of starvation. I didn’t know there was any other place in the world.
At night as I lay in my small bed in the half-loft, wishing I wouldn’t pee that night, I heard my parents talking softly to each other. In the flicker of the oil lamp I saw the pictures on the catalogue-covered rafters. They seemed to move, dance, and clutch at me. Daddy was probably nodding off downstairs and then they would bank the stove and retreat to their feather bed. Such was the life of a hunter and trapper.
Such was our life in Roaches Brook — place of my birth.
“Whass fer supper, Mommy?” we’d all ask as we bounded inside after playing.
“Oh, havin a bit a fish tonight, maids,” she’d say. Or sometimes she’d say, “Never ya mind whass fer supper. Ya’ll fin out soon nough. An stay away from dat pot!”
The rules were very strict in our house as to what went on around the stove, and we dared not disobey Mommy. Food was all-important. The stove was dangerous, and everything had to be shared to keep the entire family alive. My mother’s work was all-consuming, not only in the physical sense but mentally and emotionally, as well.
My mother, or Aunt Flossie as she was affectionately known to the community, was a short woman about five feet two inches in height. She looked quite frail at first glance but was actually very strong, both in physical strength and in character. Her strength showed in the way she ruled her household.
Mommy’s pale blue eyes stood out against dark olive skin, revealing her Inuit, Innu, and European heritages. Her dark brown hair, fine as silk, was worn in a neat bun at the back. I seldom saw it worn any other way. When she let her hair down, it fell to her waist. Before she went to bed, she sat and combed it out. It was pleasing to see that softer side of her.
My mother was orphaned young and suffered a terrible childhood. Her mother died when she was only 11. Her father passed away a year later, leaving four orphans; my mother was the eldest. But even those early years weren’t happy. I heard her say of her mother many times: “She was a cruel, evil woman.”
The mission wanted to separate the children, but Mommy refused to go to the boarding school in Mary’s Harbour down the coast. Instead she decided to take a job with a family. It was a job done solely for her keep; she was never paid a salary. The family was very harsh, and two years later they left my mother alone in a cold, unheated cabin to die. Thankfully, someone went to the pond for water, heard banging from a distant cabin, and rescued her.
Mommy’s rescuer brought her to a kind and caring family where she stayed until she met Daddy when she was 17. Even though my mother had had a baby already, my father, Thomas Curl, wanted to marry her and adopt her infant son, Sammy. They married in 1938. For the first several years they lived with my grandparents, John and Susan Curl, until Daddy built his own tiny cabin in Roaches Brook. On Spotted Island he inherited his father’s big house, and we lived in it until we moved to Cartwright in 1953.
Thomas Curl was a quiet, gentle man. When he married my mother, he gave her a sewing machine and a .22-calibre rifle as a wedding present. When Daddy went away to his traplines or out on a hunting trip, Mommy had to find her own way to keep us alive. She’d put on all the warm clothes she could find, strap on the snowshoes Daddy had made for her, tuck her gun under her arm or over her shoulder, and head into the woods, leaving us in the care of neighbours. Being a sure shot with her little .22, she always came back with a few partridges or a porcupine. Mommy also had her own line of rabbit snares set up around the cabin, and we had many delicious meals of rabbit. When Daddy was away on an extended hunting trip, before Sammy was big enough to help, Mommy also had to saw and chop firewood, fetch water, and nurse us when we were hurt or sick. My mother knew many home remedies for everything, from small cuts and scrapes to major cuts and life-threatening illnesses.
During the spring snows when we were outside all day and came in with our clothes soaking wet, Mommy was the one to dry them out. She hung everything, including our saturated mukluks, around the stove to dry. In the morning our mukluks would be so stiff we couldn’t get them on. To make them more pliable, she got out the special softening stick Daddy had made for her. It had a wooden base attached to another piece of wood about three or four inches wide, and stood about three feet high. At the top it was shaped like an axe blade. Mommy took the boots by the toe and heel and ran them over the board, making them supple again. It wasn’t an easy job as I found out one day when I tried to do it.
Mommy worked from pre-dawn until well into the night. She was busy knitting, sewing, making new clothing, mending old clothing, creating bedding from bleached flour sacks, fashioning new dickies (parkas), hooking floor mats, and producing soap. One of the most challenging jobs was crafting sealskin boots or mukluks. When I was little, I couldn’t understand how she could make them waterproof just by her skill in sewing.
Spring was seal-hunting time. When Daddy was due to return from the hunt, Mommy searched the horizon for the safe return of her man. Usually, he came back with a seal or two strapped onto the komatik.
“Whass dat, Mom?” I asked, eyeing the huge bulk strapped to the komatik.
“Dat’s a harp seal,” she explained, not that I would know the difference.
Already exhausted from the hunt, Daddy had to skin the animals before the dogs could get to them or before they froze. If the seal froze, it would be almost impossible to skin. I watched intently as Daddy skillfully removed the skin. His sharp knife separated the fur from the carcass. Huge mounds of fat were put aside for dog food. Once the skin was off, then it was Mommy’s job to clean the skin.
She got the huge galvanized tub from its nail in the porch, and a special board about a foot wide, three feet long, and rounded on one side and flat on the other. As soon as Daddy dropped the pelt into the tub, Mommy went to work. She pulled the pelt up onto the rounded side of the board and retrieved her ulu (rounded knife for cleaning pelts) from its special place. Holding the T-shaped handle between her forefinger and her index finger and stabilizing it with her thumb, she placed the blade on the fatty side of the skin. Making smooth strokes with the curve of the ulu, she slithered the razor-sharp, half-moon-shaped blade down the skin, employing the full width of it and leaving the skin clean. After removing every inch of fat, she turned the pelt over and cleaned the fur from the other side. Once she was satisfied that it was clean enough, she handed it back to Daddy. In later years when she learned to make fancier mukluks, she left the fur on.
Daddy then prepared the sealskin for drying. To do this he lashed it into a wooden frame, stretching it tightly all the way around and nailing it outside on the cabin to dry. Once the sealskin was dry, which took several days, it was ready to make into boots. One full-grown seal yielded enough hide to produce two or three pairs of mukluks.
To make mukluks, Mommy laid the large skin on the floor. She used paper cut-outs as patterns to trace around as she cut out the tongues that covered the tops of the feet. The bottoms and leggings were then trimmed to size, depending on who would be wearing the boots. Once she had cut all the mukluks out, she gave the leftover hide to Daddy. He cut it into thin strips and tossed them into a pail of water. After a few days, the strips became slimy and stretchy and were used to string snowshoes.
Mommy couldn’t soak the boot parts because the hide would be too slippery to grip and she wouldn’t be able to sew them. However, she had to get the edges soft enough to poke the needle through. There was only one way to do that. We had to chew it. I’ll always remember the first time I had to chew sealskin! I was about nine years old.
“Jos, ya gotta chew da
