When I was a little girl, 'cause we live in igloo and we live in nomadic life and there was no white people and we move around from camp to camp, depending on the season. And we live with nature and our family and everybody looks after each other. And it was very, very simple, living, just survival in the way, looking for food and moving around.[1]
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Bob Baxter was born on the Albany River in northern Ontario.
So, that's how I, that's how I grew up, you know, and knowing all that stuff where listening to the familiar sounds of my dad's snowshoes in the winter when he came to, when he came back from trapping late in the afternoon, towards, when it's already dark, and waiting for him to come home and tell us the legends, because no tv back then.
So, it was great. My mom was great, too. She really looked after us, made sure that we were clothed and fed. That was good times.
I remember eating wild game all the time. And 'cause we had our grandparents that really looked after us, too, that I have good memories of, until, 'til that day that we were taken from there, taken away to school.[2]
Prior to attending the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, Lynda Pahpasay McDonald lived with her family near Sydney Lake in northwestern Ontario in the 1950s.
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We spent most of our time in the trapline, in the cabin, and we'd play outside and it was really good. There was no drinking. There was, it was, like, it was a small sized cabin, and my parents took good care of us. And they were really, I remember those happy days, like there was no violence. We had a little bit of food, but we always had a meal, like we ate, the beaver meat or moose meat if my dad got a moose, and deer meat, and, and fish.
She could not recall being physically disciplined during this time. "They more or less just told me, you know, don't do this, you know you'll hurt yourself Lynda Pahpasay McDonald. and what not, but it was all in Ojibway, all spoken in Ojibway. And I spoke Ojibway when I was a child, and there was a lot of fun." Her mother would harvest plants to be used as medicine.
And we would, my parents would take us out blueberry picking, and my grandparents would always take us blueberry picking, or we'd go in the canoe, and we'd go,
- ↑ TRC, AVS, Eva Lapage, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 29 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011-2919.
- ↑ TRC, AVS, Bob Baxter, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 24 November 2010, Statement Number: 01-ON-24NOV10-012.
