I chose to represent the memory of my deceased grandmother through an artificial braid of hair.  Symbolically, she had her hair cut twice in her life, once when she entered Residential School and later, shortly before her death.  My grandmother was a kind and loving woman, and for me, I will always remember her braids.  She was loved by everyone in the family, and her love held the family together.  After her death in her eighty-fifth year, our extended family drifted apart.

My grandmother, Mary McGregor,  was born in 1900 on the Spanish River Reserve (Sagamok).  My grandfather, John Ense (Ace), was also born in 1900, on the West Bay Reserve on Manitoulin Island.  My grandfather found work wherever he could, working for the Spanish Mills Lumber Company and the Ministry of Lands and Forests.  The photograph on the left was taken in the early 1920s, when they were living on Aird Island.  The photograph on the right is the only known photograph in existence of my grandfather.  Although he worked very hard to support his young family, he was a severe alcoholic.  My father remembers going to the train station when he was a small boy to meet his father, who was returning home for Christmas, after working several months in the bush.  My father, grandmother and aunt stood on the platform waiting for him to get off the train.  After all the passengers had disembarked, three men were laid out on the platform, drunk.  One of the three men was my grandfather.  My grandmother and father rolled him onto a toboggan, and my father pulled him home through the snow.   My grandfather had spent all his money on alcohol and gambling.  My grandfather died in 1954, after a long bout with Parkinson's disease.

My grandmother gave birth to seven children; Cecil, Bertha, George, Marie, Evelyn, Christine and Vena.  My great-grandparents were Jossette Fournier and Louis McGregor of Sagamok.  Louis McGregor is a descendent of a Scottish trader named Captain Alexander McGregor, who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort LaCloche and ran a fishing company on the Bruce Peninsula.  Captain Alexander McGregor took more than one wife and fathered a number of children on the Cape Croker Reserve near Wiarton, Ontario, on the Birch Island Reserve near Manitoulin Island, and on the neighbouring Spanish River Reserve (Sagamok).  My grandmother has four sisters: Margaret, Pearl, Louise and Melvina, and six brothers: Clayton, Duncan, Louis, John, Antione and George.  In the photograph on the left, my grandmother is on the left and her mother Jossette is on the right.  Despite her brief experience at Residential School, she learned to speak her language.  In the photograph on the right, my grandmother is on the extreme right, my great-grandmother in the center, and her sister Margaret is on the right.  

While my father went to war in 1940, my grandmother took care of her ailing husband and remaining children.  My father sent my grandmother his pay from the war to help support his family.  My grandmother remained an active and resourceful woman throughout her entire life.  She took what means necessary to support her family.  At one point in her life, she ran a boarding house, and later, bootlegged for extra income.  While she was bootlegging, she was also doing laundry for the local Chief of police.  He would warn her when a crackdown was coming.  She never got caught.

My grandmother was a great cook.  From my earliest recollections, I always remember her preparing a meal, baking bread or making a pie.  Often we would go on fishing trips, and she would either cook outdoors or bring along a picnic lunch.  Sundays and holidays were always at my grandmothers.  Before a family gathering, she would wax her hardwood floors.  After everyone had arrived, she would turn on the radio, and our parents would dance in their sock feet, while the kids chased one another around the room sliding across the floor.  Afterwards, we all would sit down to eat.  Her floors were always shiny.

Whenever my grandmother visited, she was always in the kitchen.  When she was growing up, they had very little money to buy food.  Instead, they ate fish, rabbit and deer, and they grew their own vegetables.  She never wasted anything and always appreciated and shared whatever she had.  She loved her grandchildren and would always bring us treats or pies that she made especially for us.  

Her favorite meals were fresh fish in the spring and summer, venison in the fall, and rabbit in the winter.  I loved her rabbit and dumplings, which she called "slide-jacks".  It was made with potatoes, salt pork, rabbit and flour dumplings.  She would make this stew in a huge pot.  My grandmother said that when times were tough, she would send my father out to snare a rabbit.  It was a meal that ensured everyone had enough to eat.

