Where the waters divide: Jon Erik Kroon took us on a tour of Walpole Island and surrounding area last weekend, the water was high after a severe rain storm earlier on in the week and it was easy to see how the river delta has defined this region for millenia. Walpole First Nation is called Bkejwanong (where the rivers divide) by the Ojibwa, Potawatomi and Ottawa who have lived there for thousands of years.
Jon Erik first took us to the Highbanks cemetery on Walpole island, (the highest location around this river delta) located precisely where the river divides and the Snye goes inland toward present-day Wallaceberg, while the St. Clair veers southwest, emptying out at Lake St. Clair a few miles down. At Highbanks, Jon Erik pointed out the areas where his father had located the sites of ancient burial plots, bundle burials, an indigenous practice throughout the Americas where the body of the deceased is arranged in a fetal position and wrapped in cloth with “gifts” for the afterlife placed nearby. Highbanks also has a ‘modern’ end with grave sites marked by tombstones, and a monument to a historical treaty made on St. Anne’s Island (now Walpole) by Alexander McKee, representative to King George III in 1796 ceding land to the Ojibwa people and affirming the “rights and independence of all the Indian Nations”, including the rights to be “free and unmolested in their trade and hunting grounds and to pass and repass freely undisturbed to trade with whom they please.” Perhaps this is why the location is also the site for yearly pow wows in June, when Walpole becomes a gathering place for indigenous peoples throughout North America (and as far away as Latin America) to trade medicines and plants from this region.
It is also thought that Chief Tecumseh’s burial site is here, marked by a cairn on the shore of the St. Clair River.
Sensing Place: Lambton between the lines
Lambton between the lines, is a collaborative art-research project by Andreas Rutkauskas (Montreal), Lee Rodney (Windsor), Lisa Daniels (Curator, Gallery Lambton) and the SARCASM Collective (Sarnia) . This site chronicles the field research and community contributions that will inform new readings of the historical, industrial and political landscapes in Lambton County. The project is funded by Gallery Lambton, The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
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Point Edward golf course on the northern end of Christina Street: for a stark contrast, see “The last house on Christina Street” (August 24), which marks the boundary line with the Valley. See also the quote from Pam Calvert’s documentary about Sarnia as “fairyland.”
We’re told this might be the entry to Planet Xenon, one of Sarnia’s most elusive sites. This site is forever confused in my mind with the story of “the blob”. See CBC archives for a super 1980s style image.
This is a Google Streetview image of an architectural oddity that we came across on our rainy visit to Marysville on August 26 (see entry for Crystal Village). Directly across the border from Froomfield on the Canadian side, Marysville is an interesting place. Billed on its website as “a great place to visit, a better place to live”, I’ve learned from subsequent research that Marysville makes an odd array of 21st century consumer goods, from Frito Lay potato chips to silicone hip replacement parts.
Marysville certainly was an interesting place to visit as the town’s website suggests, but its otherworldly qualities, found in architectural sameness of Crystal Village or the imposing UFO structures on Pyramid Drive, seemed more like a chapter out of Don Dillo’s novel White Noise than the “great place to live” proclaimed by its website.
A return visit on Google Earth yielded the following information that was unavailable from the ground level.
Crystal Village, Marysville Michigan.
We’ve seen this housing development in Marysville, Michigan several times from the Sarnia side of the St Clair River, which shows the backside of a condo complex that flanks a major coal processing site; from the Canadian side one might think that its stylish worker’s housing, given the proximity of the residential and industrial sites.
But when we drove over to the other side, it became apparent that this development has nothing to do with the coal processing site. The development is ironically called Crystal Village, a name that would seem to disavow any connection to its surroundings: the alarmingly homogeneous condo development seems to try to cover up its proximity to the surrounding industrial complexes with walled gardens at the end of each cul-de-sac, but the predominant backdrop is clearly visible upon entering.
