A life of discipline and respect: Mary Gallant

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I first met Mary Gallant on a bright spring morning in May and we didn't exactly hit it off.

With a scarf over her head and long gray white moosehair clinging to her brown stretch pants, she was busy tanning hides.

I was more than half an hour late for our interview.

It was obvious she was angry as she worked in her yard on the Bushe River Reserve, near High Level, but I was intent on talking to her.

I lamely followed her as she gathered wood for a fire to dry the hides and measured water into pails, moving with a speed that belied her 77 years.

I tried to butter her up, saying: "Think of how your grandchildren will be able to read about you 20 years from now" and "everyone's told me you're one of the best elders to interview."

She stopped moving and looked at me. "You said you would be here at ten o'clock. I waited for you. It's past that...I have a lot of work to do."

I gathered my camera equipment and headed for the highway.

I'd figured she was an elderly woman who probably had a lot of time on her hands. Wrong. She was busier than three women half her age.

Three nights later, I worked up the courage to phone and ask her if we could try again. I apologized for my lack of respect and she invited me over.

As we sat in her kitchen, she responded stiffly to my questions and thought it strange anyone would be interested in her early life. But toward the end of two hours, she had transformed into a laughing grandmother, telling me funny stories about tricks her second husband used to play on people during the years they raised their family together in the bush near Meander River, 70 km. north of High Level.

I learned how discipline and respect was expected of her as a child growing up in the early 1900's. She expected some respect from me and so far, I hadn't shown it. Luckily,, she'd given me another chance. Here is part of what she told me:

"They gave me two hours to decide whether to say yes or no," Mary recalls, referring to the summer day in 1928 when her mother brought John Kidney to the convent in Fort Vermillion.

"She told me: This guy has come here for you. Your dad said you're to marry him. You can't throw away his words." The marriage arrangements had been made before her father died.

The proposal took Mary by surprise. She had been in the convent since the age of nine, placed there by her father so she could learn English.

She realized she would soon be expected to leave to make room for younger children coming in. Since jobs for the young girls were unheard of in 1928, marriage was the only choice.

But as her mother, the Mother Superior and John waited for her, Mary fought a war against her self will. "It was bad, very bad if you disobeyed your parents in my time. But I didn't know this guy and I didn't wand to marry him. I had never even spoken to him before!

"Finally, The sister came in and told me to make up my mind because it was getting late. I hated to disobey my mother but I hated to think about going with a guy I didn't know. But my mother kept saying 'your dad has said so.'

"So I finally said yes. We got married right there in the priest's residence and I went home with him."

Though she could scrub pots and pans and bake enough bread to feed over 60 residential school students, Mary could scarcely cook a meal for two. She laughs when she recalls the first supper she cooked for John.

"It was rice and raisins...but it was good. My husband is supposed to like whatever I cook, so he ate it."

The newlyweds didn't say much to each other as they settled into their new life on the Eleske Reserve, just west of Fort Vermillion. Mary, whose mother was Metis and father was Beaver, spoke French and English. John spoke only Beaver but could understand Mary's French. Since he couldn't speak it, he responded in Beaver which Mary understood but couldn't speak.

The language difference meant there was limited communication between the couple, but it suited them. Just how little they shared is vident in Mary's comments about her first child.

"It took me three years before I had my first baby...three years to decide whether I wanted a family or not. John never said anything. I never said anything. I just don't know how to describe it. He never took a child in his arms, he never did."

A neighbor taught Mary to bake bannock, cook, tan hides and urged her to learn to speak her husband's language, which she did.

She taught herself many things, like how to make snowshoes by unlacing an old pair to see how the babiche (animal tendons) was strung.

Once she learned a skill, Mary put it to use and is a strong tireless worker. Even now, neighbors tell me she is always working in her yard, sawing wood, cleaning up, hauling water or tanning hides.

"I used to tan a hide a day. I'd take the flesh off in the morning, make a fire underneath it to dry it and scrape the whole thing before sunset. You need muscles to do that. Now it takes me a whole week to scrape a hide. I feel useless."

I tell her she does more work than most men I know and still looks young. "Naaaah! I have a lot of wrinkles," she shouts and bursts out laughing.

"But if I sit, I'll just get weaker and weaker...and then I'll die."