Adalyn, on the Georgian Bay

By Val-Ann Stepanchuk

It has been my desire for decades to tell of my Grandmother’s life of survival, determination and humour.  This is a basically true, completely Canadian story of how it was for her to live and raise a family on the Georgian Bay in Ontario.  She made the choice to live in a beautiful place even though it meant a more difficult life.  It has some characters that are pretty big, but very real.  It is about a land, water, place, compelling people to interact with it and the wildlife there.

I quote my grandmother and my mother often and as closely as I can and this is interspersed with my own thoughts and reactions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Val-Ann Stepanchuk
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781500522759

Book preview

Val-Ann Stepanchuk

Memory connects hearts across time like the roots of a tree

In a way that we feel more than see

Val-Ann Stepanchuk

Introduction

Another time flits behind a thin veil.  Some say it isn’t the past, but another dimension or place on a continuum.  My connection to it is made vivid by my very real and vibrant grandmother. Her stories pull at my heart strings, strike my funny bones, and fan the embers of my rage.  Right now, November 10, 2007, I am 53 years old and I am closer to my mom than I’ve ever been with anyone.  But for the first 28 years of my life, I was closer to both my grandmother and my dad.  My granny was somethin’ like five foot nothin’ and packed like a well-tamped musket, her powder was spunk, spirit, and courage.  This story is born from her life and the events she lived through. 

I have never seen someone so dedicated to her children, her people, and improving her situation; even though, sometimes I know every molecule of her soul had to be exhausted.  Her well of willpower had to feel as empty as a black hole.  She would tell me about her life and I would laugh so hard that I would cry and then she would tell me something that made me full of deep and broken sadness.  Even though I felt all of this deeply as it was the story of the family that I love, I could also always see it unfolding before me as a movie.

These events are as true as I can re-tell them. The characters are every inch real and it all happened on Georgian Bay, but I have used no real names.  Some details have been added to weave the story together.  The way my grandmother spoke is authentic and it has been a source of irritation to the people that have edited this book!  My grandmother’s parents were French and that was the language spoken in the home at first, so when she was young, Adalyn was bilingual.  In her older years she didn’t remember French too well and didn’t exactly have an accent, but some words in English she would sometimes say a little differently, like cole for cold or ole for old and ee for he.  But she spoke English well, so her pronunciation was not consistent.  In one sentence, she would often say the same word two different ways.  Some editors wanted me to change this and make it consistent.  But I didn’t want to do that as I rely on my grandmother’s voice a lot and I want her voice to be real.  I became conscious of this speech pattern before she died.  So I started listening for it and knew that it was this particular way.  I have also listened since then to other people, myself included.  Almost everyone is inconsistent; they will say something like talking one time and another time it will be talkin’ or you and ya.  So I was stubborn and I held out on this.

When I was writing this book, my grandmother had already passed.  I was writing the stories down then so that I might make this book and I needed my mother to fill in some details for me.  My mother lay with me many nights.  I would hold her hand with my left and scribble with the right.  She told me some of the stories and I would ask her question after question.  Lying there was one of the sweetest times of my life.

Georgian Bay is a large body of water in Ontario, Canada and is the land of the Thirty Thousand Islands, literally.  Below is southern Ontario, a somewhat flatter, more fertile land, but travelling northward the land is different.  It is rocky with hundreds of lakes and rivers.  There are hills, pine trees, cliffs, as well as small towns and cottages around the bay.  My grandmother and most of my family were born in those little towns on the shores of Georgian Bay. 

But for Adalyn, being born on the shores of Georgian Bay in 1909 was an entirely different way of living, even from the lives of people farther south in cities at the same time.  Up there, life always seemed a step behind, and still does.  Going there is like going back in time.  I think that’s why people vacation there.  Winters are colder, longer, harder, and even the beauty is rugged.  Swimming was one of the best forms of enjoyment when one had no money.  In those times, people used to take a boat to get to school or go on a date because not only did they live on islands, but the schools and churches were built on islands as well. 

I want to tell these stories because this is a way of life that will be gone soon and already many people have not heard about it.  The stories are fascinating to me. My grandmother was intelligent, tough, fun and incredible.  After listening to my grandmother speak for 46 years, I can hear her voice, phrases, and giggling laughter in my head.  Her life is a rich legacy for me. She’s where I come from.  Her life is inside me. She lived these experiences in a land my heart is connected to, in the place where I was born.

I also want to tell these stories because I think they are important from a feminist or equalist point of view.  What Adalyn went through was not right.  If one works hard and goes hungry, that’s one thing.  You get through it and maybe it’s no one’s fault.  But many of the things that happened to my grandmother were uncalled for.  They happened because of the unhealthy mental state of humans, the violence of men, inequality, and the passivity in people who allow these wrongs to go on and on and on.  There is always someone to blame for oppression, violence and poverty.  Some things you don’t get through, you may do the most difficult emotional work on the planet to get over them and you only do to a certain extent.  These dark things lurk inside you and damage your sense of happiness.  They force you to live with the knowledge that there is no justice.  If I had the power, I would change the values, beliefs, and mental health of this entire planet.

At age nine, Adalyn declared that she was too old to go back to school barefoot and quit school, going right to work.  Although this left her illiterate, one would never know; she was intelligent, resilient and resourceful.  She could take an old coat and make a snowsuit that looked like it came from the Sears catalogue.  She lived on islands so when she had a child that wouldn’t swim, she tied a rope around her and threw her in.  When she had a child that couldn’t walk, she waited.  She would go without food for days, but fed her children, lived through years of violence, made an escape with the clothes on her back, killed rattlesnakes, clobbered muskrats, but still wanted to dance in the rugged beauty of the rocks, the water, and the majestic white pines.  You could not kill this woman’s spirit.  We follow her full circle through a life of trial and tribulation until she is buried on a hill, under a tree, hummingbirds on the branches, overlooking the Georgian Bay, exactly where she’d like to be.

1: One Hell of a Home

Evangeline stepped out of the house, looked over at the beautiful glistening water across the road, and smelled the air.  She revelled in