 6 class, and theres no tomfoolery permitted. When Kenny Richard catches my eye from across the aisle, pulls a booger from his nose, and pretends to flick it in my direction, Sister George launches towards him.

Sister George wears a hooded head cowling and floor-length black skirt, and glides up the aisle like a condor. Bending over, she hisses in Kennys ear and writes his name on her clipboard. Hes earned another five points in The Minute Club. Ha ha. He gives me that look, like hes gagging. Every time one of us gets caught communicating with a classmate, Sister George fines us five minutes. Every two weeks, you have to stay after school and work off the fine. After four detentions, you get the strap. When someone takes the long walk down to the principals office, accompanied by the teacher, the entire school gets as quiet as Sing Sing prison during an electrocution. Everyone sits there, exchanging anticipatory monkey grimaces, waiting for the sound of the leather belt to come echoing up the waxed hallway.

St. Ignatius School is in the south end of Winnipeg, at the corner of Stafford Street and Corydon Avenue. Just a few blocks north of the school is the genteel, wooded neighbourhood of River Heights, where the large century-old homes are occupied by lawyers, doctors, and judges, many of whom are Anglican or United Church and are unfortunately going to Hell. South of the school is the poorer, working-class neighbourhood of Fort Rouge, where the crooked old wood-frame houses are filled with large Italian immigrant families, many of whom are rosary-clutching church-goers going to Heaven. Or at least the women are.

When its my turn to serve 6:45 mass I walk to church in the bitter cold, sharing that desolate time of morning with the frozen elms, a million stars, and perhaps a furtive wild creature or two a cottontail rabbit darting through the fresh snow, pausing to perk its ears and look back at me and when I get to church those Italian mothers are always there in their black veils, kneeling. Theyre praying, no doubt, for their wayward sons, my enemies. Their sons tend to be thin sulky boys who smoke cigarettes and fight with their feet, dancing around like fighting cocks. One of the worst is Raymond Cantafio, who weighs about eighty pounds, stands about four foot ten, and has hair like a matinee idol. Many times Ive seen Raymond Cantafio slap the faces of boys twice his size, slap their faces back and forth, trying to goad them to fight. And once, while walking home, I had the grave misfortune of running into Raymond Cantafio in a back lane. For an entire city block I edged along backwards, walleyed with terror, while Raymond hissed and feinted at me like a ferret.

Boys like Raymond and his friends make certain streets into no-go zones. But like the cagey citizen of some bombed-out European city, I know safe routes through the various enclaves. Some of my friends are rich, from Yale Avenue, and some are poor, from Garwood. Some are feeble and some are tough. Some are good in school and some are so dumb that you have to wonder if theyre retarded. (Danny Barton, for example, shot himself in the leg with a .22 pistol to impress a girl.) Im sort of in-between. Im not the most uncoordinated boy in the school yard, nor am I an athlete who gets picked first for baseball teams. My father is a senior bureaucrat with the city, so he makes a good salary. But my parents are raising a family of seven kids, so were kind of poor anyway. We live in a tract-house neighbourhood seven blocks west of the school. The post-war economy is humming, and my street, Mulvey Avenue, is sort of a suburban battery farm long rows of temperature-regulated boxes churning out small human beings like me.

Its Sister Georges task to whip us into shape, but art class is not high on her list of educational priorities. Art class can only encourage us to screw open the lids of our fetid little minds, and what good can come of that? Shed rather have us do something useful, like long division. Or, if shes in a good mood, shell permit a spelling bee. Today, shes definitely not in a good mood. I have a bruised lip to attest to that. At lunch hour, when we were all stampeding back to class, I stopped for a drink at the water fountain. Sister George glided up and whacked me in the back of the head, driving my upper lip into the chromium steel of the spigot. Woe betide, she exclaimed, if youre not back to class in one second. I should have known better, trying to drink water after the bell had rung. But Sister Georges bloody willingness to always ratchet up the tension one more notch fills most of us with a fearful respect. This is a woman who, without too much provocation, would probably drive spikes through our heads and cook us for dinner.

On Sister Georges desk at the front of the room, a plastic desk radio issues the rackety piano music of the CBCs weekly Manitoba School Broadcasts. The announcer has the sweet maternal voice of Miss Roma Harpell, the hostess of a television show called Romper Room. I dont think its actually Miss Roma, but it sounds like her. She sounds like the sort of woman who thinks that children are bunnies, full of bright ideas and sweet affections. As Kenny would have it, shes fucked in the head. But Id rather spend the next hour listening to Miss Roma than Sister George. So I cooperate with all of Miss Romas instructions. As the piano murmurs gently in the background, her cooing voice issues our marching orders. Now children, put your heads down on your desks and close your eyes. Thats right, nice and tight! Now just be very quietand dream that were drifting in the vast darkness of space. Look at that lovely blue planet over there! How pretty it is! Look at the many green continents, so magical and different! What faraway lands will you visit today?

Somewhere behind me a yardstick whacks a desk. Close your eyes! bellows Sister George.