Jody Patterson's Articles

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Sun, Jul 20, 1997

Jody Paterson

VISIONQUEST - THE HEALING JOURNEY

Their bios list height, weight, occupation, family status - everything
except why they'd want to paddle 1,600 kilometres through the rough waters
off the B.C. coast. Maybe they wanted a physical challenge. Maybe they
wanted a scenic tour like no other. Or maybe, like the two friends who
launched VisionQuest, they saw their chance to make a difference.

Esther Shackelly: Nooaitch tribe, aerobics instructor, BC Ferries employee.
John Peters: Tlingit, guitar player, student. John TooGood: RCMP member,
former detox centre supervisor, father of three. Debbie Malthouse: Powell
River school teacher, skier, mom.
They're among more than 50 VisionQuest Journeys '97 paddlers currently en
route to Victoria, having left July 3 from Hazelton. The paddlers linked up
this weekend in Port Hardy with First Nations paddlers on their annual
Tribal Journey, and the flotilla will swell even more in its final days for
a triumphant 50-canoe entrance into the Inner Harbor Aug. 3, the start of
the North American Indigenous Games.

VisionQuest began 12 years ago with a madman. American draft dodger and
suspected murderer Michael Oros had eluded RCMP for years, but police
thought they finally had him surrounded in the early morning of March 19,
1985, in bush near the B.C.-Yukon border.
But Oros circled back, killing Const. Mike Buday with a single shot. Const.
Garry Rodgers then shot Oros dead and a 13-year pursuit was over.
In the years that followed, artist and RCMP Staff Sgt. Ed Hill dreamed of
doing a painting to commemorate the murder of Buday. His friend and fellow
artist Roy Henry Vickers also had a dream: to build a recovery centre for
people fighting addictions.

The two found their image on the shores of Teslin Lake, a decade after
Buday's death. They painted the last scene Buday saw as he lay dying.
Sales of the limited-edition print brought in the first $100,000 toward
building the treatment centre. The provincial RCMP became official
supporters of VisionQuest a year ago, and the task of raising an estimated
$5 million began in earnest.

VisionQuest paddlers are a mix of RCMP, First Nations and regular folk.
They're travelling a route traditional to both the police and First Nations
elders, who know it as "The Grandfathers' Journey." They've stopped in
Terrace, Prince Rupert, Kitkatla, Klemtu, Bella Bella and will now make
their way down the east coast of Vancouver Island.

Canoes are paddled backward into each night's stopover as a symbol of
peace, and the celebratory potlatches that follow have reportedly been more
exhausting than the paddling. Ceremonial blankets have been filled with
donations in every village; in Vickers' birthplace of Kitkatla, the 800
residents donated an astounding $20,000.

I'll be spending the next two weeks with the paddlers and writing a column
daily about the people and the voyage as we make our way to Victoria. I
know I've got a lot to learn from those who would give up a month to
blisters, muscle ache, hard work and sea-sickness.

Both Vickers and Hill are among the paddlers, Vickers in a sleek black
canoe named Many Hands. It was named for the many hands needed to pull a
canoe 1,600 kilometres, and the many hands that will build a dream.

Mon, Jul 21, 1997

Jody Paterson

VISION QUEST - THE HEALING JOURNEY

FORT RUPERT

My face smells like gasoline from washing it with the soap I lent to the wife of the canoe carver.
The carvers had been up all night trying to get two more canoes ready
to leave with the Tribal Journey entourage Sunday morning. They'd needed
s omething to soften the brushes with before oiling the raw cedar, and gasoline
was all they could find. The carver's wife hasn't been able to get the smell off her hands.

The all-night construction vigil, the chip-chip-chip of men
hollowing out a one-tonne log, hadn't gone unnoticed in the VisionQuest camp across the field.

"I had a wonderful sleep. I could hear my heartbeat all night long,"
declared artist Roy Henry Vickers. "Yeah? Well, my heart sounds like a belt
sander," grumbled a less-rested campmate.

By 9:30 a.m., eight canoes were ready for launch from the beach a few kilometres
south of Port Hardy. The three VisionQuest fibreglass canoes weigh in at a slim
450 pounds apiece, an easy carry to the low-tide mark. The chore was more onerous
for paddlers lugging down the five traditional cedar Tribal Journey canoes, each
a thousand pounds or more.

The day's destination was Alert Bay, 60 kilometres to the south. That's a regular
day's paddle for the VisionQuest paddlers, on the water since July 3 following a route
from Hazelton known as The Grandfathers' Journey. It hasn't been an easy trip to this
point, sometimes 11 or 12 hours paddling in heavy seas and rain that never stops just
to cover those 60 kilometres. A virus has spread among the exhausted paddlers, and
everyone seems to be either recovering from or succumbing to something awful.

