This autoethnographic research presents personal stories from the author, connecting family, land, and music. He recounts stories his Ojibwe grandmother shared about her time in Franz, a small railroad village in northeastern Ontario that is now a ghost town. The connection to Franz is established through memories from his grandmother. Inspired to write a song, the author aimed to reconnect to Franz itself. The study follows the author's personal journey to visit his grandmother's land for the first time, making new connections and stories along the way. The research utilizes Indigenous autoethnography, Indigenous storytelling, and arts-based methods, such as a/r/tography, to link his stories to those of his grandmother, resulting in a reflection of storytelling, community history, and (re)connection to land, woven together by stories from the family matriarch.
TopIntroduction
The year was 1944, maybe 1945. We’re at a small railroad town in northern Ontario, north of Lake Superior. There’s a young Ojibwe girl, about 4 or 5 years old, walking home on a dirt road along the rail-track. Her name is Frances; she’s the baby of the family. World War II was still raging in other parts of the world. Her oldest brother, Allan, left some time ago to go fight in the war.
Her grandma, Mary, was working around the yard when Frances arrived, singing “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!” Astonished, Mary burst into laughter,
“Aaniindi gaa-noondaman iw nagamon?” (Where did you hear that song?)
“Ningii-noondaan radio-ing.” (I heard it on the radio.)
“Gi-debwe na? Gi-nisidotaan na?” (Are you for real? Do you understand it?)
“Gaawiin.” (No.)
The girl and her grandmother laughed heartily.
Somewhat puzzled, yet amused at having gotten a fit of laughter out of her grandmother, Frances began singing again, “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!”
This is a story I remember my grandmother, Frances, sharing. It was one of many that she told of her early childhood in Franz, a tale from northern Ontario, in the heart of the Michipicoten First Nation’s traditional territory. Franz was a small railroad town (Figure 1) along the Algoma Central Railway, near the midpoint between Sault Ste. Marie and Hearst. It is now only a shadow of what it once was—a ghost town. However, for it to now be deserted, it must have once had much life. This chapter explores a period when the region was alive, a time when my grandmother and her family lived there. I share stories I remember her telling, the kind that brought life to a place that I never knew, and about which I have been trying to learn.
Figure 1. Algoma Central Railway (ACR) car running through Franz
Much of the inspiration for this research comes from the final course I took to complete my Master of Education degree from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I enrolled in the course “Place-Based Education” with Dr. David Greenwood in the early summer of 2019. In this course, we were encouraged to think about place and, more importantly, connections to place. One of our textbooks was Hearth: A Global Conversation on Community, Identity, and Place (Smith & O’Connor, 2018). The book offered many perspectives on what relationships to place can mean. However, two essays that I did not expect to stand out in this collection are what most inspired my reflection. Andrew Lam’s essay, “Enchantment,” described his experience growing up in Vietnam, then having to flee in times of war. Boey Kim Cheng’s essay, “Home is Elsewhere,” spoke of the complex boundaries between Singapore and Australia as home. These were stories of movement, displacement, and making new homes in new places, with memories and connections to the motherlands remaining intact. Their stories and experiences could not have been more different than my own, and yet they resonated with me. I could understand what they were writing about, or at least I wanted to understand more. The way they spoke of the homes of their youth was not so different from how I remember my grandmother speaking of her own childhood. I have spent my life living in Anishinaabewakiing, our Anishinaabe homelands, and the vast majority of my time has been spent in northern Ontario. Yet there were places of familial significance that I had never visited. Franz is one of these places.
In a sense, I was familiar with where my grandmother had grown up, as I had heard stories about Franz for much of my life. I knew it was only about an hour away from Wawa, where I was raised, yet I had never been there. During my college course, I was reading these complex stories of motherlands that were so far away, yet still very personal. It led me to reflect on what my own motherlands are. I realized that, in some ways, my story of reconnecting to Indigenous lands may not be so different. Most of my connection to Franz has come from stories from my grandmother and grandfather. These are, quite literally, stories of my mother’s motherlands.