leaving kap with a hundred dollars

not the money, the band

as i left Kap i listened to simone and ian and one hundred dollars, figured out that fourteen hour day was about timmins, seemed appropriate.

it was sad leaving, though as my dad said after six days it was time.

strangely enough though we never found the road named after my pop, we did find out there was an injunction against blockades on it. turns out the wonderful government did it again -- amalgamated two nations, the Kapuskasing Cree and the Moose Cree and was building an energy project on the mattagami river with the permission of the Moose Cree but without any consultation with the Kapuskasing Cree. Similar to the situation in Ipperwash around the Kettle Point and Stoney Point peoples.

In some ways Kap is a microcosm of Canada's history - land stolen from First Nations, then these same nations manipulated, amalgamated, ignored and forced to assimilate. Corporations promising the world, then abandoning the workers they made promises to (interestingly, there is a protest website against Timbek who currently runs the mill - last year they laid off workers for two weeks and forced a pay cut while their CEO makes 2.5 million a year).


And as lesley says, Kap is seeing rough times, every second shop is for rent or sale, the jobs are going, the population is down from the 12 odd thousand they had in pop's time to about 75 hundred now. And you can see what my pop feared, why he probably went along with what kimberly Clarke did before he fought them - he saw a city abandoned, a city desolate and poor. He saw his workers unemployed, forced to move to the cities where they would face further poverty.

And you see it still in kap, whether in the woman running the museum, Julie who still so clearly loves her town, in the city workers who took the same pay cut the mill workers took when their wages were cut

but you wonder - you wonder about Timbek, and Kimberly Clarke, and all the other multinationals who steal our labour, steal Native lands, and then leave in the dark of night when it suits their bottom line. You wonder about a federal government who has neglected the north of ontario (along with the east coast, the west coast, and now even toronto - you wonder who the hell do they actually support anymore) who will fund a wonderful and cute trail system in Moonbeam but have kept us addicted to the drug of multinational resource extraction

you wonder about this country. I love this land, I find it hard to reconcile my love of the area known as Canada with my deep deep sorrow and anger at our history and our continual governing by those who hate most of us and would continue our journey down the road of corporate dominance.

a country of rock, ice, water and trees, colonized by small pox, lies and bullets, dominated by idioacy and greed

somehow, thinking these things in the dark, looking towards the northern lights, one hundred dollars seem appropriate