From here on, VisionQuest will travel with Tribal Journey, an annual sojourn
from Port Hardy to Victoria. The well-oiled VisionQuest machine will have to make
some allowances for the mellower Tribal Journey: Sunday, delayed by beachside ceremonies,
the canoes set out too late to catch the all-important flood tide.

Vickers has been dreaming about VisionQuest since he was 28. He's 51 now and
free of the addictions that haunted him most of his life; the money raised
by VisionQuest will go toward a recovery centre to help others find the
peace that always eluded Vickers.

Most of the 60 VisionQuest paddlers are RCMP, native and white, picked
from 160 police and civilian applicants by Insp. John Grant. He saw a chance not only
to raise money for a good cause, but make historic reparations with First Nations.

"The RCMP did things in the past that may have been legal at the time, but not moral,"
said Grant. "We're coming into communities to apologize for what has happened
in the past 124 years."

A feast awaits in Alert Bay, as it has in Port Simpson, Kitkatla, Bella Bella.
These travellers are welcome here, and animosities from another era are forgotten.
Fort Rupert resident Terena Hunt watched three eagles escort the VisionQuest
canoes into her home harbor, and knew she was witnessing something important.
"This is the first time in history [First Nations and RCMP] have gotten
together to do something significant for human kind," said Hunt.
VisionQuest is coming into our communities, and they're moving the people.
This is big. I don't know when this will ever happen again."

Tue, Jul 22, 1997

Jody Paterson

Years of misery began in school

ALERT BAY

Cecil Johnson knows that old brick building that darkens the sky behind
the dancers here to greet the canoes. It used to be a residential school
back when he was 12 years old, the year his mother died.

They called it St. Michael's, although there was nothing holy going on
there. Johnson learned to fight at St. Michael's, and later he learned to
drink. He was an expert in both for most of the years he was married, and
kept it up even after his wife committed suicide.

"And then I woke up one day and knew that was the day I wasn't going to
drink anymore. I'd been drinking for four days. I had four days' growth on
my face. I looked in the mirror and said, 'I'm never going to see you
again, you son-of-a-bitch."

That was seven years ago, and everything was supposed to work out after
that. But too many things had gone wrong in his family for too long. A year
ago, Johnson's son committed suicide at age 17. In January, his 21-year-old
daughter attempted suicide.

"I know it's a result of how I brought them up. My son was on the road to
becoming an alcoholic, just like me. Instead, he hanged himself."
When Johnson heard about the VisionQuest project not long after his son's
suicide, he knew he had to be part of it. His son had been a paddler in the
1994 Tribal Journey, and now he too would seek solace from the ocean.
He'd also been an auxiliary RCMP officer for two years, and VisionQuest is
an RCMP initiative in partnership with artist Roy Henry Vickers.

Johnson joined up Sunday with the VisionQuest pullers - the name the
paddlers go by - canoeing from his Fort Rupert home to the site of the
residential school at Alert Bay. He'll stay with the team through Aug. 3,
when they arrive in Victoria for the start of the North American Indigenous
Games.

The VisionQuest dream is to raise $5 million for an addictions recovery
centre, and Johnson is a believer.
"I got goosebumps and was shaking all over a couple days ago just thinking
about going on this. To me, this journey is healing and spiritual. I'm
going to heal a little more. I want to be able to deal better with my son's
death."

He also has a daughter who he wants to survive, but her healing depends on
his own. "She tried to kill herself because she missed her brother so much.
I told her, 'Honey, if you'd succeeded that night, I'd have been in the
grave that same night.'|"

The painted brickwork of St. Michael's is peeling now, and visitors to
Alert Bay stop to take photos of the eerie old place. The residential
school is now band offices.

Wed, Jul 23, 1997

Jody Paterson

`Everything's OK when you're in the boat'

SAYWARD

The morning meeting doesn't always happen. The night's accommodations don't
always come through. But when paddle hits the water, everything's just fine.
As VisionQuest paddlers made their way down Johnstone Strait, dolphins
played in the wake of the support boats and a whale spouted off in the
distance.

And the 60 paddlers say the nature show was even better farther north,
where a grizzly reared on to its hind legs on shore at Rivers Inlet and an
eagle was lured to water level with a newly caught cod.

"It's been long days, short nights, and everyone gets tired, tired, tired.
It's been wet, but wonderful. And everything is always OK when you're in
the boat," said Victoria RCMP Sgt. Garry Spence.

The VisionQuest contingent, a mix of RCMP and civilian paddlers raising
money for an addictions recovery centre, left Hazelton July 3 and will
arrive in Victoria Aug. 3.

