Word: boated
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...about the people up there, who had nothing. Then they'd tell their families that they were going north with Dr. Grenfell for four, maybe six months, not to worry about them, not to try to get in touch with them. They'd get on board Grenfell's boat and wouldn't be heard from until they returned one day out of the blue...
Eight miles from St. Augustine, beyond the mouth of the river, 40-foot high icebergs hover silently on the surface of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The supply boat hasn't been able to come this far north since last October. It's now the second week in July and word has come from the next town down the coast that the freighter Fort Mingan--the lifeline connecting these northern coastal villages to southern Quebec--is on its way. So now on "the white side" of St. Augustine, they've begun to prepare for its arrival. Beer bottles crack...
...Indian side." Small children scamper from house to house--16 identical government prefabs staring blankly across the blue through 16 identical broken picture windows. The wind sends whirlwinds of dust spinning frantically over the grassless strip of riverbank and single row of Monopoly board houses. Eventually, three or four boats, loaded to the brim, start off down the river to the estuary where the freight boat will dock. As they go behind the hump of sandbars, both water and boat disappear while heads and torsos are still visible. From across the river you are left with the impression of groups...
Thirty years ago the Indians in St. Augustine didn't use the Hudson's Bay Store across the river, and consequently didn't care when the freight boat came or didn't come. Although unable to cultivate the barren land, they lived on moose, caribou, bear, beaver and small game which they hunted in winter. And when the river thawed in late May, they would fish for trout and salmon in its swollen waters. Today they keep themselves alive on beer, potatoes, bread and candy bars bought with bi-monthly welfare checks. In spite of a special concession from...
Life on the Indian side is, above all, domestic. Husbands sit around at home, play with the children, fix boat engines and take their wives across the river to the Hudson's Bay Store. Welfare is the primary, if not the only, source of income. A few of the younger men go south in winter to work in a lumber camp; the rest stay in St. Augustine and concentrate on staying warm. The women are strong and sensible, the dominant figure in a domestic life where the man's role as hunter has been phased out by external forces over...