All the Way (3 page)

When I was growing up, I can remember meeting my dad's co-workers and buddies who had moved here from places like Newfoundland. Every time we'd go out hunting or fishing, they were always welcome. I remember waking up on Saturdays and Dad's white co-workers would be waiting outside our house at seven in the morning to go out on the land. My dad wouldn't go run after them. He'd say, “We're leaving at 7:30 tomorrow morning. If you're there, you're there. If not, come out and find me on the land.” The white guys didn't know the land, so they were always there waiting. But after a few years of being guided, they would be comfortable enough to go out on the land by themselves, hunting and fishing and doing all that traditional stuff.

Some people also use the land as an escape from their lives, from their husbands or wives and whatever troubles they have at home. When families are feuding—husbands and uncles and aunties—they say,
Fuck, I'm going out on the land.
You know that when people get angry and go out on the land, if they don't look after themselves you may never see them again. Once you get out of town you're in the wilderness and you never know what could happen, especially if you're distracted by anger.

Sometimes, when things are getting tense at home, my dad will take off and be missing for a day, or two days. I can't imagine
what it's like for my mom when my dad goes out on the land and says he's coming back in a couple of days and a storm brews up. She must be sitting at home wondering if he's coming back at all. And sometimes my dad being away is a good thing. It's a relief. She needs him to come back and take care of the family, but at the same time at least when he's out on the land, there's peace at home. That's when my mother is most peaceful—when my dad is gone. I think that's the way it is with a lot of families around here.

MY DAD WAS BORN out on the land in a little shack near Pistol Bay. His mother, Jenny Tootoo—her Inuk name was Pinwatha—was alone when he was born. There wasn't even a midwife. She tied off the umbilical cord with a piece of string and cut it with a razor blade. He was the fourth of her eleven children.

Jenny's husbands were away trapping when my dad was born. Yes,
husbands
—two of them. It was a different kind of family, though up here it wasn't so unusual. There's a book called
When the Foxes Ran
that was written by Gerry Dunning; you can buy it at the Eskimo Museum in Churchill. One of the chapters is about my grandmother and her husbands, Bob Hickes and Pierre Tootoo. Hicks was white. Tootoo—my father's father— was an Inuk, and so was Jenny. Her marriage with Pierre Tootoo was arranged when she was a baby. She met Bob Hickes, who was much older, after she was already married to Pierre, when the two men became hunting and trapping partners. The funny thing is,
it was Hickes, the white man, who really taught Pierre to trap. In their home, they didn't speak English—only Inuktitut.

Here's what it says in the book:

Jenny was in love with Bob Hickes and to a lesser degree with Pierre Tootoo. The two men never fought with one another, never argued, and looked after each other as well as Jenny. All provided security to each other and the children. “It never mattered to me what father the children had, nor did it bother each father. All of our children have been equally important to us.” She states, “All of them have given us happiness inna my heart and inna their hearts. What is inna your heart is what is important. I've had the love for two men.
We three worked together to keep each other happy, at times even alive. Our family has never been rich, but our family has always been happy!”

My dad's family moved to Churchill, Manitoba, in 1950, not long after he was born. They lived in an area called The Flats, along the Churchill River. The men went to work at an army base there, and for the first time the children went to school. When they first moved there, they were the only Inuit family living in town. That's where my father grew up.

MY MOTHER, ROSE, is Ukrainian. She grew up on a farm just outside of Dauphin, Manitoba. So I guess that makes me
a Ukimo. I know that's not the politically correct way to say it, but I like it.

Mom was an only child. From what I know, her family isn't very close, so she didn't grow up with a lot of people around her. We were never really exposed to her side of the family. They were down south, mainly in Winnipeg and Ontario. We made a few trips down to meet them, but growing up I don't ever recall us being close to her side of the family. I can remember one time when our Baba—my mother's grandmother—passed away and the funeral was in Winnipeg. Obviously, all of the kids and family went down for that. It turned into a bit of a gong show. Everything started to come out from all of the old family feuds. I was a young teenager then and I remember walking out of the ceremony at the church because it got out of control. People were arguing about all kinds of things—I'm not sure if it was the will, who did or didn't deserve what, but it was a mess—so me and my brother and my dad actually walked out of the funeral.

My parents met back in the day; Dad went down south to work and brought Mom back up north. All of these white guys were coming up north and stealing all the Inuit women, so my dad said,
Fuck you, guys, I'm going south and grabbing myself a white girl
, and he picked up this blondie. That's his story and he says he's sticking to it. I think, for Mom, it was a way to get out of her own situation. She left and basically never went back. She jumped on a plane with a fricking stranger, this little Eskimo guy trawling around. They moved to Churchill first, where Dad was from, and then later made their way north to Rankin Inlet.

What must have attracted her was my dad's personality, and I guess the way he carried himself. He's a very quiet guy when he's sober, keeps very much to himself. He goes about his own business. And then obviously he is also a cool guy and a party guy. Maybe that part of him helped take my mom's friendship with him to the next level. He's fun, he's popular, and he's a good hunter—which, back then, was how you survived and how you fed the family, so it really mattered.

But Mom was coming to a completely different universe and a different culture. I've never really asked her what kept her here, but Mom and Dad hit it off right away and had my sister, Corinne, at a young age and then went on and had my brother, Terence, and me.

Eventually, my mother's parents moved to Churchill to be closer to us. That's where my grandfather died. My grandmother worked as a baker for one of the hotels there. Later, after my grandfather passed away, she moved to Baker Lake, which is close to Rankin Inlet, and cooked in a hotel there. She was the best grandma. She sent us goodie packages of her cinnamon rolls, cookies, and doughnuts. It was always a great occasion for our family when we would get these packages. I definitely remember that.