The three canoes are dependent on a fleet of support boats that stick close
by: Zodiacs to transfer fresh crews into the canoes, two cabin cruisers to
prepare hot chocolate and soup for rain-soaked travellers, and a seine boat
that has alternately been bunkhouse, baggage caddy and change room for
police paddlers donning red serge for a grand community entrance.
VisionQuest organizers Roy Henry Vickers and RCMP Staff Sgt. Ed Hill called
in their markers to muster up a support crew, all of whom are friends of
one or the other.

Blaine and Henny Hagedorn's luxurious Toucan carries "the ladies who cook,"
including Henny. The Hagedorns knew Hill from his time in the Gibsons RCMP
detachment; Blaine, who owns a SuperValu in Gibsons, called in his own
markers to come up with most of the food for the trip for free.

Greg Grant is also from Gibsons, and turned over his real-estate business
to his employees for the duration while he and crewmate George McRae cater
to the paddlers from aboard Therapy. Relief paddlers count it as a bonus to
spend time on Therapy, where the blueberry muffins are baking and the
barbecue's always on.

Seine boat captain Cecil Hill grew up with Vickers in Kitkatla. He's a
lifelong friend and a VisionQuest believer, recovering from his own
alcoholism.
"If anyone knows about the reason for this, it's Roy and I. I told Roy that
if our visits have a positive effect on just one person in each community,
it's worth it," said Hill.

The message of recovery, hope and healing was particularly important to
communities on B.C.'s north coast, said Hill. Many of the villages have
been devastated by poverty and addiction.
"I see a great need for a lot of healing. And the really great thing is
they recognize it themselves in the communities. They're screaming for
help," said Hill.

Few of the paddlers were prepared for the emotional welcomes they received
in communities where hopelessness prevailed. Hill said the healing goes
both ways.
"I said to Roy after our first two stops, I don't know if I have enough
tears to make it to Victoria."
Donations may be made to: VisionQuest Recovery Society, 657 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C. V5Z 1K6.

Thu, Jul 24, 1997

Jody Paterson

Nobody complains about little problems

BROWNS BAY

We'd been paddling for almost seven hours. The trucks with our clothes and
tents were supposed to meet us at a campsite north of Campbell River.
But a security company hired by the producers of the movie Eaters of the
Dead being shot nearby had blocked the roads passing near the set. So the
trucks couldn't get through.

Nobody complained too much. Those who demand order from chaos must have
been weeded out in the early organizational days of VisionQuest. The
1,600-kilometre canoe trip from Hazelton to Victoria is no place for the
inflexible.

There's not a chance of keeping plans straight when 33 people are paddling
in the ocean and another 33 or so are driving vans, boats and U-Hauls
through remote communities to meet them. The other day in Alert Bay, a van
was left behind after one guy passed the keys to another guy, who passed
them to another guy, who thought the first guy was supposed to be driving.

The night before, billeting arrangements fell through and paddlers found
out at midnight that they had no place to stay. I spent the night on the
couch in the coffee room of the Alert Bay police station - one of the
benefits of being part of the RCMP-supported VisionQuest - while fellow
travellers slept in the weight room.

Victoria RCMP Sgt. Garry Spence said one of the weirder stays of the trip
was at Namu. Paddlers pulled into the site of an abandoned cannery in a
downpour. Desperate for an alternative to pitching a tent in the flood,
they camped out on racks once used for drying fishnets. Spence said the
shelves of bedrolls looked like a prisoner-of-war camp.

And in the absence of chaos, there's the unexpected. Near Kitkatla, a
paddler getting out of a Zodiac support boat accidentally hit the throttle,
slamming another paddler into the rocks. He had to be airlifted to hospital.
Another paddler, newly pregnant, had to be sent home several days into the
trip due to exhaustion. A photographer hired to document the historic trip
couldn't handle the rustic living conditions and quit. One paddler's bug
bite infected to the point that he required intravenous antibiotics.

But the journey carries on, and RCMP Insp. John Grant keeps his eyes on the
prize: money and awareness raised through VisionQuest for an addictions
recovery centre. And as one RCMP paddler noted, flexibility is one of the
most essential characteristics sought in police recruits.

The trucks never did show up that night. We finally loaded on to the seiner
travelling with us as a support vessel and were transported to a
neighboring bay. I fell asleep on the deck. I've learned to fall asleep
anywhere, even in a recreation centre with the guy next to me snoring and a
couple of younger paddlers playing basketball at the far end.

On this night, I'll bunk on a bench in the Campbell River Band's bighouse,
just me and the VisionQuesters and 150 or so paddlers travelling with
Tribal Journey. There's a cedar fire burning in the middle of the room, and
the kids are chanting and playing drums in the corner. And I'll sleep just
fine.

