A Strange Inhuman Scream

Money Boss by Robert Sanderson

My historical fiction story, Money Boss, is now released to the world. This novel of a remote Indian Affairs district in 1975-1976 named ‘Grayson’ reflects what happened in many Indian Affairs districts across Canada; it is, in fact, a parable of how the agency operated. It is also a story about secrets; those of Indian Affairs – the agency; and individual people – and one I lived.

In 1975 I was hired by a joint Ojibwa, Cree and government joint- committee to manage a project that would research what could be done to support economic development in nine indigenous communities in the Nakina district of Northwestern Ontario. At the time, I knew very little about how the agency operated. In the course of one and a half years I would learn. The research also led to a non-fiction book which I co-authored, When Freedom is Lost.

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter Three in Money Boss, where the protagonist, John Rager, experiences life in a nearby sister district, before he joins the agency.

As with Rager, I too did work for the Ontario Cooperative Development Association (OCDA) as a business adviser before joining Indian Affairs – and I too did visit a similar “shantytown.”

(1)

During his three years working for OCDA in Sioux Lookout, Rager lived with Helen and Sam in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment. After Helen left, he felt a sense of relief for a time, as though a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders. It was only much later that he felt regret.

By the end of his last year with the non-profit agency, the manager asked him to take on a very different project. “I would like you to go to a small town not far from Kenora named Bristol. There are a number of non-status Indians who live outside Bristol in a shantytown. They lost their treaty status when one of their maternal ancestors married a non-Indian. What they need is government housing, not shacks, and the Grand Chief of Treaty Three requested that we send someone to help them. What I would like you to do is go to Bristol, rent a cabin, and help the people apply for government housing. You’ll have to research the available government housing programs. I would think there is some sort of program they would be eligible to apply under. After that, you hustle back here and continue your other work.”

This was the background to the day that he found himself walking with a young Indian woman named Elena Ottertail from the Treaty Three office along a rail line to the shantytown, five miles outside Bristol, the two of them lonely soldiers on an impossible mission. At one point he asked her if the people had tried to get help from either level of government. “So far, not much luck” she said.

“Is that why they built the shantytown?”

“Yes, they had no choice. A few years back, they lived in an outpost camp north of Bristol. This was before Indian Affairs officials showed up and told them they had to send their children to residential school, otherwise Children’s Aid would place them in foster care. No one wanted to send their children to residential school, knowing how badly the schools treated Indian children. On the other hand, they certainly didn’t want their children put in foster care. When the people asked Indian Affairs to build them a school, the officials refused because they were non-status. When they appealed to the provincial government for a school, they were told they were Indians, and therefore not a provincial responsibility. In so many words, they found themselves in a no-man’s land where the two levels of government play ping-pong with definitions and people’s lives. So, they moved to Bristol, hoping to rent houses.” Elena paused before adding, “But no one in Bristol wanted to rent them houses or cabins. All they saw were a bunch of Indians with no money and no full-time jobs. Residents thought they would lower property values. So, they had no choice but to build a shantytown and send their children to school in Bristol.”

There was very little to Bristol except a general store, church, primary school, gas station, train station, two seasonal tackle shops, and houses and cabins. What made the town unique was its location as the gateway to a region of lakes, abundant wildlife, and spectacular sports fishing. There was also the Bristol Lodge. The Canadian National Railroad had built the massive structure at the turn of the century; a lodge with a hundred guest rooms, marble bathrooms, and a huge dining room in addition to four tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course, and a marina with motorboats, speedboats, cedar canoes, fan boats, and floatplanes. There were also the cottages on the lakes – some were simple family hideaways while others were luxury cottages with saunas, guest houses, and every imaginable toy. The small town was the center of a boreal wilderness paradise.

It was a long walk. At one point, Rager asked, “I would think it’s hard on the children, walking like this every day?”

“It is,” Elena replied. “Every day for ten months of the year, the children – some as young as six or seven – walk to school, back and forth. That’s a six-mile walk one-way, twice a day. There are also the trains that travel along the rail line, which are a danger. You’ll see that when we come to a trestle, a hundred yards long, that spans over a steep canyon. Whenever a fast-moving train comes along, the children have to run for their lives. But that’s not all. In the winter when it’s cold or there’s a snowstorm and the children don’t go to school, the authorities threaten the parents. They say, ‘Your children have to go to school or we’ll take them away and place them in foster care,’ and sometimes they do. Children’s Aid sweeps down and takes the children. When the parents turn to the courts, the government lawyers always win.

“When you think about it, the government is the real problem. They tell them their children have to go to school, but make it impossible by denying them a school where they once lived or providing housing in a town with a school, at least up to now.”

“Are you related to the families?” Rager asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s cruel, what the government does.”

After an hour, they turned off the rail line and entered thick bush. They followed a path through a gulley until they came to an open place, where Rager could see a dozen shacks. The stench of human waste permeated the air. An elder stoked a slow-burning fire as clouds of black flies droned everywhere. With his long, grey, wispy hair, dark and wrinkled face, missing teeth, and knotted hands, the elder could easily have been a mythical figure in a Japanese Noh play. He hardly paid any attention to his two visitors, except to give Elena a nod. Nearby, children played in a clearing: a girl with a broken doll, a waif-like boy pulling a choo-choo train, and a dozen or so older children attempting to build a shack out of branches and cardboard. It could easily have been a Calcutta slum – all that was missing was a Hindu priest chanting over a corpse…

(2)

After Rager fails to secure housing for those living in the shantytown, he attends a great public celebration at the Bristol lodge where the provincial premier announces multi-million funding to expand the lodge – by building a ski hill to expand the tourism season; a decision that will ultimately fail. After leaving the celebration, disgusted by a government that cares so little for those who live in squalor, Rager finds himself alone in a park:

He lay down on the ground. It was warm. He imagined that he could feel the enormous hidden forces, the molten mass of heat, that lay below. “I can’t do anything for these people,” he thought. “They have no purpose, no value, and the government treats them like dirt. Nothing will ever change that fact. I might move to another town, another city, another country, but it will never change the reality that no one cares what happens to these people.”

All through the night he kept on thinking of the shantytown. Where might the people go? It would likely be Winnipeg. He imagined a dark-brick tenement building, a city park, people sleeping on benches, and a scream in the night – a strange, inhuman scream, as though someone were being beaten to death. Then he fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke, the sun was burning through the early morning fog; a strange, living, moving fog that crept over the water before finally running away. When the sun appeared, he watched sail boats passing by, full of men and women gaily laughing. He even saw the premier with a female assistant board the Otter and fly away. It seemed to be a dream – an illusion – and a great jest!

In the months that followed, Rager applied for the position of Indian Affairs Grayson District Commerce Officer and the agency hired him without ever holding an in-person interview. “You were the only one who applied,” the regional superintendent of economic development told him.

Someone once told Rager, “The government is us, you know. We elect our members of parliament and they represent us: in a way, they are us.” But Rager knew differently. The government was an organization run by men with funny names like Roger Holiday. He wanted to know more about these men. Why were they so mean – was it simply power? He also wanted to redeem himself. Why not take a risk – what could he lose?

His decision to accept the position brought him to Grayson, the rooming house, and Mr. Reed.

(If you don't have your copy of Money Boss, click here for more about the novel and to buy your copy.)