All Photos courtesy of Figure 1 Publishing
Canada’s largest ocean watershed begins in the Hudson Bay region. Its pulsing waterways are like veins stretching across Ontario and beyond, intersecting and gathering strength as they flow through dense forests and wetlands. The water moves through populated urban centres to the serene countryside, spanning from Alberta to Quebec and up into the Northwest Territories.
In his recently released book, “People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie,” Paul Seesequasis transports viewers back to the early 1950s and 60s, documenting the life and culture of the Anishinaabe, Cree and Anisininew communities in northern Ontario.
Seesequasis, a nipisihkopawiyiniw (Willow Cree) writer and journalist, is interested in how image reclamation can challenge the framing that we usually see around Indigenous peoples in Canada.
“People of the Watershed,” currently on exhibit at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, is the first exhibition for the late John Macfie, a settler journalist of Scottish background from the Parry Sound area who was born in Ontario in 1925 and passed away in 2018.
“He wasn’t this kind of exotic outside gaze that you get so often,” explains Seesequasis. In the past, photographers would enter communities with an interest in showing the “vanishing way of life.” Macfie is the exception in that he documented the people and their day-to-day living in a natural way, he says.
In the early 1950s, Macfie took a job as a trapline manager for the northwest region of the watershed. This position required him to travel by bush plane, snowmobile, canoe and dog team to meet with trappers. Part of his responsibilities included monitoring fluctuating animal populations.
At the time, traveling through remote communities required guides to get from one location to another. “You’re trusting that person with your life, especially in the wintertime,” explains Seesequasis.
There was no GPS or cell phones, so if you got stuck in the bush, you were on your own. It was a self-sufficient time for people who worked the land, trapped or lived off the land because they had to be, he says.
Macfie travelled as far north as Fort Severn and Sandy Lake near the Manitoba border and as far south as Mattagami. Along the way, he learned some Cree, Anisininew and Anishinaabe words and phrases so that he could communicate with local community members.
Although not part of his job, Macfie travelled with two cameras, one for Kodachrome colour slides and the other for black-and-white, to document his time in the north. He later donated these photos to the Archives of Ontario.
Seesequasis organized the book by the four seasons and its corresponding activities. “The seasons determine the life,” he explains. “So, the book and exhibition are both done by season.”
The photographs document day-to-day life. In addition to photos of hunting and trapping, hide tanning and gathering of medicine, there are also sacred images of women’s camps, the Midewiwin Lodge, community ceremonies and treaty gatherings that took place in different communities. Macfie captured an inside look that many settlers were not invited to during this time.
Unlike recent images of children who attended residential schools, many of Macfie’s photographs depict children in various outdoor settings, either because they were not in residential schools or had returned home from them for the summer. The family photos reveal a vibrancy and relationship to the land, he explains.
“The other thing you notice is the water. The women’s camp was at Neskantaga. People are drinking the water.”
Neskantaga First Nation, located about 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, is enduring the longest boil water advisory in Canadian history, beginning in 1995.
“You just see how this lifestyle was going to change once mining started and other things started up there,” says Seesequasis.
The photographs capture special moments, a sharp contrast to recent events where this community faced multiple evacuations due to tainted water or had their court filings over failure to consult on Ring of Fire developments dismissed by the courts.
For those reading his book or attending the exhibition, Seesequasis hopes that people can get a sense of how people lived, their relationship to the land, the strength of family and the strength of relying on each other.
The watershed is a vast territory that is more than its news headlines. It is more than the Ring of Fire.
“This is not empty land,” says Seesequasis. “Contrary to what some politicians have lately said, it’s not empty land. It’s always been land inhabited by people, and people, as you know, who’ve been there for thousands of years. I hope it rings across that this is someone’s home.”
“People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie,” is on display at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection until November 17. The book is available for purchase in select stores and online.