Sat, Jul 26, 1997

Jody Paterson

Tradition rides in cedar canoes

QUALICUM

They weigh a tonne. Really. And VisionQuest's fibreglass canoes can dance
circles around them.

But there are no rivals in beauty to the traditional cedar canoe, built for
warriors and travellers and powered by the songs of those who pull it
through the water.

The canoes come from Fort Rupert, Alert Bay, Campbell River, Comox, leaving
their home communities to make their way south to Victoria with Tribal
Journeys.

The three VisionQuest canoes joined five Tribal Journeys canoes a week ago;
numbers have since grown to 14 as the procession makes its way along the
Island's east coast, and as many as 50 are anticipated to arrive in the
Inner Harbor on Aug. 3 for the start of the Indigenous Games.
"Cedar canoes are very important to our culture. We have to pick the proper
tree, do the proper blessing, show respect for the tree for giving up its
life to become a canoe," said Michelle Washington, Tribal Journeys
co-ordinator. "Not just anyone can build and paddle a canoe."

Canoe culture was reawakened in B.C. with a paddle to Expo '86 by the Bella
Bella natives. They then challenged other tribes to try their hand at
long-distance paddling; the result was 1993's Qatwus gathering in Bella
Bella, which attracted 24 canoes from as far away as Washington state.
Tribal Journeys debuted in 1994 to mark the Commonwealth Games. For the
next two years, First Nations paddlers did smaller runs in preparation for
the biggest voyage of all: The 1997 North American Indigenous Games.

The Squamish canoes, joining up with Tribal Journeys in Nanaimo on Sunday,
will carry a sacred bundle for the Games from the elders of Hobbema, Alta.
The bundle is being carried to Vancouver from Kamloops by runners before
being put on the Squamish canoe.

In each native community from Port Hardy south, VisionQuest and Tribal
Journeys canoes have been greeted on the beach by a welcoming party and
invited in to feast and enjoy a night in the big house. Washington said the
beachside ceremony hearkens back to a time when canoes had to ask
permission to come ashore on another nation's territory.

"When a canoe asks to come ashore for a night of rest, they may be asking
their traditional enemies. It's important to seek permission, because it's
not just us standing here on the beach - it's all of our ancestors standing
here with us, and they're seeing the canoes of their enemies coming in."
Each community sends out its own canoe to greet incoming canoes, and guests
are careful not to speed in ahead of it: "The host comes in first to warn
the people that these canoes are coming into their territory," said
Washington.

Campbell River paddler Gary Dawson-Quatell is one of 27 pullers on the
Klaneekwala canoe, which joined Tribal Journeys on Thursday.
He said his grandfather used to talk all the time about his canoe travels,
and Dawson-Quatell wanted to try it for himself to "bring back my history."
And that's the point of Tribal Journeys, said Washington.
"We're doing this for the love of our culture, our people. We want to show
our youth what we used to do."

Sun Jul 27, 1997

Jody Paterson

The healing journey - Surviving suicide epidemic

I was in the food lineup at the Qualicum welcoming feast when Patricia
Johnson told me that she'd tried to kill herself last summer.
She was 20 at the time. Her younger brother had killed himself three months
before, and she just didn't know how to live without him. They had been all
each other had for most of their lives, holding on from foster home to
foster home and through their own mother's suicide when Patricia was nine.

That was the year Patricia started drinking, and by 12 she was already
worrying that she was an alcoholic. She kept on drinking after her
brother's suicide, after her own suicide attempt, even after an accident
seven months ago when the boat she was on crashed in frigid waters near
Oweekenow.

There's no liquor store in Oweekenow, so Patricia and some relatives had
gone to stock up in another village. The boat was loaded to the gunwales
with booze when it crashed on to the rocks. Patricia almost died of
hypothermia, and was angry when she didn't.

Three months ago, Patricia checked into a treatment centre in Kitimat. It
was hard staying sober, especially when a sister of one of the people she
was going through treatment with committed suicide. Then another guy
getting treatment found out his brother had killed himself.

In First Nations communities, suicide always gets someone you love sooner
or later.
In every community VisionQuest has visited on its canoe trip from Hazelton
to Victoria, paddlers have heard the pleas from elders to help them heal
the sickness in their villages. And as they throw donations in the blanket
at the bighouse toward an addiction recovery centre, they're buying hope.
Roy Henry Vickers went to the RCMP with the concept of a 1,600-kilometre
canoe trip to raise money for a recovery centre. The RCMP saw the chance
for grassroots involvement in crime prevention and reparation for past
wrongs against Indians. And VisionQuest was born.

