Tobique 

 

The Malecite Reserve is standing at the junction of the Saint-Jean and Tobique River.

 

Tobique means in Malecite language:  whose making bows.

 

Complicity of the root of the bow and for the head of the arrow, the carved stone.

 

So much in the making.

 

So much hope to hunt and to defend ourselves.

 

Tobique, place of hunting, fishing, trapping for a thousand years.

 

Time when the trout covered the river like confetti.

 

Time of big pines that were shipped out to England.

 

Time of caribous, which vanished when the moss became rare.

 

The era where the moose skin was used for the white belts of the long dark grey coats of the Canadian soldiers.

 

The Amerindians knew how to read the signs of nature, the geological formations, the behaviour of the forest in fire, the habits of the fishes and animals.

 

Amazing paddlers acted as guides for the members of the Tobique salmon club.

 

Lord Strathcona had built a fishing residence for the Duke of Connaught, Governor General.  The highly ranked wildlife of Canada and the States didn’t rub shoulders with the daily dark heroes.

 

They didn’t wear the underwear made with wool that the women were weaving with a spinning wheel, the long john’s thick of a quarter of an inch, to protect them from winter’s cold as much as the heat in the summer.

 

We talked about gold and precious stones at the edge of the blue mountains.

 

We are still looking for Giberson’s hillock of gold.

 

Wealth is the nature; a treasure is hidden inside.

 

Guarded by the black bear, the red squirrel and the tight bow.

 

And by the arrow that goes through millennia to reach infinity.

 

The Malecite knows the value of things: I will take a salmon but I will refuse your loony; you can’t buy everything, he said to the tourist.

 

The Malecite as well as the Mi’kmaqs are still our living archives.