Matilda Chantyman, Carla's Words

November 6, Monday, 2017

Family and friends,

I heard about Matilda's (102) passing before lunch. We use to visit her at Kluskus. She had a small house dog that she called 'Dlig'. The dog was a bit bigger a squirrel. Hence the name of her dog.

She was a busy and tuff ol' bird: she attended family funerals at Anaham, other Chilcotin communities for funerals and celebrations. I have even seen her at a diabetes conference at Penticton. When she was mobile, I use to see her at the casino and asking for five dollars. She use to sit at one of my favorite machines.

There was a time that I saw her at the Quesnel rodeo activities at the park and listening to the bands playing rock and roll tunes. She must have had the love of music and dancing in her genes as did her nephews: late Patrick, late Raymond, late Raphael, and late Norman. Music was in their family as her nieces Celina and late Clara were good at belting out a good tune. Family resemblance was visible in looks, taste of traveling, meeting 'new' people, making friends, and attending rodeos, dances, and pow-wows.

With the passing of this fine elder, is a lost of knowledge, culture, from Tl'etinqox and Kluskus sides. Just imagine that she lived and traveled The Grease Trial on foot, with horse and wagon. I am sure that she lived with the seasons, cattle roundup and feeding, haying time, and moving from Anaham, Anaham Meadows and Rocky Point.

Not to mention that she provided for her family with traditional ways of living. She spoke fluently in Chilcotin and Carrier language. In her day, school was not a priority but living of the land was the way of life. The way to survive was to hunt wildlife, big and small, fish, deer and moose were packaged and dried, berries, wild tea, wild potatoes, soapberries were picked and stored for winter food. There was none of shopping and buying of food at Safeway for this grand Tsilhqot'in.

This elder has many great-nieces and great-nephews at Tl'etinqox Government, Tl'etinqox School, Tsilhqot'in National Government, Negotiations & External Affairs Office, Punky Lake Wilderness Camp Society,  Stone Band and Alkali Lake Band office: Sharmon Alphonse, Lorna Elkins, Bella Alphonse, Jodie Jim, Paul Grinder, Randy Billyboy, Carla Alphonse, Karen Jim, Samantha Jo Dick, Chief Joe Alphonse, Cecil Grinder, Pamela Alphonse, Janel Alphonse, Justin Bambrick, Dorothy Alphonse, Darlene Alphonse, Wanda Petal-Dick, Rhoda Petal, Janet Petal, Erika Petal, and Faye Chelsea, I am sorry if I missed anyone. It is important to know our family connections. We come from a strong and remarkable deni.  

Matilda Alphonse Chantyman may you greet the good Lord with a smile and open arms. RIP.

Carla Alphonse, CSSC, HSD

Chief's Assistant, Tl'etinqox

Tsilhqot'in National Government

250-394-4212 Extension 206

888-224-3322 Extension 206

250-302-1109 (Cell)

Matilda Chantyman

Hello,

Matilda Chantyman (b June 3, 1916), Carla's dad's aunt on his dad's side, died.   Matilda was living in Quesnel, where Dad was born in 1919, three years after Matilda, who I think was born in Anaham. 

In 2004 and 2006, when I taught in her village of Kluskus, off the road in the bush about 100 km west of Quesnel, Matilda still lived there, with her daughter Bella, over 60 then. During winter trips, in a high-clearance truck for the bush trail, toand from Quesnel, Matilda got to sit in the front with the little children, but Bella, I, and the bigger children rumbled along snuggled under blankets in the box.  One winter night, stuck in the bush, Bella had a fire going fast.  We gathered round, waiting for morning and someone to bring a U-joint to fix the truck.   The temperature was only about -10.

"When I was younger, we used to walk to Ulkatcho," Bella told me.  That's about 140 km west of Kluskus, along the Dakelh-Nuxalt Grease Trail, the route that Alexander Mackenzie followed westward to Pacific Ocean tidewater at Bella Coola in 1793.  A Bella Coola monument says so.  At Kluskus, I saw little metal signs on trees along the trail, a protected historic route sometimes traveled still, by foot or horse.    "An Indian is pointing a white man in the wrong direction," Kluskus resident George Jimmie, one of the high-clearance truck drivers, quipped.

I met Matilda and Bella in February, 2004 in Bella's house at Kluskus, which had a 3 x 8-foot table covered in dried moose meat. 

In 2016, Carla, Chelsea, and I attended Matilda's 100th birthday party in the Quesnel friendship centre.  I shook a 100-year-old hand.  Matilda asked one of Carla's sisters for a chew of tobacco.  Prime Minister Trudeau's letter to Matilda for turning 100 was on he hall wall.  Perhaps her land, stolen by colonialism, is in the mail.      

Michael Wynne
Williams Lake, The Land Called Canada

Hockey Helmet Pony Tails

Monday, November 6, 2017 

     Saturday, November 4, skating for the first time this winter season, I liked watching pony tails flying from under hockey helmets worn by several girls, age 9-12, skating in pairs or trios, wearing their hockey sweaters, 
     No girls played minor hockey when I did, in the 1970s.  Girls figure skated.  When our coach invited one to show us power skating techniques when I was 12 or so, nobody on my team could catch her.
     The activism against fighting in hockey might yet civilize the sport among men and older boys, amateur and professional.  "I was watching the fight, when a hockey game broke out."
     Poetry in motion, that's what I thought when I watched a couple university women's hockey games in Edmonton a few years ago:  finesse, not goonery.
      Everybody skate, to "The Skaters' Waltz!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV4BxDcWus8