history – Sight Unseen

No country, state, or community should need a report that includes calls to action about buried missing children at the hands of the government, but here we are, Canada, and you refuse to listen.

Anybody saying that the 215 child deaths in Kamloops were an expected occurrence for that time period due to sanitation levels or TB is being ignorant. Know that prisoners were treated more respectfully than these innocent children.

I’ve heard people trying to rationalize it, knowing the last IRS closed in 1996. It’s not a dark chapter or history, it’s current trauma and lived experiences. Telling yourself that “surely by the time the 1990’s came around, atrocities weren’t being committed anymore” is cowardice.

We all need to do better. Don’t rely on your Indigenous friends or colleagues to educate you and do the hard work for you. Learn how to be an ally and amplify their voices, listen when they speak, hold our leaders accountable.

If you’re looking for actions aside from learning and educating yourself, or sharing on social media, you can donate to the Indian Residential School Survivor Society who provide counselling and healing for survivors at:
https://www.irsss .ca/donate

Better yet, support your community and neighbours by voting in politicians and supporting policies to do good work. Canada is a first-world country while its reserves and Indigenous communities are the equivalent to third-world countries. Many do not even have drinking water.

Many do not even have drinking water.

Time’s up, Canada. You’ve had the chance. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave you 94 actions to implement. Yes, even actions about missing murdered children.

From the TRC Calls to Action:

Missing Children and Burial Information

“71. We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

72. We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

73. We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.

74. We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.

75. We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of
appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.

76. We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
i. The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies.
ii. Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
iii. Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.”

This information is nothing new and can’t be brushed aside again. This conversation needs to be over, we need to move past conversation.

Canada loves to talk about diversity and welcome while blocking the door and hoping nobody looks under the rug.

(I say “you” but I mean “we”.)

Hope this finds you well,

-L

Over the Christmas break, I finally had some time to spend with my grandma. I don’t spend as much time with her as I’d like to. My grandma is one of my very favourite people and we are quite close. She was chief babysitter for my siblings and I, we spent a large chunk of our time at her house- it was definitely our second home. One of our favourite things to do was to make “messes” in grandma’s kitchen. We would each wear the aprons grandma made for us, and she would let us add any ingredient we wanted to our bowls, and then we’d bake it. And I mean any ingredient- picture: coffee grounds, juice crystals, flour, salt, eggs, powdered milk, sprinkles, baking soda, sugar, crushed crackers, and baking powder, and any quantity of each. This would lead to funny-coloured miniature cakes that we then proceeded to foist upon our loving father, who suffered through many concoctions all the while telling his beaming children that they were delicious.

I still cook with this air of throwing things together much as I did then, whether this is due to my impatient nature or experience in grandma’s kitchen, I do not know. I can’t be bothered to measure ingredients, nor to follow a recipe. If I have something in mind I’ll turn to Pinterest, look at a couple recipes, and use pieces of each one to come up with my final dish. Have no fear, I don’t bake- too much preciseness is needed. I love to make casseroles, soups, and saucy dishes where give and take is totally acceptable.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard grandma talk about homemade cottage cheese perogies, called Wereneki(ver-REN-e-kah). Grandma comes from a Mennonite family and is fluent in Low German. She would make them, but since the kids didn’t like cottage cheese, we never tried them and she cooked store-bought perogies for us. Even though I never tried them, I was always curious.

Another way grandma kept us occupied at her house was by telling us stories from when she and grandpa were young or when they were our age; one grandma told us was about grandpa’s Aunt. She lived in her own home, at 104, the only concession to her age was having home care come in and lend a hand. When the home care lady stopped in one day, she asked Auntie what she’d had for dinner. Auntie replied that she’d had perogies. The home care lady asked where she’d bought them as she wasn’t satisfied with the ones she’d bought. Auntie scoffed at her and said that she didn’t buy them, she’d made them. So at 104 years old, Auntie had made perogies for her dinner and cleaned up after- all of which is no small chore. Grandpa’s family was English, but even they made homemade perogies.

I’d mentioned to my mom about how much I’d love to learn to make them. Now that I’m old enough to appreciate history and tradition, I wanted to spend more time with Grandma as I love learning from her. My grandma is now 87. She fell and broke her hip this past summer so she walks with a cane, she no longer lives in her farmhouse but lives in a granny suite built for her, attached to my mom’s house. She can’t see hardly anything and doesn’t drive herself. She has recently taken up knitting, which she hadn’t done in many years, claiming she can knit without having to see. She can’t read recipes anymore since the printing is notoriously small, so I knew she would appreciate the help and the lesson.

So one afternoon, mom had picked up the cottage cheese we needed from the city, and I came over to spend time, once again, in grandma’s kitchen. Once we’d mixed the filling and the ingredients for the dough could no longer be stirred with a spoon, it was time to get my hands dirty. As I began kneading the dough, grandma, mom, and I realized that I was already covered with flour and that there was going to be more flour involved. Grandma suggested an apron and went to the closet to get one. Mom went to her house and retrieved the one grandma had made for me more than a decade ago. The apron grandma came out with was her mother’s apron, my great-grandma Heppner’s. It was the classic blue gingham embroidered with flowers. She explained that even her brother wore it for many years to carve turkey for her family’s Christmas and Thanksgiving. I put it on, and when mom returned, she wore my apron since we were now working together. I was stretching and filling the dough circles and mom was rolling the dough and cutting circles.

The ones I made were a little misshapen but I’m sure that will improve with practice.

Traditionally, Wareneki are boiled and then served with farmer sausage and cream gravy. Once they were done we let them rest for a while and then threw them in the pot of boiling water. For the cream gravy, grandma soured some cream, we added black pepper, salt, and cooked it in a frying pan until it had thickened. Mom fried the farmer sausage, cooked some veggies, and we were done.

Before this, I hadn’t actually tried cottage cheese perogies because I don’t like cottage cheese. After spending all afternoon making them, the anticipation was too high so I couldn’t resist trying them. They were delicious! Now we’re planning a perogy making day for February break when we’re all home. My siblings are relatively picky eaters so we’ll also have other fillings besides the cottage cheese; this way we can spend time together and they can also learn.

I’m thinking I’ll make perogies quite often now that I know how- they aren’t too difficult and once you know how they really don’t take that much time. Some of the best perogies I’ve tried were filled with Saskatoon berries, so I’m excited to try some of those!

Another thing grandma made with the dry cottage cheese were cottage cheese pancakes called Glums Koki. You add eggs, flour, salt and pepper to make a batter and then fry until golden on both sides. Grandma eats hers with cracked black pepper on top, I prefer them with syrup and grandma thinks I’m a crazy person. I took home some leftover cottage cheese and gladly had these for supper the next day. Here’s the recipe:

Glums Koki

12oz dry cottage cheese
4 eggs
1/2 C flour
Salt and Pepper
Combine all ingredients, drop by spoonful into a hot frying pan with butter, fry until golden.

I know a fair bit about the history and traditions on my dad’s Swedish side, but not so many from my mom’s German side. This was one of my most favourite afternoons.

Hope this finds you well,

-L

Tag: history

Present Day, Canada

Grandma’s Kitchen