Thompson and Nelson House (posted from the Thompson, MB Library)

(this post covers 10- 12 August, 2007)

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Sunday, 12 August-

This morning we woke to a beautiful sunny day. The overnight temperatures were around fifty (Fahrenheit, that is) so it was a cool breakfast and wash-up but the morning sun feels great.
We drove into Thompson and stopped at the RCMP office to see what they would recommend for parking the van—just so we’d know (and to see the RCMP office). The recommendation is to park at City Hall during business hours and leave the keys with them in case the vehicle has to be moved. I like our deal with Colleen better so we’ll go with that. The RCMP office looked like any modern up-and-coming small-city police office—very clean and professional—and friendlier than many.
Today our goal was Nelson House, a Cree community which historically had a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trading post but today is a Cree reserve or what we know as a reservation. We only drove a mile or so out of Thompson when the good road ended and our 50 kilometer road to Nelson House turned to gravel with alternating stretches of rough asphalt. It wasn’t long until we were passed by some young fool in his SUV who kicked up a stone and put another crack in our windshield. We continued to look for wildlife without much success but finally did see two pairs of sandhill cranes. We’ve seen the cranes in their wintering grounds in Florida (in the Ocala and the Everglades) and were surprised to hear their distinctive calls here in the North, even though we knew they are migratory. Last September we had passed through the extensive sandhills south of Valentine, Nebraska and learned about them being a favorite sandhill-crane habitat. Thus we were surprised to see them in this stunted-but-continuous coniferous boreal forest.
As we neared Nelson House we were greeted by a large billboard informing us we were entering Cree lands and all visitors had to register at the tribal government offices on weekdays or by making a call to police on the weekend. We didn’t have a working cell phone so could not comply but hoped we’d find a phone in Nelson House. We stopped at the local (and only) gas station/convenience store and spoke with a friendly young clerk as we bought some soft drinks for lunch and as he rang up the purchases of a few of the local folks. When I asked about registering as a visitor he said we probably should stop at the RCMP office and tell them we were here. As we prepared to leave, a woman who had been in the store walked up to the van and pointed at the kayaks with a big smile. She said she had paddled a boat like that when she was a girl. We had the impression she wanted to say more but didn’t. Her name was Mabel. A man walking nearby waved and asked if we needed a guide. I assumed he was talking about a fishing guide and said no, we were just taking a drive through to see the town because of its history as a fur-trading post. As I started to pull away I realized we hadn’t exactly registered and we could possibly offend someone if we drove into the wrong place so we asked if he had meant he could give us a tour of Nelson House. He said for $20 he could give us a tour of town. We of course are a little wary of the situation and of letting a stranger in the van but this seemed OK. He introduced himself as Ralph Moore, brother of Jimmy Moore, Chief of the Band. Our impromptu tour actually went well. I don’t think Ralph has done m/any tours but perhaps that just made him try all the harder. He would tell us what each building was and that alone was helpful because most weren’t marked or were marked in Cree. Ralph told us we need not worry about registering since his brother is the Chief but I thought I’d stop at the RCMP office just to be sure—until we saw it was closed and I was even happier to have Ralph with us in case we were stopped.
Nelson House sits on the juncture of three rivers and a large lake and is the government center for the 5000+ members of the Band. Ralph told us the lake is polluted, though, and they can’t swim and there are no fish, due, he says, to mercury poisoning by Manitoba Hydro. We were a little confused, then, about why there’s a fish-processing plant in town (and would have missed it entirely without him) and why Hydro causes a mercury problem but we didn’t think we should press the point. We were also glad we had Ralph when a floatplane took off from the lake. We wouldn’t have known it’s the tribal floatplane which not only is available for the clinic to use in emergencies but today is ferrying kids to bible camp.
But Nelson House does have its problems. The Band government declared it a dry town but alcoholism is a big problem and housing is poor. The tribal pow-wow center, the medicine house (clinic), the new job training center, and some new housing all look good. But the streets and yards are all dirt (some very muddy), and many of the individual houses are shabby and boarded-up yet with people living in them. The Band has signed a partnership agreement with Manitoba Hydro on development of a dam which is supposed to bring in millions of dollars in income per year but local residents are suspicious and fear the deal is yet another governmental land-grab in disguise.
Our tour only lasted about forty minutes but it was money well-spent. We enjoyed meeting Ralph and learning about the reserve.
After our long, rough drive back to Thompson we went to the library since we knew it was open this afternoon (a library open on Sunday but not Saturday, eh?) and did a little more research on Nelson House. We found a video about pollution problems of the lake but that one talked only about the town’s sewerage lagoon polluting the lake. We also found a news article about the residents being split on the vote for the dam.
At the library we read in the Winnipeg Sun of the damaging hail storm south of us yesterday in the areas we had passed through last week. It passed just north of Riding Mountain National Park and there damaged some 3500 buildings in Dauphin before tracking southeast, then east through Brandon and the north side of Winnipeg, causing millions in damage. The Sun calls it one of the Top 10 weather events in provincial history. In Dauphin alone the damages to buildings and cars will exceed the bill for storm damage done in the entire province last year. Hail was reported to be golf-ball-size in some areas, baseball-size in some, softball-size in others though the only photos we saw of it were somewhere between golf-ball and baseball-sizes. Another article said the hail turned a best-year-ever grain crop into a worst-year-ever yield in minutes for farmers in the path of the very large storm. Canola and wheats were hit hard.
After the library we returned to our campsite for another of Labashi’s excellent medley meals and a glass or three of Schloss Laderheim. No movie tonight, though. We're in the wilderness, you know.

