life and times 1933

some two years after my first furring trip. I now considered mysefl a veteran hunter and trapper.it was mid september we had went to our old faithful supplier Bill Collier. contrary to what the white merchant was branded for. this good old soul though pop owed him hundreds of dollars he would still fit us out foor the fall. not much but we could make do with it a little flour tea pork and sugar baking powder. [though there was times we used ashes for baking powder. this is kind of tricky using ashes,] perhaps a stick or two of tobacco. this made up our supplies. some of this used to be for the family home. My second year all excited anxiously waiting for the time to head in the country. at last the time came we were all packed ready to leave the next morning, I went on the road hardly could contain my excitement telling all my friends I was heading in for the fall.as if nothing could go wrong. we were sitting by the road by Uncle Mattie Jeddores one of our usual spots just passing the evening. Ruben stride was close by he was telling someone about sombody cutting their foot I paid no attention to what he was saying till I heard the name Uncle Peter. I was thinking why was pops name mentioned then it struck me could it be possibe it was pop who cut his foot, I took off running for home when I entered the door sure enough Poip was sitting with his foot all bandaged up. I almost dropped to the floor. I knew then our trip would be off' Pop must have read my mind because he said I'm afraid we will have to put of our trip for awhile but give me three days I should be o.k. these three days seemed like a month. Any in three days we left the foot was not yet healed apparently pop being a veteran of world war.2. knew something about wounds hie skinboot was too soft so he found an old pair of rubber boots couple sizes bigger then he took cut off the top split it down the front close to the toe cot holes used sort of boot lace to tie it comfortable. so we left about five miles to row in a dory to st veronicas it was well in the afternoon by the time we reached there.we managed to haul our dory up in spite of the cut foot pop was still able to carry a heavy load.using a walking stick.I did the best I could in carrying a load uncle charley was not much better then I was. Our first move took us to spell rock. this was a beautiful place all small white birch always a cool draft moving through it. a little further on me put up our camp uncle charley and I did this while pop went back for the remainder of our supplies. he got back near dark. we had our supper built an open fire close by the camp shortly after we went to sleep I worked hard so I slept soundly. the next morning we did the same pop returning for the second trip. from now on it would be a little easier for pop because we would be using the canoe, I got to stick in here how we keft meat fresh for a while with no fridge.we would find a place where spruce grew find a place where sort of redish moss was pull off a layer of mossabout five inches thickpull it from the end and both sidesleaving one end intactthis would be about two foot square fold the layer back over did a hole a foot or so deep cover the bottom with birch bark spread the meat beaver or duck whatever pull the moss layer back over it will fit in place you would have to mark the place to find it when you need it but no longer then a week.
I would like to correct some thing Dud Jackson wroe in the book [on the country] he wrote we used spruce bark to tan our caribou. this is not right we used fir bark for tan but one would have to know what to look for to do it right, This trip took us much longer then any previous trip due to pops cut foot. but we went through the same routing on every trip,
back to the first furing I went to see Uncle stevejoe as mentioned before I was honoured they had respect for me as young as I was I had lived up to my heritage spent a whole month in the country.as was required to be considered a true Micmac.Nobady asked me what we did how many furs we got though I was bursting to tell. being adults and more sensible then me they would wait and talk with pop.one thind about the micmac people they shared their good luck with other nicmac peoplenews as well as meat. But nobody could ever get anything from Uncle Tom mc'donald and his son leo.if they had a lkoad of fur and you asked them they would answer . not as much as a muskrat. even though they were not stingy people. they would give you anything but somehow they would never let anyone know what furs they had.this puzzled a lot of people because every one was curious and there was nothing alse to talk about.