Return to Grassy Narrows

Editor’s Note: This article was written with Ivy Keewatin, a resident of Grassy Narrows.

“First they took us kids away to the residential school. Next they built hydro dams so the rice got flooded and old graves went underwater. Then they made the families leave their log houses and go into prefabs all crowded together on a back bay. After that came the mercury that poisoned the fish. Now they’re taking the trees away.”

The speaker is Ivy Keewatin, the place Grassy Narrows, 80 kilometres north of Kenora, Ontario. I had been a fishing guide there for five summers in the 1950s under the tutelage of Ivy’s father, Andy Keewatin, head guide at Ball Lake Lodge and chief at the Grassy Reserve. Anchored below Wabigoon Falls with Ivy, our fishing lines strung out and humming in the current, I remembered the many times I had taken my guests to fish this spot and stopped for a shore lunch of...