What makes you passionate about working at the Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity (CCRC) in Blyth?

The direction of travel – finding the path that so many are walking right now and have done for millennia that pertains to respect, resilience, gratitude and humility. The understanding that this is our one and only home and that we are only a small part of the greater, the greater that includes all of the other beings we share the place with, the stars overhead, and the vibrant life beneath our feet. Realizing that we are just passing through and that the best thing we can offer to our home is to leave it in better shape for future generations, and that treating others how we’d like to be treated, in the here and now, truly makes for a sustainable way forward.

The CCRC is evolving and the Voice of the River continued that tradition and brought so many new people to the project, people who brought their finest selves to the event, people who came along with us through their stories, through their love of place.

Could you share one of your most memorable stories as it relates to tourism?

Rae Crossman is a poet. I met him in Brantford three years ago at a story circle we held at the Canadian Military Museum. His wife Barbara came with him. During the story circles we asked a couple of questions: what does the Grand River mean to you? What do you mean to the Grand River? The second question produced some startling and revelatory answers.

We then asked each story circle participant to tell us a story about the River, or about an experience they had with water. When it came to Rae – he stood up and, clutching a canoe paddle, recited a poem – a poem that he’d written for his 15-year-old son (many years before) called From the Bow. Between when it was first written and the story circle in Brantford, Rae had recited it hundreds of times – on stage, around campfires, and as a part of R. Murray Shaeffer’s northern Wolf Project. The poem, Rae’s performance of it, held the room beautifully, for it is a beautiful poem about a father’s love for his son. And it is about a paddle down a long River, the river of life.

Soon after his recitation, he became quite ill, they weren’t sure he was going to live. We kept in touch as Barbara, Rae’s wife, stitched a beautiful quilt square for the Grand River Quilt, and she kept us up to date on Rae’s therapies and his well-being. Just before we started the Grand Tour of the Voice of the River in July, I reached out to Rae and Barbara, asking if Rae was up for reciting his poem in Waterloo when we presented there. To my surprise and delight, he got back to me right away and said he would like to do that. He was still weak but wanted to give it a go. So he did just that. And it was as beautiful as the first time.

After the presentation at Schneider Haus, he and Barbara waited until we had the van packed – I didn’t know they were still there. They congratulated us on a wonderful presentation, and I thanked them again for being a part of it. I then asked if he’d be interested in reciting on the final night at Chiefswood Park and he and Barbara said in unison, Yes! And they drove over for the Two Row on the Grand honouring, and he recited his poem right after a Pauline Johnson poem was presented.

I pointed Rae out, and Richard went over and knelt beside Rae and the two fell into conversation. It was the Two Row in action – Indigenous and Settler talking in peace about their experiences on the River. It was a moment that stirred the soul. At the end of the night, like in Waterloo, as we finished packing the van, I turned in the dark and was immediately met by Rae. He’d been waiting until the work was done, not wanting to interrupt, and then he said that reciting the poem, From the Bow, in Waterloo and again in Chiefswood, was a life saver for him – something that gave him hope, belief. We hugged and he handed me a copy of his poem with a note, then he turned away and disappeared into the night.

What follows is the poem: From the Bow by Rae Crossman… (for Caley)

you’ve always paddle the bow my son

even as a child managing to stroke against awkwardness with a paddle too long for your years

my own unwieldy fathering making you make do

grace came with your growing

measured by fewer gunwale scrapes

and vigour lasted a hundred counts

and a hundred more just to prove you could finish strong

though to be honest you languished a little when the crossing was wide the wind empty of stories

and the sun a hammer on the anvil lake if morning brought mist we feathered silently round every point

strained to see movement

driftwood on the shore startled into heron flight cedars antlered granite shifting into the bulk of a bear, phantoms for the night’s fire

from the bow you made your first cast caught your first fish

and from the bow you slipped them all back

except for the pike that swallowed your hook and forced you to rip the guilt out of your insides

it still quivers there occasionally along the line of your jaw

and you learned to read the river, eager to run the dancing white align down stream arrows find the course amidst the coursing

but I made you throw logs in the souse holes to see what they could do to a man

breath churned into foam

then once in a rapid that surged with my worry though your spirit won me to the attempt

we took the dark slick tongue down between closing walls of rock

a deep channel gorge tentacled with sweepers

kept tight to inside at the turn away from the undercut bank, the sucking whirlpool

back ferried across the current to the brink searching for the break in the line of the ledge

shot through a gap caught a roller and couldn’t hold it

I was ready for the splintering broadside against a boulder

but with a quick pry off the gunwales from the bow

you cleared us past the rock

with only a glancing kiss

and we ran the haystacks leaping and plunging like rodeo riders

your paddle in high brace your shouts rising like the spray

till you cut into the quiet of an eddy, into mid-stream stillness

where time seemed to swirl in contraries, a haven where a wading boy might catch water striders all the calm day long

if not for the river in the artery urging him to lean downstream, hang his weight out on the paddle, feel the pull on the blade, swing the bow into the current again

run the rock garden to the end

so now I know it is time my son

for you to take the stern

time for you to decide which rapids to run, marble smooth into the chute which portage landings made, sheer ascent above a thunder drop

time too for you to feel the rub of the centre thwart on your shoulders

and find the point of balance.