My grandmother was close to sixty years old, when I was born.  I was very fortunate to have been raised with four generations.  I loved my grandmother very much, and she would always bring me little gifts or toys.  Her home was never empty, someone was always coming or going.  Her voice was soft, and she was very gentle.  I will always remember her shiny braids, neatly wrapped and pulled tightly into place.

My grandmother and great-grandmother lived to see five generations.  My great-grandmother is on the left, my grandmother is holding her great-grandson, my aunt Bertha is second from right and my cousin Gail is on the extreme right.  My grandmother loved all her grandchildren, especially Gail.  My aunt Bertha had Gail at a young age, before she was married.  My grandmother raised Gail as her own daughter.  They were very close.  When Gail married her husband Gary and had their first child, my grandmother was thrilled.  Little did my grandmother know, that she would not only outlive her daughter Bertha, but also her grand-daughter Gail.  Their deaths were a devastating blow.

My grandmother spent Christmas with all her children, grand-children, great-children and great-great grandchildren.  When she entered a room, everyone was happy to see her.  I remember one year, we saved our money and bought her a rocking chair.  She was thrilled.  Whenever we visited her, she was waiting for us in her rocking chair.  

She never told us what she wanted for Christmas, but we knew she liked practical gifts.  She would buy us toys and games or knit us mittens, hats, slippers and scarves.  We would get her things that she really needed.  Christmas was a difficult time for her.  She had to buy gifts for all her children, grand-children, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.  She lived on a small pension.  But she never forgot anyone at Christmas.

My grandmother loved bingo.  She would go to bingo as often as she could, and she was lucky.  She could play twenty cards or more and still watch your cards and tell you when you missed a number.  Before the days of bingo dabbers, she kept her red and green chips in a small velvet bag.  I loved to play with these chips as a small boy.  My father would drive her and her friends into town through sleet, rain or snow.  The weather rarely kept her from going.  She would tell my father that she'd won a hundred dollars.  He would ask her, "How much did you spend?"  She would say, "Ahhh you, it doesn't matter."

This is how I remember my grandmother.  She was a large, kind, and gentle woman.  She loved to laugh and have her family around her.  She was game for anything.  My brother David and cousin Ron would call her in the afternoon, and ask her if she would like to go to Toronto.  She would be ready in a hour, and off they'd go.  She eventually moved to Toronto for a couple of years and lived with my aunt Christine and her sister Melvina.  She loved to ride on the street cars, and she was thrilled there was a bingo every night.

A few years before her death, she moved back home.  She had lost a lot of weight, and her health had deteriorated.  My aunt Christine was working in a seniors facility, and she took care of my grandmother at home.  My grandmother still loved to have the family over for dinner, and she would help prepare the food.  She didn't like the freezer, and found it too cold to root around inside for food.  She would put a sweater on backwards, pull a hat down over her ears and slip on a pair of gloves.  My aunt snapped this photograph, as my grandmother was rooting around in the freezer.

This photograph of my great-grandmother and grandmother was taken in 1974.  My great-grandmother was born in 1877.  She was 97 years old at the time of this photograph.  My grandmother was 75.  We stayed for dinner that day, and I sat between my grandmother and great-grandmother.  Despite her age, my great-grandmother was still spry and still retained memories of her youth.  She remembered traveling by boat, using a sheet for a sail, from Manitoulin Island to the Spanish River Reserve, after picking blueberries on the island.  She had my aunt Bertha in her arms, who was a baby at the time.  My aunt was crying and she had no milk to give her.  She said she dipped the bottle in the warm lake water and fed it to my aunt.  She said you could do that in those days.  She died two years later, at the age of one hundred.

My grandmother lived to the age of eighty-five.  She had seen the coming of the automobile, electricity and telephone.  She lived through two world wars and saw immense change in her lifetime.  She had over 50 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.  She laid to rest her father, mother, several of her brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren.  She always carried herself with great dignity and humility.  But most of all, she loved life and her family.  I will always carry her memory in my heart.  I miss her love very much.