‘We know, we understand and we choose love going forward’

Fourteen cousins began a quest across the Northwest Territories to uncover their ancestral roots – a journey made possible through “years of research.”

The Blondin-Boland journey began when distant relatives who had spent most of their lives spread across Canada decided it was time to reunite in the North .

The cousins share a grandfather, Bill Boland from Wales, who moved to the NWT in 1911.

Bill worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Fort Good Hope where he met Georgina Blondin. The two were married on August 5, 1916. They had eight children.

Georgina contracted tuberculosis and passed away in November 1932. Before her death, she asked Ruth Lee – a nurse who shared a strong bond with the children – to marry Bill and take care of the family.

Ruth and Bill ultimately moved to Toronto and had three children together.

“In lots of ways, it’s a tale of two grandmothers, because that blended family of the two marriages produced 11 kids,” said Sue Sirrs, a grandchild of Ruth and Bill, who lives in Halifax and was one of the cousins on the trip.

“I always wanted to go to the North and I never did. So to connect with the people, the land and the culture… my goodness, what a gift we had.”

Sirrs said the cousins began regular Zoom calls in May last year to learn more about their grandfather and the family’s history. The trip included three of Bill’s great-grandchildren.

Many of the cousins remember reading a novel, Winter by Cornelius Osgood, when they were young. In the book, American anthropologist Osgood shares his experiences living in the NWT. Some of the cousins recall parts of an early 1950s edition being dedicated to Bill, Georgina and their children.

“The children referenced are our aunts and uncles and, for many on the trip, the kids referenced in the book are their mothers,” Sirrs said.

“That story was frozen in time for me and this trip made everybody come alive. The people that we met were so good and so kind to us, and so welcoming.”

David Anderson, from Rainy River First Nation, is another of the 14. He said the cousins had been trying to visit the North for years.

The pandemic interrupted a first attempt at the trip. Last year, almost 20 people had booked flights before the NWT wildfires disrupted that plan, too.

This year, things finally came together.

“You get 14 people who haven’t seen each other for years and years and then, all of a sudden, we’re together for two whole weeks,” said Anderson.

“When we stood on top of the hill in Yellowknife, finally, all of us together, it was quite the moment.”

The trip took the cousins to Hay River, Fort Resolution, Fort Providence, Délı̨nę, Norman Wells, Tulita and Great Bear Lake.

In some communities, residents told Anderson they remembered his grandparents, which meant a lot to him.

In Fort Resolution, Chief Louis Balsillie greeted the family when they arrived and attended a ceremony the cousins held.

“That’s the part that hit home. This is truly an epic odyssey for all of us: the first step of us reconnecting with the North,” said Anderson, “and reconnecting with our families in the North, the land and the water.”

Uncle Archie’s diary

One cousin had a diary that belonged to their great uncle, Archie.

Archie, who was one of Georgina and Bill’s children, passed away aged 13 at St Joseph’s residential school in Fort Resolution.

Sirrs said Bill took his other sons out of the school after that.

The diary contains entries from the last three months of Archie’s life in 1930. On some days, he wrote about aircraft flying in and out of the community. On others, he wrote about picnics on Mission Island.

“But there were days he couldn’t write about,” Sirrs added.

“He said it was a bad day. You don’t know what it means.”

The diary suggests Archie’s little brother was with him on the night of his death, and shows the brother continuing to make entries in the journal afterward.

Almost a century later, the family’s words still have power.

Sirrs said Anderson’s sister, Laura Horton, demonstrated that when she created a collage of family pictures alongside some of grandmother Georgina’s embroidery. At the bottom of the collage, Horton added words that read: “We know, we understand and we choose love going forward.”

Sirrs called that quote “monumental.”

Horton, who also lives in Rainy River First Nation, had dreamed of returning home since she was a teenager.

“Finding cousins from all of the 11 children was really important,” she said.

“Going to St Joseph’s Mission where our uncle passed away, and being able to have ceremony and call his spirit and let him know that we have always remembered him … to call the ancestors in from all across through ceremony was extremely humbling and moving.”

As the trip progressed, Horton urged her cousins to learn an Ojibway song titled Mino Bimaadiziwin, or Good Life.

“Life, good life,” they sang together in Ojibway, translated here into English. “It’s up to you, it’s up to me what I will do. I’ll do good things with life.”

Horton said she needed almost 40 years to be financially and emotionally ready for the journey. Though she had been to the likes of Norway and Yukon through work, this was her first time visiting the NWT.

“Why did it take so long to get home? Isn’t that an interesting question? I’m a pretty open person but that personal little girl fear, it really was real,” she said.

“We finally faced it and got there.”

Barbara White, another of the cousins, will never forget relative Walter Blondin – from Tulita and now a Fort Simpson resident – spending 12 to 15 hours on the Mackenzie River to meet the group.

“There were so many instances like that. When we landed in Tulita on our way from Délı̨nę to Norman Wells, we had about 15 relatives meet us at the airport,” White said. Despite the Tulita visit being the shortest of stopovers, people had come “just to say hello.”

