Enjoying Nature’s Bounty from an Indigenous Perspective By Dick Lalande, AKA Chief Dream Hunter, Lower Ottawa Valley Chapter
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French Canadian rural cultural Catholic environment. Our families spent most of their free time in the forest, lakes, rivers, and wetlands away from the urban areas and in the close wilderness, where they were more comfortable and resourceful in feeding their families. This practice continued after we all left home to receive higher education in the cities and finally joined together to form our private Indigenous community on Algonquin traditional territory in Lanark County.
ur busy President, Paul Robertson, and I have had several discussions on the need to have our ‘OWA Indigenous Stewardship Circle Committee’ provide articles to the Woodlander. We both felt we could do more to recognize that many of our members and other Indigenous communities are woodlot owners. We should encourage all parties to participate in our association. The purpose of this article is to show how our Indigenous Members of the Tay River Algonquian Community, via its Elders, have been taught by our parents to continue our tradition of fishing, hunting, gathering, and farming.
Dick Lalande with his grandchildren during the deer hunt November 2013. Photo Credit: Chris Lalande
The Elders grew up in North Bay, Ontario, in a
The following are examples of how the Native and French cultures shared and integrated their traditions to provide food for the table.
Water and Wetlands Fishing
North Bay is the Nipissing Algonquin tribe’s home territory, and fishing was their leading food and trade source. To this day, fishing pickerel in Lake Nipissing is still a significant tradition. Our founding Elders spent countless hours fishing Lake Nipissing as children. In winter, we would build our ice-huts and spend all weekend on the ice, catching pickerel, white fish, perch, pike, and ling. At the end of the day, and just before dark, my father, my two brothers, and I would each pick up an empty plastic bucket. When the nonIndigenous fishermen left to go home, we would gather all the discarded fish they left on the ice so that no food was wasted. We would bring it home, clean the fish and Dad would grind up the pike and perch and make his famous fish paddies for the freezer. In the summer, we would go out at night, with our flashlights, after rain, to collect dew-worms on the grass and keep them in the basement ‘cool room’ until the need to go trout fishing. In the fall, we would take our hand-nets and buckets 8
and follow the Chippewa Creek from Lake Nipissing north until we would gather enough minnows, put them into our home-made fresh-water tank, and keep them alive for the winter season. To round out our fish food supply, we would follow Dad to the Ontario Northland Railway (O.N.R.) yard, where he worked, jump into an empty boxcar, and make our way north to Rabbit Lake. There, we would stay overnight in an O.N.R. maintenance boxcar, which had a stove. We walked the tracks to collect left behind coal for the night fire. The next morning, we would snowshoe to the lake and spend all day catching lake trout until we caught our limit. In the fall, we would take a full day and make our way to the Callander Marsh on Lake Nipissing, and with plastic buckets, go and pick up as many cranberries as we could. We were told to bring high rubber boots and an extra pair of dry, woolen socks. There was trout fishing on Trout Lake and smelt netting in the rivers in the spring. Summer was filled with frog catching and speckled trout outings. Needless-to-say, our free time was food-related.
The Ontario Woodlander—An Ontario Woodlot Association Quarterly. Issue 102, March 2021