"Recovery is recovery of our birthright: our right to be free, to have fun,
to find unconditional love. We won't need to run from our emotions
anymore," said Vickers.
"When I was in recovery, I learned to say, 'I'm Roy Vickers, I'm an addict,
and I'll stay addicted to whatever keeps me away from my emotions.'|"

Vickers has been sober for five years, since going to a recovery centre in
Wickenburg, Arizona. His two sisters went through the same program, as did
his wife Rhonda. The odds are only 4 in100 that a Wickenburg graduate will
be clean a year later, but that's still four times better than the 1 in 100
odds for those at other treatment centres.

Patricia plans to beat the odds. She saw her brother in a vision a few days
after the boating accident; they hugged and laughed and he refused to say
goodbye, and Patricia knew he'd be with her forever. After almost dying
twice, she's wondering if maybe there's a reason she's supposed to keep on
living right now.

She went back a while ago to find her old friends in Oweekenow, but
everybody was still drinking like it was fun, even though hardly anyone was
laughing. She's thinking of moving somewhere else.

Fri Jul 25, 1997

Peter Salmon

Songkeeper dreams of the day all can sing

Comox

The elders call him the songkeeper. And at a time when entire villages no
longer have anyone who remembers their songs, William Wasden is a
sought-after man.

Wasden was 19 when elder Tom Willie came from Kingcome Inlet a decade ago
to visit Wasden's father, who was then the band manager in Alert Bay.
Willie was looking for singers.
"My father took me to him, and the old man sang a song. I was really
captured by his singing. I felt bad that the elders had kept these songs
going, and now the art was dying," said Wasden.

Willie sang several songs to Wasden, including a rhythmically difficult one
that the elder said had the hardest beat to learn.
Wasden taped it and listened to it over and over at home that night. The
next day, he sang it flawlessly for Willie. The teacher had found himself a
pupil.

Wasden spent the next four years training under Willie almost every night.
The VisionQuest paddler learned more than 200 traditional songs, some in
languages 1,000 years old.

"Cannibal Dance songs, weather dances, chief songs, songs for feasting,
paddling, mourning - I know songs for all occasions. At almost every big
gathering, I'm asked to sing," Wasden said.
An illness that hit Wasden when the paddlers reached Bella Bella kept him
out of the canoe until Thursday, but not out of the festivities. When the
three VisionQuest canoes pulled into Wasden's home village of Alert Bay
this week, Wasden sang and danced at the feast and celebration that
followed.
"I was an artist before I was a singer, but what I saw was a lot of artists
and nobody singing. I really enjoy being part of our culture, seeing the
joy and happiness on the elders' faces when I sing for them."

Wasden taught traditional singing at the Alert Bay school for four years,
and now contracts out to native villages that need to relearn their own
songs. His late teacher was "the last of the master songkeepers"; Wasden
figures there are probably only five or six singers on the north end of the
Island who know a wide variety of songs.

His family has never shared his interest - he still remembers his
disappointment at discovering that his mother was fluent in Kwakwala but
never taught her children. Native heritage is an obsession for Wasden, and
he dreams of the day when tribes don't need an imported songkeeper to teach
them.

Wasden continues to paint and carve as well, but art fanciers will have to
see his work in the bighouse or not at all. "I keep my artwork inside my culture.
Some things are sacred, and artwork is one of the most important parts of our
culture. I don't think that these things that were sacred treasures of our elders
should be hanging on the walls of collectors."

Wasden's own struggles with drug and alcohol addiction have led him to seek
his own recovery in VisionQuest, an RCMP/First Nations initiative to raise
$5 million for an addictions recovery centre.

"I've done my partying. It's time for something else. The trip from New
Hazelton to Victoria is the time for me to think what I want to do with my
life. Because I am in a position to lead. I know that."

Tue, Jul 29, 1997

- Soul craft- Corey Moraes's transformed canoe

It was to be a journey of transformation, for him and for many on their own
journeys of recovery from addiction.
And so artist Corey Moraes transformed a canoe, changing fibreglass into
art and sign paint into spirituality.

The New Westminster artist was commissioned by VisionQuest chief
expeditionist Chris Cooper to paint the canoe Cooper would use on the
1,600-kilometre trip from Hazelton to Victoria. Moraes wanted the design to
suit Cooper as well as the goals of VisionQuest.

"The wolf was an animal Chris was drawn to, so I chose a sea wolf. I
thought about his knowledge of excursions and guiding, so I had the sea
wolf blend into a killer whale on the bow, and at the back is a human
transforming into a whale," said Moraes, 27. "That represents us as
human beings, gaining knowledge. This journey is like a transformation
for most of us."