“It was absolutely one of the best things we have done in our lives. The greatest surprise for me was how welcoming everybody was,” she said. “It was like we had known them all our lives.”

White grew up in Ontario and now lives in Vancouver. Of all the cousins, she said she is the only one who had seen grandfather Bill, who passed away when she was two years old. They lived with White’s father on northern Saskatchewan’s Lac la Ronge.

An important moment for White was when she and her sisters left their mother’s ashes at the cabin where she had been born, an old trading post on the Dease Arm of Great Bear Lake. A Campbell’s Soup sign still rests on one wall.

She had only met her cousins on a few occasions before this trip. “Yet when we were together, it was as if we were eight years old again,” she said.

“We just almost picked up where we left off.”

‘Deeply spiritual and emotional’

Ashley Day, who grew up in Uxbridge and now lives in Toronto, is one of Bill and Georgina’s great-grandchildren. She was a physical educator for a few years until her area of focus shifted to Indigenous health.

“It was through that education that I was really sort-of searching for my identity as an Indigenous person. That wasn’t uncommon from the rest of the Indigenous students that I was coming in contact with at the time,” she said.

Today, Day works as faculty at York University’s School of Kinesiology and Health Science.

She found being part of the “deeply spiritual and emotional” trip challenging.

“The idea of doing this was so overwhelming, and I felt like I really needed to. We’ve all been piecing histories together on our own for years, decades, and for some people their entire lives,” Day said.

Life growing up in the south wasn’t easy. Day said she was taught to not talk about being Indigenous or “show emotions.”

Day’s grandfather went to residential school in Fort Providence and Fort Resolution. She said that was something she wasn’t aware of until she was 20 years old.

“We always knew that we were native, but we never talked about it,” she said.

“While we didn’t look substantially different from the people that were around us, we were always slightly different in the way that we looked – but overwhelmingly different in the way that we lived, too.

“I lived with a lot of effects of colonialism without really knowing what its roots were.”

Day said she grew up with a single mother and two siblings. Her mom, she said, didn’t have the “luxury to not face racism,” and she felt guilt for being allowed to do so.

“Even now, in her passing, I just feel like I understand her more and celebrate what she was able to do with really very little. She was such a survivor,” she said, “and it always goes back to our roots.”

Homecoming

Day said her cousin Kristine Geary encouraged her to come on the trip, which she was initially hesitant to join.

Geary grew up in a small cabin on the Mackenzie River in Norman Wells. During the trip, the cousins visited the grave of Geary’s great-grandfather, who she said was one of the people who signed Treaty 11.

Geary’s mother, a trapper, attended four residential schools. At 15 years old, Geary moved in with her adoptive family in British Columbia.

“I never really had family after that point. I had kind-of kept in touch with my brother up north. It’s very difficult because he also now lives off the land, like my mother did,” she explained.

“Not only were we meeting cousins from across Canada. but we were meeting cousins that we had never met,” she said.

“The emotion was so great and I think a lot of it is still being absorbed as we go through pictures, as we reconnect with our cousins. It’s going to be a work in progress.”

Geary said the trip was a “homecoming” for her. She was touched by the time the cousins spent with each other, like when they ate moose meat and stew together.

“Going back was peaceful. I wouldn’t say it was closure. I would say it was the beginning of my journey of better understanding myself,” she said.

Geary now lives in Kingston, where she owns Maple Leaf Tours, a bus and tour company.

Like Day, Geary said she was taught not to talk about being Indigenous while growing up.

“For me, what really was a switch was when Kamloops 215 happened. It was like a dam had burst. I was like, ‘Oh my God. We’re allowed to talk about residential schools?’ It was all over the news and media and I thought maybe we don’t have to hide this any more. Maybe we can talk about it,” she said.

“It’s so true when they say you never show your emotions. I never saw my mum cry, ever.”

Geary said healing for her is an ongoing journey. While there are parts of the story she cannot share with her children, she said, she was happy to share it with some of her cousins.

The next step for her is building a cabin near the place where she grew up in Norman Wells.

“I felt like I finally belonged somewhere. I finally had family. Somebody else got it, it wasn’t just me,” she said.

“There are so many more like us, suffering in silence alone. There are cousins out there that are looking for you, too. The fact our family was able to connect? We will always be connected.”

For Anderson, the journey itself was a sacred ceremony. He said he could feel the presence of the ancestors while visiting the places where his parents and grandparents lived.

“When we use our sage in a way that was given to us, when we use our medicines in a way that was given to us, when we accept the gifts that the Creator has given to us to help us, we are able to open up ourselves – not just our minds and our hearts but also our spirits,” he said.

“We’re here because our ancestors walked this land. We’re here because our lives have been shaped by this place. We want to honour that life and honour the relatives.”

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Correction: September 18, 2024 – 12:03 MT. A previous version of this story stated Bill worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Hay River. In fact, he worked in Fort Good Hope.