Notable Attractions In Moose Factory Include....

#1: Duck camo flatters every skin type (OH YES I DID)

#2: Cats are stored in outdoor cages (WHERE THEY BELONG)

Sawry cat-lovers, I'm allergic.

#3: More hipsters than Queen West West West

Me and MSCR#2 hit up the Aboriginal bar one Sat!

#4: Fewer options in general....stimulating creativity

#5: DIY paradise! Check out these hide and fur mittens I made for my Mom :)

MSCRs at work.

Hi Mom!

#6: Legit nature all around

#7: The people! These are folks who will get up at 6am to check your rabbit snares with you JUST TO BE NICE

Note that the snare has been tampered with by a non-rabbit woodland creature

#8: Pple hand you liquor in a hoof shaped bottle (WTF?)

I worked with the most amazing nurses up there. They are
so boss, they basically were 100x smarter than me. They also
partied better than me. I fail.

#9: Your neighbours will invite you to hang in their igloo

I had nurses for neighbours, nuff said.

#10: MOOSE RISOTTO

So this is the nurses again...

#11: Practicing medicine in a MASH setup

The lab

The former clinic got damaged and medicine
has been practiced MASH style ever since

#12: You can work out in a gym more badass than Rocky

#13: You have the opportunity to spend $1.76 on one litre of gas, on a daily basis!

#14: Wild puppies

#15: Decorative hickeys....yes the folks here view them as a status symbol. Some pple sport hickeys on their forehead, arms, even in heart shapes on the neck!

Sooooo turns out there are considerably more than just 10 notable attractions to Moose Factory! I'm actually really sad to be leaving as I had a fantastic time and made some great new friends. This is my final blog entry, thank you so much for reading and all your wonderful comments and encouragement.

Xxx

A real laundry room at the nursing station

You know when you’re watching an indie movie, and everything looks like it’s from the 60s, and everything is so rundown, but yet so cool, and you just think, “Wow, that shit is just so REAL?”

Well, from the second I arrived on Kashechewan soil I knew that shit was getting real—but it wasn’t cool AT ALL. As we drove into town from the portable-beside-a-plowed-strip-of-earth also known as the airport, I was greeted by the bleakest, most hopeless environment I have ever experienced (notably, I have never been to a developing nation).

A real, non-sarcastic note in said laundry room

From the “urban planning” (the water treatment plant is nearby the sewage treatment area, which often overflows come storm or flood) to transportation and road infrastructure (everyone drives these massive fancy trucks but there’s really nowhere to drive to as the reserve can be traversed on foot in approx 20mins. Besides the ice road in the winter, there is one road out and it LITERALLY leads to nowhere, ending suddenly in the bush at a spot dubbed ½ Kash.), to keeping up with the Jones’ (there are satellite dishes aplenty--outside homes with holes in the roofs and cardboard for windows), to me, everything smacked of missed opportunities to do better. Surely this was a developing nation in Canada.

As the photo montage below reveals, houses are rundown, foot traffic is sparse, graffiti is ubiquitous, and the entire encampment is rimmed with a 12 foot dike that helps to mitigate the annual springtime flood, which almost always necessitates a months-long evacuation and destroys property. That’s a lot to be depressed about ---and just like that the suicide stats I’d read had some context.

Hallway to hell

While Moose Factory is no thriving metropolis, there is a sense of community there that I perceive to be a stark contrast to the social milieu in Kash (keeping in mind I've only been here 4 days). MF offers so much in that vein; a wonderful sewing circle that I frequented; a concert featuring Cree-Scottish music; monthly sweat lodges; monthly turkey dinners; increased extracurricular association between the northerners and the southerners (my adopted local family is just one of many, whereas southerners in Kash note that intermingling is a rare occurrence); doctors on site; mostly uncontaminated water (only one boil advisory while I was there); and, relative proximity to a city. Sure, it’s Timmins, but whatevs. I could see myself living in MF. I have no plans to ever return to Kash.

As you can see, my accommodations are not the finest in the land, although I understand that this is a luxurious as it gets in these parts. A cursory google search reveals that it was the government's bright idea to move these folks to a FLOODPLAIN (SERIOUSLY?! Were wild animals disguised as politicians the ones who made this decision??), instead of somewhere smarter, effectively digging taxpayers into a vortex of wasted federal funds...well interminably. Floodplains tend to flood every year, after all, costing millions in evacuations and property damage for all posterity to underwrite.

In 2006, then special advisor to Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Alan Pope, analyzed the situation and proposed an extremely rational solution*--move the reserve to the outskirts of Timmins and protect the existing (floodplain) land for citizens to visit during the hunting seasons. Pope apparently even managed to get Kash bigwigs on board! It must've been a hard sell, "Get off the silly floodplain the government accidentally placed you on, and be closer to cheaper, healthier food, better plumbing, health care, etc," but….unidentified political forces activated, the government choked (natch) and now the Ministry has erected barriers to reading the report. This means that it was probably excellent and timely and would've worked perfectly.

Bringing me back to the point I raised in an earlier post. For the benefit of all stakeholders, it’s time for policymakers to create rational, effective policies to best allocate the funds in the Aboriginal portfolio to improve the quality of life on reserves whilst also building local capacity to match that seen elsewhere in Canada. Ergo, wean off the federal teat in a slow, thoughtful, flexible manner.