Moraes, a Tsimshian, consulted with a Tsimshian elder in Kitkatla to come
up with a name for the finished canoe. The elder suggested Soul Entering,
the closest translation for transformation in the Tsimshian language.
Moraes also organized a traditional blessing for Soul Entering and the
other two VisionQuest canoes - Many Hands, owned and painted by Roy Henry
Vickers, and Strong Arrow, owned by the RCMP. The canoes were brushed with
cedar boughs and blessed by Burrard Nation elder Bob George on Apr. 23 at
Ambleside.

Like several of the VisionQuest paddlers, Moraes is in recovery. He quit
drinking two years ago, transforming from alcoholic to artist. He also
became a drug and alcohol counsellor, reaching out to others as they had
once reached out to him.

He remembers his early days in a treatment centre, feeling instant dislike
and detachment from the others in for treatment. He later realized that
what he saw in them were pieces of himself.

But friendship grew, and those who'd walked the path first helped Moraes
stay on track. The hardest part was watching some fall away.
Moraes wants to use his art to connect to his culture, carving masks and
totems and ultimately, a cedar canoe. That goal has been reinforced by his
VisionQuest experience.

"When we arrive in the canoe, the people appreciate it tremendously, seeing
it in the water. That's what I'm trying to achieve in my art, to touch
somebody. And there is community in a canoe, because everyone has to pull
as one."

Moraes wasn't sure what to expect from the month-long journey, which ends
Aug. 3 when the canoes paddle into Victoria's Inner Harbor for the start of
the Indigenous Games. What he has found is the beginning of something big,
the "genesis of a strong movement" among First Nations.

"It has been an honor for me to witness the healing that is beginning
already," said Moraes. "We will rebuild the strength that has always been
there. As an elder said to me, our culture has never died. It was asleep,
and now it's reawakening."

Wed Jul 30, 1997

Jody Paterson

Spiritual voyage also feeds the body

It'd be the weight-loss opportunity of a lifetime if it weren't for all the
food.

Three weeks of pulling canoes through ocean waters seven or eight hours a
day ought to be enough to burn off a zillion or so calories. The only
problem is the zillion and a half consumed.

Morning comes early for paddlers on the VisionQuest journey from Hazelton
to Victoria, and even earlier for "the ladies who cook" - Henny Hagedorn,
Carol Grant, Joanne Dunn and Joy Hill. If breakfast is 6 a.m., the women
are up at 5 a.m., whipping up a vat of porridge and scrambling up a chicken
coop's worth of eggs.

Their afternoons are spent aboard a support boat preparing the next day's
lunches for paddlers and crew: 100 sandwiches, 100 apples, 100 granola
bars, tucked under the canoe seats first thing in the morning or delivered
via Zodiac in the midst of the day's travels.

Chilled paddlers who pulled canoes in the rain for much of the trip always
found a bowl of hot soup waiting aboard a support ship. One rainy night in
Namu, the cooks ambitiously made spaghetti in an abandoned cannery, adding
fistfuls of pasta to the same pot of water until everyone was fed.

The women - all either a wife, sister or friend of VisionQuest organizers -
had anticipated having to cook dinner more often. But the day's big meal
has largely been taken care of by Indian communities as paddlers stop for
the night on their journey to raise funds for an addiction recovery centre.
The communities spend days preparing a feast for the hundreds of
VisionQuest and Tribal Journeys travellers. In keeping with feast
tradition, organizers arrive at people's homes with a box of ingredients
for a specific dish to be brought to the dinner; in small communities,
almost everyone will cook something.

In Port Simpson, there was octopus, oolican, seal intestines; in Fort
Rupert, there was caesar salad, chicken, garlic bread; in Alert Bay, there
was sweet and sour pork, chow mein, spaghetti; in Nanoose there was corn,
roast beef, curried rice. And at every dinner there is salmon, barbecued
and smoked and baked and dried.

As good as the dinners get, the desserts are even better. The 70-member
Qualicum band laid out so many pies that paddlers had leftovers for lunch
the next day.

Communities have been generous with their food and their support, say
Hagedorn and Hill. In Hartley Bay, where a heartbroken community was
grieving for a 15-year-old girl who had committed suicide, the feast went
ahead regardless and every guest was given a drinking glass as a gift.
In Kitkatla, women brought their best china and silver from home for the
feast. In Qualicum, bandanas and water bottles were given to everyone. In
Bella Bella, freshly baked bread was handed out as the canoes departed.
RCMP Insp. John Grant, who organized VisionQuest with artist Roy Henry
Vickers, said the real gift of the journey is watching the RCMP paddlers
learn what he has known for a long time.

"I've spent a lot of time in First Nations communities and I know what
they're capable of. They're rich, vibrant communities," said Grant. "But
watching some of the members see this for the first time is like watching
your kid opening Christmas gifts. We will not be the same people when we
return."

