Hello friend. It’s been a while. I sincerely hope that these words find you getting by as best you can in this strange world we find ourselves in. Staying centered and grounded these days is no small feat, and I’m grateful to find myself here again, with the energy and space to share.
This post is actually two years in the making. The experience I’m about to tell you about deserves thought, healing, and humility, and though I made a delicious recipe, I needed ample time to learn from, and honour the situation. Almost like with rich decadent food, your body and mind needs time to digest emotion and experience, and over the past 20 months of intense turmoil, discovering and uncovering, and worldly change, there is no better occasion or cultural climate than this moment to share one of my life’s most potent experiences. I hope you’ll join me on the entirety of this journey and take the time to read and digest it for yourself too.
I welcome conscious comments and will receive your words gracefully and with humility in regards to my personal history and ask kindly that the inevitable missteps, mistakes, and / or insensitivities in my story shared below are highlighted with respect and with the intention of learning, inspiring community and healing, and are supportive of a better and more just future.
The People
I’ll begin by introducing the people of the story that span many generations, many places of origin, and many cultures:
The Anishinaabeg – an Indigenous community made up of the Ojibwa, Odawa, Potawatami, Chippewa, Mississauga, Algonquin, and Delaware peoples who stewarded the Great Lakes Basin before and through the late 1600s.
A man named James Whetung of the Black Duck clan, Anishinaabe who has called this land home for his lifetime and the many generations before him.
My European ancestors who arrived in this same area (“Upper Canada” then, and what is now known as Southern Ontario) in the early-to-mid 1800s.
A young man named Mossom Boyd, my great-, great-, great-grandfather, who landed in 1833. He purchased 100 acres of land and cleared it himself in the hopes of building a prosperous life. After farming for a few years, he wasn’t making the income he’d hoped for, and sought work at a local sawmill, eventually taking it over, on the site which is now Bobcaygeon, Ontario.
As Boyd continued to work the land, benefitting from the abundant natural resources, he experienced great success with his lumbering enterprise. He later went on to cut forests in great swathes across Ontario, then moved out west to Vancouver Island with his son, Martin Mossom Boyd, who eventually took over the business. Needless to say, the family’s enterprise had an indelible impact on the Canadian landscape and the Indigenous peoples.
Me, a white, privileged woman who benefits from this history in seen and unseen ways with a mission to inspire health to the people of this world through conscious choices. Here’s one of my many stories…