My grandma also provided an escape for us. When there were bad fights between my mother and my father happening in our house, we kids and my mother would jump on a plane and fly to my grandma's place in Churchill or Baker Lake and stay with her for the weekend.

AS I SAID, my dad is a great guy, and on the land is where I love him the most. On the land is where I see my dad at his finest. He's fucking unbelievable. He's like a guru, the guy who understands everything in this part of the world. And when he comes down south, people just love him. He's a charming guy. He's a great, great community guy—everything you could imagine and want in a guy living up north. He has all these good qualities.

But there is another side to my dad, a flip side, a dark side that most people never see because it only comes out behind closed doors. It's like he's bipolar. When you're in Rankin Inlet, booze is around and it's just like he's a totally different man. My dad never brings booze out on the land. Out there, shit can turn on you just like that and if you're not thinking straight, your life could be in danger. But when we're home it's like a switch turns off. In a perfect world he'd just stay out there, sober, and not have to worry about a fucking thing. But the truth is, even when we were kids, he'd get out there for a couple of days and then he'd start to get the itch. He couldn't wait to get back to the house. It would be Sunday, four o'clock in the afternoon, and he would want to get home and have some cocktails because he hadn't had any in a couple of days.

Alcohol is the drug of choice in Rankin Inlet, but if you're visiting from the outside you would never know it. Technically, it's a dry town. There aren't any bars, other than the Legion, where you have to be a member, and there isn't a liquor store. So drinking isn't a social activity, with people going out together, the way it is in the south. To get booze you have to order it in,
and that takes time and it's expensive. Or you can bring it in— or have somebody bring it in for you—on the plane, which is kind of under the table. So the drinking takes place in homes, with the doors closed. You're partying, but you're isolated. And it is binge drinking, drinking whatever booze is available when it's available.

My mother drinks with my father. And back when I was drinking, Terence and I would be right there with them. In those days, I didn't see the problem. Now I understand. But my parents don't understand what I see because they're stuck in this cloud. I'm not here to change people's ways because of what I went through. It's up to them to do it. When I come home now, my parents wonder why I'm not around the house half the time I'm here. It's because they're fricking boozing and I'm not going to sit around and watch that. They just don't get it. They're set in their own ways. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Sometimes they try to hide the drinking from me, but, of course, I know what's going on.

I love my dad when we're away from this whole commotion. But sitting in the house, it's like he's just counting down the hours until I leave so he can have a few drinks. That's when I feel sorry for my mom, but at the same time, they're in it together and they're both stuck in that trap.

I know that the moment I walk out of the house, it all starts up again.

TWO

I
n the centre of Rankin Inlet, nestled between the school and the rink, is a large pond called Williamson Lake. In summer, it is an unremarkable patch of water, but in winter, it becomes something else entirely, even on days when the wind is howling off Hudson Bay, when the temperature never creeps above forty degrees below zero. The local kids also play in the arena, where there is no need for artificial cooling to create the ice surface during the winter, and play road hockey on the snow-covered gravel streets, but it is here, outdoors, where they gather in the time-honoured Canadian tradition after classes are done, lace up their skates, and divide into teams for games of shinny. This is where Jordin Tootoo's hockey journey began, and it is where he developed his rough-andtumble, high-energy style. In the National Hockey League, his style is distinctive, but among the kids in Rankin Inlet it's the only way to play the game.

Growing up in a small town, everyone knows everyone—and everyone knows everyone's kids. You're only a ten-minute snowmobile ride from anywhere in town and others' doors are always open. I remember leaving school and just roaming around town. Our parents weren't worried about anyone trying to kidnap us or do harm to us or anything like that. Kids have way more freedom up there than they do down south. After school, we would just scatter. We'd find different creative things to do.

Nowadays, kids have toys. To us, “toys” was making a tunnel or a fort. We would have snowball fights or go sliding, do spontaneous things. I never played video games—still don't to this day. In those days, there was no satellite TV like they have now in the north. To us, fun was being outside when it was minus forty and just going where the wind took us. That was being a kid. There was so much freedom. Down south, kids are on a pretty tight schedule. It seems like everyone is on a schedule down there. Up north, it's a free-for-all. That's something I'd love my own kids to experience some day—being able to explore the world and not have to worry.

Of course, it wasn't quite so simple when we went home. When your family has problems, you don't really want to be around the house, especially on Friday or Saturday nights when the booze starts to flow. I wonder now how many of my buddies' families were the same as mine. They didn't seem to want to go home either. It seemed like a lot of kids were always out. Were they in the same boat as I was? We never talked to each other about it. Nothing was ever said. I just remember that if friends
wanted to come over to my place, I would always try to find a way to go to somebody else's place instead. Or I'd say, “Let's play road hockey for another hour under the street lights.” Anything to put off walking through that door.

On a Friday night, it would be nine or ten o'clock and Mom or Dad would be yelling out the window: “Get your ass in here!” Little stuff would set them off. For instance, every year in springtime, the snow would be melting and there would be water everywhere. Of course, kids want to play in the water, and when you play in the water you get soakers—water inside your boots. And every time I got a soaker, it was like,
Holy shit, I'm going to get slapped
. I'd walk in the house and try to hide it, but they would always find out and then I'd get knocked around. I don't know what the reasoning was—that they had to do more laundry, I guess. It's one of those things that I dreaded.

I can look back and laugh about it now. It was just a frigging soaker. Why are you so pissed off about it? But if you're not in the right mental state, every little thing pisses you off. Anything your kids do. Maybe your booze order didn't come on a Friday night and you're pissed off because you don't have your fix. So you're going to take it out on your kids. Little things like that.