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Saturday, 11, August-

Today we were rained in. The rain started overnight and most of the day, not hard but persistent. We had been up late so got up late with our movie so arose late but still wondered what we would do today. We drove out to the airport to see it but it was too big—too commercial—to be interesting. We drove into town and stopped at the visitor center to ask Carol where to find hunting and fishing gear, thinking we’d see where anything different is offered up here. But there’s no specialized sporting goods store, it all comes, apparently, from the Canadian Tire store or the Wal-mart. We took a walk through those stores and the mall, mostly looking for items not available in the states and to see the shoppers. There’s a large Cree population here so it was interesting to see the many First Nations faces, many of whom would not look directly at us but rather cast their eyes downward around us whites (or perhaps that’s my imagination talking).
Later in the day we drove to the Library and, though it was closed, parked outside and picked up the wireless hotspot signal. I uploaded some photos from the digital camera while Labashi read her excellent book about the fur trade in this area.
Afterwards we bought a box of wine (we really like the Schloss Laderheim Reisling that comes in what they call ‘casks’, i.e., boxes) and went back to the Blockbuster for another movie for this rainy night. This time we brought home ‘Who the #$%#@ is Jackson Pollack?” and “Joyeux Noel”. The first is a funny documentary about a California truck-driving woman who bought a painting for $5 at a thrift shop and is convinced it’s an authentic Jackson Pollack painting. After many promising-but-inconclusive attempts to prove it’s an original Pollack, she has been offered millions of dollars for it but refuses, believing she’s being cheated.
The second film, ‘Joyeux Noel’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ is a French drama telling the story of World War I fraternization. Scot, French, and German units declared a cease-fire on Christmas Eve in December 1914 to celebrate Christmas and, the next day, to bury their dead. Highly recommended.

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Friday, 10 August-

We left our campsite at Paint Lake Provincial Park thinking we’d probably be back. Paint Lake is about a half-hour south of Thompson and has the only campgrounds listed in the AAA guide. But you never know. So I didn’t reserve another night. We are running a bit of risk that we might not be able to find a campsite on the weekend but if that happens, we know there’s a Wal-mart in Thompson and we can probably stay there overnight. The Provincial Parks in Manitoba have also been good about having overflow areas and, besides, things are supposed to tail off after the August three-day-weekend.
Upon reaching Thompson we stopped at the tourist center. There we met Carol, an interesting and somewhat-quirky woman. Carol teaches in the winter and has several part-time jobs in summer. She became a board member of the tourist center and started working there after her teenage son ‘found himself’ after working with the center’s forge. He took to the metal-working arts and now makes custom knives as a hobby, all after starting out as a bellows-pumper for the museum forge. Carol claims to have started baking at two years of age and hosts a web site with her many recipes (it’s genieinafilebox.com).
Thompson is only three years older than I am, celebrating its 60th birthday this year. It was founded by International Nickel Company (INCO) after establishing an agreement with the provincial government to spent $175 million developing the mine and a town around it. Today, Thompson is the the third-largest city in the province (albeit with a current population of 13,000) and is called ‘the gateway to the North’. Its airport is second only to Winnipeg with regard to number of air movements. While the hard road ends just north of Thompson, it has two airports, a seaplane base and a Canadian Rail (VIARail) depot. It has a hospital, provincial offices, and a very active civic board.
After our museum tour at the tourist center we stocked up at the local Safeway (they have a Starbucks in the Safeway!!) and Wal-mart, then toured the town. We found a good wireless hot-spot at the library and spent the next few hours uploading the blog update, handling our email, reading the Winnipeg Sun, Northern Miner and browsing through the excellent library.
When we bought our train tickets in Winnipeg we were advised not to park at the Thompson train station overnight but rather to check with the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) for their recommendations on where to safely leave the van during our absence. At the tourist office we learned of a campground which both stores the vehicle and runs a shuttle to the train station so we thought we’d check it out. We found the McCreedy Campground north of town and met Colleen. She not only does the storage and shuttle for our trip for a reasonable price ($7 per day) but also rented us a campsite for $10 a day, saving us both the hour-long back-and-forth drive to Paint Lake but also saving us $5 a day in camping and park admission fees.
After several turns through town we selected Boston Pizza for supper. We’ve seen the Boston Pizza chain in Winnipeg but just thought it’s a pizza shop, perhaps with a few pasta selections. We were surprised to find a very nice, new, upscale restaurant with a large menu and fantastic food. We settled on splitting a pad-thai dish, then a cactus-potatoes appetizer, all with an excellent Two Oceans Chardonnay and a Jackson Trigg Merlot—and, uh, a chocolate martini. They also have a peppercorn poutine I have to try sometime. We enjoyed chatting with our server, Tatum MacDonald, a Metis-Scot- woman who prides herself in keeping her French current and wants to send her kids to a French-speaking school. What a great evening.
We then stopped by the local Blockbuster and browsed the shelves for something interesting. A woman manager-type checked on us to see if she could help and we asked for ‘something Canadian’ or shot in Thompson or about the North. She blanched, then said she knew what she wanted but couldn’t remember the title. She buzzed through the aisles until she found ‘The Snowwalker’ and brought that to us. That evening we enjoyed The Snowwalker on our wide-screen TV (actually our laptop computer propped up nearby) in Mocha Joe. Good movie! It stars Barry Pepper as a bush pilot who crashes while taking an Inuit woman to the hospital and they are forced to walk out, surviving only because of the woman’s knowledge of survival in the harsh tundra. Good prep for Churchill!

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