‘Two Row’ paddle down the Grand celebrates friendship
Ellie Joseph is a retired teacher from Six Nations. She was born there. She lives there. Her band is Mohawk. Her clan is Turtle.
Jay Bailey, who grew up in Waterloo, is a retired French teacher. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he is of European descent and lives in Simcoe.
The fast-flowing friendship between the two organizers of the third annual Two Row on the Grand event is uniquely water-born. Thirty kayaks and canoes are set to leave Cambridge near Churchill Park on Wednesday morning for a nine-day Grand River journey to Port Maitland.
“Paddle brother and sister,” Bailey said on Tuesday.
“We both feel that our connection with creation makes a big difference with how we handle our lives in general.”
And that’s what the Two Row event — a symbolic renewal of the Two Row Wampum treaty more than 400 years ago between the Six Nations and the Dutch — aims to achieve. The treaty states that both nations will travel down the river of life in peace together, event organizers point out.
Promoting friendship and co-operation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people — as well as seeing great blue herons, kingfishers and eagles — is what the event is about. Wherever the river allows, the rowers will paddle in Indigenous and non-Indigenous lines.
“We’re leaning on each other,” Joseph said on Wednesday, as she picked up bagels, fruit and cereals for paddler breakfasts.
The bonds between paddlers grow strong, she said. They lean on each other and ask for help during the nine-day excursion, as the number of participants ebbs and flows between 40 and 130 at any one time. About 40 will go the whole distance from Cambridge to Lake Erie.
Some 39, including Bailey and Joseph, will start in Cambridge. Bailey said they first connected at the Day of 1,000 Canoes event on the Grand about eight years ago.
“I was dressed as a voyageur, she was dressed in buckskin,” said Bailey, who still does presentations in schools on the fur trade.
“Everybody got their photo when they launched.”
In 2013, Joseph invited Bailey to take part in a Two Row event in New York, which went down the Hudson River from Albany to Manhattan with a presentation at the United Nations. They and others put together a similar event for the Grand River that had 20 people go the full distance in 2016.
Now, Joseph and Bailey go kayaking together on other occasions. He has visited her during the winter months.
“It’s just a really nice friendship that’s evolved,” Joseph said. “It’s just one of many. There’s lots of networks and friendships. That’s what we want (at the Two Row event). We want to see that happen.”
jhicks@therecord.com