Thu, Jul 31, 1997

Jody Paterson

Biker of the sea rides to paddlers' aid

He's the ocean's Easy Rider, cruising the high seas with the wind in his
hair and a spare motor at his back. And when he hears that familiar cry,
"Frank!" he knows it's time to turn that Zodiac and find the distressed
paddler who needs a bottle of water, a break from pulling or a little privacy
for bladder relief.

Frank Camp has been riding Zodiacs for more than 20 years. He has worn out
three of them so far on trips to distant ports, including Skagway, Alaska.
"I love the adventure of the Zodiac. I compare it to the person who drives
a motorcycle: it's independence, power, control, and the peace of being in
nature," said Camp.

Camp, former superintendent of Pacific Rim National Park, saw a poster for
VisionQuest one day in Tofino. A longtime acquaintance of VisionQuest
organizer Roy Henry Vickers, Camp volunteered to sign on as a support boat
for the month-long canoe journey from Hazelton to Victoria.

"I stay with the canoes, keep an eye out for unforeseen water conditions,
change somebody out of a canoe. In really bad water, I provide a degree of
confidence. That plays quite a role in what I'm supposed to be doing."
Camp was born into wilderness. His father was a trapper and park warden and
his mother was Cree; Camp was born in a log cabin north of Edmonton with
his grandmother as midwife. The family then moved to the wilds of Jasper,
where Camp later returned as a park warden himself in the 1940s.
"I've worked in every national park west of Ottawa except Prince Albert,"
said Camp. "My wife and I raised our kids in the mountains, carried the
babies in a papoose."

Over the years, Camp has guided for Mexicans hunting Dall sheep in the
Yukon, organized a packhorse trip to Jasper for a writer looking for
inspiration and recounted his travels in his 1993 book Roots in the Rockies.
Camp's West Coast roots go back to 1827, when his grandfather arrived as a
seaman aboard the Cadboro, a Hudson's Bay trading vessel. "I'll see things
along the coast and think, 'My granddad must have seen this.' "

Camp's wife is tending to things at their Ucluelet home while he's on the
water with VisionQuest. She's no stranger to adventure - she snowshoed from
their isolated home in the Rockies years ago while in labor - but picks her
spots carefully for Zodiac touring. "She likes the Broken Islands," said
Camp.

VisionQuest's twofold goal of raising money for an addiction recovery
centre and healing the historical animosity between RCMP and First Nations
appeals to Camp. He admires the 50 RCMP paddlers on the journey for trying
to "open doors that have been closed for years."

Camp worked with native trainees during his years with the Parks branch and
was troubled that they often didn't have the confidence to do "what I knew
they were capable of." The 1,600-kilometre canoe trip down the coast will
bring recovery to more than just those with addictions, he said.
"There are a lot of degrees of recovery. I think of this journey as
recovery of self-esteem."

But enough reflection. The radio is beckoning; somebody somewhere needs
Camp's services. Camp straddles his Zodiac and is gone, a free man on the
open ocean.

Fri, Aug 1, 1997

Jody Paterson

Cree Ray Tootoosis answered elders' call

Ray Tootoosis used to be a regular guy. He played hockey, did a little
rodeo, spent time with his wife and kids.

But then the elders called him seven years ago at his home in Hobbema,
Alta., and asked him to go on a mission to Wyoming. And life hasn't been
the same since.

Tootoosis is the keeper of the sacred bundle, which contains something
sacred from every tribe participating in the North American Indigenous
Games. The bundle is "life, unity, protection," said Tootoosis, and very
serious business.

"Through this bundle, all the elders of First Nations throughout North
America are uniting," said Tootoosis, a Plains Cree.

Tootoosis first saw the sacred bundle in 1990 in the Bighorn Mountains of
Wyoming, where there is a 28-spoke medicine wheel, seven metres across,
that is believed to be at least 700 years old. The site of the wheel is the
most sacred spot located centrally between the U.S. and Canada.

That was the year Tootoosis was head of Team Alberta for the first
Indigenous Games in Edmonton. He went to Wyoming not knowing why the elders
had summoned him, and he has still never asked why he was chosen to be
keeper of the bundle.

"I'm just the keeper. I work with four elders, and they tell me what to do.
I was told to go to the elders and do what they said, and by the time I
went from Hobbema to Wyoming, I had a bundle. I didn't know what was in
store for me."

Since then, Tootoosis has taken the bundle to four international Indigenous
Games and wherever else he has been told to, which has meant many a road
trip. It's a lifestyle not suited to a working man, and so he depends on
his wife, a tribal councillor, for financial support.

Tootoosis left home in mid-June for Wyoming to start the relay run that
would bring the bundle into Victoria for the 1997 Games. Runners carried
the bundle in seven-minute relay legs up through the U.S. into Alberta and
then B.C.; at Vancouver, it was put into the Squamish Tribal Journeys canoe
for the rest of the trip.

