As soon as we return to the island in late August 2019, a move is in order.
We’ll be in no shape to tackle our renovation if we can’t find temporary lodging. The rental market in Victoria is very tight. With only six weeks to go before the hammers fly, I am getting nervous. We have a two part problem - a place to live (not too dear) and a place to stash our belongings while the work is being done. Rather than store them we hope to find a small unfurnished place.
From Chicago I write to my friend Marion Cumming asking if she might know somebody who knows somebody who has a house. The first person she thinks of, Patricia Walker and her husband Dr. Jim Piercey have such a place in Estevan Village in the municipality of Oak Bay (brief history here) and become our amiable new landlords . The bungalow is a fifteen minute bike ride from our house on Fernwood.
I saw Marion at City Hall on June 1st - the day I was making small presentation to council about our house renovations before heading to New York attend my mom's funeral. Marion presented me with a beautiful hand written and illustrated a card of condolence with hummingbirds . Ever since, every time I see a hummingbird (there is one that hovers outside the bedroom window) I feel it is my mother reaching out to me through Marion’s intercession.
Marion is a wise elder. If anyone here does not love and admire her - I have never met them. Nor have I ever been in her company without learning something important. Marion is an artist, a convener, a writer, an environmentalist, compassionate, & loving, widely-read, firm in her convictions but gentle in spirit. I was very very lucky that she was one of the first people I met when we came to Victoria. If more people looked at the world as she does - we’d all be better off.
Marion and her husband, Bruce, were the first Canadians from the settler community to give their land back to the indigenous people. They did this in 2007 with their farm in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The Globe & Mail reported the singular event in a 2007 article excerpted below. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-gift-meant-to-correct-a-dark-moment-in-history/article681740/
“The negotiations to settle these claims are supposedly restricted to Crown land, not private property. But the Cummings have a different idea. "Individuals could return land, even if governments don't honour treaties and don't give back land that rightly belongs to native people," Ms. Cumming said.
Their home on Sunny Lane is surrounded by gardens and decorated with West Coast native carvings. It has the feel of the country living in the city, with a winding driveway behind a wooden gate and a stone staircase leading up Gonzales Hill to a lookout at the top of Walbran Park.
The view below is the shores of McNeil Bay, once the site of a village of perhaps 200 native people and today one of a series of Oak Bay beaches fronting some of the most highly prized property in the Victoria area.
On these beaches, where homeowners now walk their dogs, local Lekwungen people once collected clams and mussels when the tide receded. And on the hillsides, where camellias bloom in gardens, the Lekwungen harvested starchy camas bulbs to feed their families and trade to other coastal peoples.
The Cummings have worked with local Coast Salish people and with Taiaiake Alfred, director of the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria, to set up the Sacred Land Society, the first of its kind in B.C.
"They are very kind and generous people," said Charles Elliot, a Salish carver and vice-president of the society. "They have a deep understanding of what first nations people are up against, about the loss of our lands and our resources."
Those sentiments led the couple to donate their farm to the Maliseet people when Mr. Cumming retired from the University of New Brunswick in 1992.
The farm near Fredericton, which includes three buildings, 280 acres of forest and half a kilometre of shoreline on the Nashwaak River, is now a healing and cultural centre operated by the Wolastokwiyik Nawicowok On the Land Program.
The Cummings bought the Oak Bay property from the estate of Mr. Cumming's Aunt Jean, who had owned it since 1956, and retired to the West Coast.
The donation of the land is "a rare gesture, a gift that they [the Cummings] will leave to the world," Dr. Alfred said. "Many people feel sorry about the colonialization and wonder what they can do. By giving their property back, they will regenerate the spirit of the land and the people."
Marion is gifting her house in Oak Bay the the Victoria Friendship Center. She is my heroine!