Tobermory 2006: Wigwassi jiiman

I spent a morning with some of the Fathom Five National Marine Park researchers monitoring fish abundance in some of the bays. With waders up to my chest, I helped collect nets in shallow water that had been set up the day before. These were large square nets with forty-five degree angle ‘wings’ to guide the fish into the traps. We dumped the contents into a bucket and the researcher counted how many of each species were present in each of the traps. One of the nets had a huge pike fish, nearly a metre long. Most of them had some lost turtles, which we tossed back into the water.

Outside of the Bruce: I went home for one weekend for a change. Mom had me busy on Saturday, playing in a golf tournament for her ski club. It was a good thing that we played best shot, where all players put their ball beside the best ball shot in the group or else we probably would have been out there for quite a bit longer. That evening, one of the ski club (and sailing club) members had a barbeque…I played lots of volleyball, jumped on the trampoline, and had a Cockatiel on my shoulder. A nice finish to the barbeque was when a wooden figure with skis, paper face and a shirt that said ‘Pot bellied stallion’ on it was put on a piece of wood jutting out from a ladder that went over the fence line of Terry’s property. He lit it on fire, and it slid along the piece of wood to drop onto a pile of wood, and among all the drunken cheering of everyone present, it immediately erupted into flames… goodbye potbellied stallion. That Sunday was pretty much catching up on shopping and driving back to the Bruce to see Melody before the sun went down.

Friday was a busy day despite the fact that I had the day off. In the morning I went on a long hike to Cave Point, which has this huge cave on the shoreline – really neat! Afterwards, I headed over to the Visitor’s Centre where the month-long birchbark canoe project was finished. This was a large birchbark canoe (Wigwassi Jiiman) that was made from scratch by Aboriginals who were hired for the project. The canoe was portaged from the Visitor’s Centre to the shoreline (by the Grandview restaurant). A large crowd, including the man who named the Chi-cheemaun on the shoreline, and the Fathom Five boats were watching in the water as the canoe was launched… and the Chi-cheemaun itself came in and blew its horn as they paddled the birchbark canoe around the harbour – it was awesome!