Tootoosis can't say what's in the bundle, nor can it be photographed,
although a photographer made it through security one time and put a picture
of it into a Vancouver newspaper. He suspects his bundle is the one an
elder foresaw 45 years ago, the bundle that would "unite the Indian people."
Only certain elders can open the bundle and add items; Tootoosis keeps
additions in a blanket beside the bundle until an elder is available. Rooms
must be blessed before the bundle is brought in, and women who are
menstruating are supposed to wear a blanket around their waist if they're
close to it.

"Women are so powerful that at their time of the month, they can cancel any
medicine," said Tootoosis. "The Plains Cree hold women so high that they
give light. The Creator gave them the power of childbirth, and that's the
biggest power of all."

At home, Tootoosis generally stores the sacred bundle in his bedroom. But
he won't see home for a while - after the Indigenous Games end Aug. 10,
Tootoosis is off to another ceremony in Minnesota at the request of the
elders.

He doesn't know how long the elders will want him to remain as keeper of
the bundle, but presumes it's his job until he's too old to do it anymore.
"It's a big honor, a really big honor. But it's got its ups and downs."

Sat, Aug 2, 1997

Jody Paterson

Mounties found tears and reconciliation
Final column in series

The Cree used to call them "the men with no legs." They didn't walk among
the people. They just drove up in their police cars.

They came for people's children, or with handcuffs, or to stop the exchange
of gifts that breached anti-potlatch laws. They came to carry out the
wishes of the federal Indian agent, who didn't tolerate any tradition but
the white man's.

The red serge of the RCMP hasn't been a welcome sight in many native
communities. And while police were just doing their job as law enforcers of
the day, RCMP Insp. John Grant knows that it has long been time for an
apology.

The VisionQuest journey into 21 Indian communities from Hazelton to
Victoria is "probably the most important trip the RCMP ever made since the
march west in 1873," said Grant. With 50 RCMP members aboard the three
VisionQuest canoes, the red serge is returning this time with a much
different message. "I don't think the organization has stepped up before
and said, 'We're sorry.' What an opportunity this has been for the RCMP to
come into the communities the First Nations way," said Grant, who organized
VisionQuest with artist Roy Henry Vickers.

The emotional impact of the VisionQuest journey was greatest in the
isolated mainland villages, where elders wept as the canoes landed on the
beach. Some hadn't seen a canoe in their village since childhood; for many,
the sight was a poignant reminder of a time before residential schools,
alcohol, suicide, despair.

Newlyweds Gary and Linda Manzer signed on with VisionQuest mostly for the
chance at a month-long canoe trip but will end it Sunday having witnessed
something much more profound than scenery.

"It's been incredibly emotional. It has meant so much to the people in the
villages to have the police coming in, saying they're sorry and they want
to help the people heal," said Linda Manzer.

Philip Lincoln, paddling with VisionQuest since Klemtu, said the
1,600-kilometre journey has been "a really strong start" to mending
relations between First Nations and RCMP: "All the villages have been able
to talk to these guys like people."

At 20, Lincoln has been through the deaths of three of his six siblings,
two of them lost to drugs and alcohol. Early death runs like a plague
through native communities, their culture in government-orchestrated
shambles for more than a century.

I cried when I heard John Grant apologize in the Comox bighouse. It was
just a moment, a single sentence, but there had been so many sad stories
before it and so many still to come.

"Before we left on this journey, an elder told us - a roomful of tough
Mounties - to bring lots of Kleenex, because we were going to need it. All
of us kind of shrugged it off," said RCMP Staff Sgt. Ed Hill. "But now,
there's not a guy among us who hasn't cried."

The 70 RCMP and civilian paddlers will have been a month on the water when
they and Tribal Journeys make the final pull Sunday into the Inner Harbor.
There have been tears and arguments, miserable weather and injury, but
there have also been water fights and sun on the water and the awareness
that change is coming, and they are part of it.

The work for the VisionQuest Recovery Society will continue long after the
canoe trip has ended - as Vickers notes, "this is good, but it's a small
thing in the journey of life." There is still much to be done before there
is money for an addictions recovery centre, before old hurts have healed.

For me, the journey has been to places of the heart. I met a man not so
long out of prison who makes art on lifejackets; another who is seven
months sober and celebrating; another whose songs will awaken nations. I
met RCMP who had connected to native communities long before VisionQuest,
and others who will connect from this point on.

I saw communities with little give everything, and a child with nothing
give the only quarter he had. And I was a foreigner in Indian territory
instead of the keeper of the colonial house, and I was welcomed.
Safe journeys, VisionQuesters. My life is better for having known you.

Jody Paterson, columnist,
Times Colonist