Sea expedition gives voice to Canada’s unwritten stories
Storytellers gather aboard coast guard icebreaker to become familiar with our most remote areas
Keep your eyes out this summer on any of Canada’s coastal shores and you might spot a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker. On board, you’ll find a group of diverse Canadians — musicians, writers, politicians, Indigenous elders, youth and community leaders — searching for our country’s untold stories.
It might not be the most likely place for storytellers to gather, but it’s part of an innovative project called the Canada C3 expedition — named for our three coastlines — that hopes to shine a spotlight on Canada’s remote corners and bring us together to share our many cultures.
Over 150 days, (representing Canada 150) the icebreaker will travel 23,000 kilometres in a series of 15 legs. Each leg of the journey will see new participants rotate onto the ship. They’ll travel to places such as Fogo, Pond Inlet and Bella Bella, and get to meet some of the people who live there. They’ll play pickup hockey, join traditional cooking classes and generally get to know the community — and let the community get to know them. They’ll meet people such as Inuit elders Sophie Keelan and John Jararuse.
I spent time with Sophie and John on a sombre afternoon in Hebron, an abandoned Inuit village in Nunatsiavut, the homeland of the Labrador Inuit, during the leg of the trip I participated in: leg 6, from Nain, N.L., to Iqaluit, Nunavut.
In a former Moravian mission church, painstakingly being rebuilt by the Nunatsiavut government, Keelan and Jararuse were singing an Inuktitut hymn, welcoming us to their land. Hymn complete, Sophie explained in a soft-spoken voice how grateful she was to return to the coastal mountains her people call home.
Hebron — a once thriving and proud community of 200 Labrador Inuit — became a symbol of bureaucratic bungling when the Newfoundland and Labrador government and Moravian leaders ceased serving the village in 1959.
The relocation of its residents to communities further south unleashed a cycle of cultural and emotional dislocation for families forced to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar lands. It’s a pivotal moment in our country’s history and, like so many others, remains unknown to most Canadians. It’s the intimate stories of Canadians such as that of Keelan and Jararuse that lie at the heart of Canada C3. An initiative of the Gatineau-based Students on Ice Foundation, Canada C3 was conceived to provide a platform for Canadians from all walks of life to share deeply personal experiences, and to reflect on the journey’s four key themes of reconciliation, diversity and inclusion, the environment and youth engagement.
For Juno-winning musician Rose Cousins, who took part in leg 6, the journey from Nain to Iqaluit was life-changing.
“I knew this would be an experience like no other, seeing and exploring parts of Canada I might never have seen. My hope was to be cracked open in some way, to be taken out of the spin of life and to learn something new about a place I’ve lived my whole life. Recent light shed on our Indigenous history makes me realize there is so much I don’t know. I wanted to come away with something to share.”
For Cousins, the stories she heard in Hebron left their mark. “Hearing firsthand from Inuit elders about their experience of being relocated and what they endured was deeply impactful, as well as hearing about the challenges with Inuit suicide.”
Each leg features a writer-in-residence, tasked with penning a piece that will be featured in a book edited by author James Raffan. Geoff Green, C3 expedition leader, and founder and executive director of Students on Ice, says having writers and artists on board echoes an age-old aspect of sea expeditions, dating back to early European polar explorers, such as Ernest Shackleton.
Notable writers taking part in the Canada C3 expedition include Lorna Crozier, John Vaillant and Madeleine Thien. Giller Prize-winning Thien ( Do Not Say We Have Nothing), writer-in-residence for leg 8 (Qikiqtarjuaq to Pond Inlet), says the journey offers a chance for participants to be moved by one another.
“To hear a story, or to make one, draws on so many parts of ourselves. Memory, intellect, desire, cadence, voice. It’s hard to read a great, capacious novel and yet believe that the only valuable truth is what I, individually, believe. The ship is emblematic of something beautiful: that knowledge lives when it’s put into practice and that ideas take shape at the point of contact with other ideas.”
Holly Lake, originally from Churchill Falls, N.L., is now a senior editor for iPolitics. She says her experience on leg 6 provided a chance to reconsider what she learned growing up in her native province.
“My ignorance of what the Inuit have endured and how mistreated they have been, forced from their own homes and communities by promises that were never kept, has been jarring. I’ve always had some sense the Inuit of Labrador had been wronged, but it was not something we were taught about in school.”
Samia Madwar, managing editor of The Walrus, sat with Keelan and Jararuse on deck as the ship wound its way through their traditional territory. She began to see a connection between the stories they shared and their intimate knowledge of the land. At one point, Madwar says, Sophie noticed greenery on the side of a hill that had not existed in her living memory, a possible indication of the effects of climate change on the North.
“So much of what we learned is based on personal experience. The personal perspective adds a whole new dimension to an issue. It compels us to listen.”
For Lori McNulty, author of Life on Mars and writer-in-residence for leg 5 (St. John’s to Nain), the expedition asked probing questions about national identity and values. “The journey made me ask, over and over, what does it mean to be a Canadian? What do I stand for? What am I willing to fight for? Where have I been blind to those who feel they have been eviscerated from our national story?
“For me, the story of Canada remains unwritten and it is my responsibility to assume a role in how I want the story to unfold from here.” Trevor Corkum’s novel The Electric Boy is forthcoming with Doubleday Canada.
Canada C3 was conceived to provide a platform for Canadians from all walks of life to share deeply personal experiences