Up The Nottoway River

We loaded the boat with nets, a rifle, some tarpaulin and a lunch box with the iconic Spiderman emblem on it for his young son, Bertram. His mother kissed him on his head and made sure his lifejacket was strapped on tight before leaving. The three of us set off into Rupert bay from Waskaganish, the first of the five James Bay Cree coastal communities of Northern Quebec.

The sea was far from calm. The murky, stirred-up surface gleamed almost mercurial as we moved out into the open water. The gargled clamour of the two-stroke engine chanted incessantly, lulling us into a trance-like state with each bump from the sturdy wavelets crashing beneath us, leading us deeper and deeper into a place of inner silence, of outer wonderment.

The sky split in two. One half incandescent the other ominous. Two omens of a potential future teasing us in biblical fashion.
“It is raining there,” Bernard said as he pointed southwest towards the Nottoway. Half an hour upriver is where we would stop to check the nets for sturgeon, a fish prized for its fatty, boneless meat. 

The rain fell and nipped at our exposed skin like shards of glass. We moved along the Nottoway seamlessly for the waters there had stilled. I learned then that the river harboured invisible paths only Bernard could see. We cut through and along stretches of the water’s hidden highways, taking strange brutal turns, crisscrossing here and there on what seemed to be an evenly deep river.
“There are rocks, hiding everywhere,” Bernard said, noticing the confusion on my face, “but I know where they live.”

When we reached the nets the rains had ceased. The country opened up into a vast range of peat bogs and boreal forest cut through only by the large fanned out capillaries of northern rivers. Bertram stood up at once and grabbed a long spruce pole and began digging into the river, prodding to the sides of the bow of the boat, calling out: “deep, deep!” His father nodded. We approached a pink buoy a few dozen feet from the river’s edge. Bernard scanned his surroundings keeping an eye out for moose or a woodland caribou.

“This is where I shot a bear,” he said pointing over at a rocky island. I asked him if he shot it this spring. “Maybe five years ago.” He said and then he called out to his son to catch the buoy so we could check the nets.  The land around us was full of someone’s memory.

With each pull on the long rope we grew more and more eager for sign. We prayed for a tug, a glimmer of that silken fish skin to reveal itself in the sunlight. The young boy scurried here and there along the boat in excitement. The father quietened him in Cree. And there it was. A large white-bellied sturgeon, twisted entirely in the net, surrendered. 
When we reached the end of the net, we had totalled three large sturgeon. Food for days, food to be sold and shared with the community as is typical amongst the Cree. 
“Mommy fish, daddy fish, baby fish,” Bertram said patting the diamond patterned surfaces of the Jurassic creatures.
“They look like dinosaurs,” Bernard had told me earlier that day before setting off. I had never seen a sturgeon before. They are beautiful. 

“Clouds are coming again,” said Bernard. He pointed at a large container at my feet. I unravelled a red and white striped tarpaulin and wrapped it around myself and the young boy. Bernard moved speedily over the river as the rain poured, now slicing at us. We could hardly keep our eyes open for the drops of water stung at them incessantly. I found myself constantly checking on the young boy. He was singing to himself. He sang and sang until eventually he stopped, until eventually he lulled himself into a deep sleep. His head bobbed with every bump from the boat. He was happy.
They had caught fish.