Eva Carpick

My mom's mother was from the northern Manitoba Nelson House Cree and her dad left Scotland when he was 12 and they settled near Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.. When she was thirteen my mom had a baby porcupine. She delivered the baby by performing a cesarean on the dying ill mother porcupine. The first thing that the baby porcupine did was to put its tail up and climb a tree. 


My grandmother, Josephine Dysart delivered hundreds of babies. The oven of the woodstove was often used as an incubator. There were no power generated utilities. None of my mom's brothers or sisters were born in a hospital. My mom was born "somewhere" between Nelson House and South Indian Lake. There were 13 kids in the family. Six girls and seven boys. Betsy, the twins - Margaret and William, Sarah, Adam, Eva, Charlie, Willy, Sam, Evelyn, Roger, Irene and Ronnie.


Eva's 79. She doesn't bake much anymore except for bannock. Bannock and Roger's syrup were a treat when she was a kid. They had butter after her dad went by dog sleigh to get groceries. It would take three days to travel from where the trapline was on North Indian Lake to South Indian Lake. It was two sleeps. He had eight dogs. The sleighs were called toboggans. In South Indian Lake there was a Hudson's Bay post.


Charlie Dysart, my grandfather would buy: candles, coal oil, flour, baking powder, lard, salt, pepper, tea, coffee, dried fruit (apples, raisins), dried beans, salt pork, yeast, sugar, honey, big 5 lb. cans of jam (raspberry, strawberry). "Everything was in cans in those days."


He bought fabric and Josephine sewed the clothes for the kids by hands. She made the two dresses that she owned. She knit. Made socks and mitts. Made mitts and mocassins with caribou and moose hide. They kids didn't have shoes. When there was no snow the kids wore mocassin rubbers or went barefoot.


They only ate wild meat and fish. They ate mostly caribou (more tender than moose meat), moose, rabbit, beaver, muskrat, ducks, geese, ptarmigan, grouse. The fish were whitefish, pickerel, trout, jacks, sturgeon, red suckers. 


Charlie put a garden up at the main camp. Potatoes, carrots, onions. They were farmers in Maine. "Uncle Bob always had a nice garden." Bob was Charlie's brother who joined him up north. Bob also a married a native woman.  They had a large family. Everyone had a large family.


Of course, there was no electricity. 


Candies and bars were a treat. They used to make a taffy with Roger's syrup in the winter. 


"Our camp was very small. It was made of spruce logs. There was a loft with the wood stove down below."


Josephine made caribou hair mattresses. The hide was used for clothing. Charlie had a caribou hide parka. All the feather robes and pillows were filled with goose or duck down. 


My mom came to Thunder Bay from her home in The Pas last Saturday. She brought pickeral from the north. When she cooked us a fish dinner she breaded the fish in Betty Crocker Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, flour and Club House La Grille Lemon & Herbs seasoning. We also had mashed potatoes, boiled beets, boiled frozen peas and local greenhouse tomatoes. Delicious.