Ice out

By Conrad Beaubien

Lustagoocheehk is a Mi’Kmaq word meaning ‘godly little river’; translated today it is also known as a branch of the Miramichi in east central New Brunswick. The name Miramichi may have been derived from the Montagnais words “Maissimeu Assi”. The river rises in Big Bald Mountain in the Miramichi Highlands, part of the Appalachian chain of mountains running thousands of miles north/south in Canada and the US. I have been privileged to know that river, from its highest headwaters of the Northwest arm, legendary for its run of Atlantic salmon, to where the arm joins with the Sou’west branch at the town of Newcastle. From there the godly little river expands as it eases onward toward the awaiting sea.

It’s at Newcastle, the hometown of author David Adams Richards, where fresh and salt water dance in the daily tides, stirring a churn of brackish water. That mix of tide is happening on this very morning, I know it, I can tell as I feel the pull of its moon-sent current, drawing from my clay bank of memory, improved by a freshened touch of recollect at this time of year.

Standing out here on the limestone shelf of the County’s Point Petre, looking beyond to the lake horizon, out to the Seaway/Great Lakes navigation channel across the way, while missing is the scent of salt water, present is the echoing sound of the bow thrusters of the Canadian Coast Guard Service ice breaker moving against the current, steaming upstream from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Miramichi Bay that lies at the mouth of the river. I can hear it carried in the wind, the mashing of spring ice and the groan of heavy engines defiant against winter cover over land and sea. Then ghost-like from beneath the ridge of blanketing fog riding low above the reaming meter-thick ice, emerges the burnished red and white of the ice armoured hull.

Appropriate also for this day, emboldened on the hull of the ice breaker is the name—CCGS Jean Goodwill. Goodwill was one of the founding members of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada and a champion of public health services for Indigenous people. The vessel, built in the Chantier Davie shipyards at Levis, Quebec was just recently launched. The 93-metre craft with an eighteen thousand horsepower engine can drive the boat through a metre of ice while travelling at three knots. Similarly, recently launched and now based in Halifax is the Goodwill’s sister ship, the ice breaker CCGS Captain Molly Kool. Captain Myrtle ‘Molly’ Kool was the first woman in North America to attain the certification of Master of a Cargo Steamship in the Home Trade.

And so it is the time of ice-out in a Northern country, the marking of a rebirth of the landscape. This spring, while we remain under safety health precautions, we are yet more freed in mind and spirit. One takeaway that I hope will continue is that the wearing of masks has encouraged us to look into the eyes of another as we converse. Also to be reminded that not being able to read the lips of another is easily forgotten as being a further obstacle of communication for the hearing impaired.

Perhaps it is the slight breeze rising from the Gulf waters, drifting its way into the interior of the continent and the Great Lakes that is catching onto the shoreline in my midst; that remembrance of the wonder of springtime on the river and also importantly in this month of March that is set on the calendar to mark the accomplishments and to pay tribute to women everywhere. As a proud father of daughters, I am also reminded that there are over 80 million girls in the world today that are out of school as a result of cultural bias. The tides of empowerment of women that spans generations are continuing forces that will surely release the chokehold of illiteracy on these young women and the world will be a better place for it.