E. Pauline Johnson

We North Americans have nothing similar to Monaco, Liechtenstein or San Marino in Europe. We have no sovereign principalities surrounded by Canadian or American territory. Or do we? On saturday our family drove down to the nearby Six Nations Reserve, which lies along the Grand River between Caledonia and Brantford. As one of the many aboriginal reserves in this country, it is Canadian territory, yet in some respects it possesses something approaching sovereign status. It relates directly to the federal government and has its own elected band council. Status Indians on the reserve are exempt from certain taxes to which the rest of us are subject, most notably those on gasoline and cigarettes.

Our destination was Chiefswood, the childhood home of the famous Anglo-Mohawk poetess, Emily Pauline Johnson, who lived from 1861 until 1913. Nancy had read a biography of her, Flint and Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (2002), by Charlotte Gray, and was fascinated to know that her childhood home was so near to us. A few weeks ago we had driven past it, and Nancy was determined to come back and visit Chiefswood, which was restored and opened in 1997 as a museum.


McMaster University

Chiefswood

Johnson never married, but at least one of her poems indicates that there may have been someone special in her life at some point. Here is an especially moving stanza from Close By:

Once, many days ago, we almost held it,
The love we so desired;
But our shut eyes saw not, and fate dispelled it
Before our pulses fired
To flame, and errant fortune bade us stand
Hand almost touching hand.

For someone like myself who has always lived near those "inland seas" known as the Great Lakes, Johnson's Erie Waters speaks vividly:

A dash of yellow sand,
Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;
Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;
And, creeping close to these
Long shores that lounge at ease,
Old Erie rocks and ripples to a fresh sou'western breeze.

I'll end with a stanza from this patriotic poem, Canadian Born, which for more than one reason sounds magnificently politically incorrect nowadays:

No title and no coronet is half so proudly worn
As that which we inherited as men Canadian born.
We count no man so noble as the one who makes the brag
That he was born in Canada beneath the British flag.

More of her poetry can be found at the Pauline Johnson Archive located at McMaster University.