Indian Summer Ride

Joy here...Four of us met up this morning under a hazy sky to head out for a ride in an autumn morning borrowed from summer.  Last Friday when we rode, it was 4 C at the start of our ride; today it was already around 14 C by the time we headed out the door, with a high humidity and a promise of temperatures around 25 C by the time our ride would be over.  The Trainer and I met up with two other friends - one who has never ridden with us so far this year and another one who has joined us on a Friday ride once and who was part of our "Share the Road" 100km cavalcade - and we headed off towards the park.

The Trainer says that we like to "pick up strays along the way" (with a laughing reference to our two new friends who joined us today), but we all agree that we are friendly folks who like to find like-minded friendly folks to head out on bike rides with us.  So our "strays" today were more than welcome, and in that spirit of friendship and camaraderie, we felt the skies began to clear overhead as the sun began to illuminate the beautiful fall colours that are just starting to show up on all the trees around us.  And while those trees were showing signs of autumn, and our memories of last week's 4 C ride were fresh in our mind, the warmth of today's ride made us feel like we were in the midst of an "Indian Summer."

There are a few different theories about the roots of the term "Indian Summer," as some think that it referred to a time when North American Aboriginal tribes would bring in their harvest and others think that it referred to a time of nice weather at the end of summer when tribes could still complete raids on European settlers (or vice-versa as the European settlers to North America certainly weren't above attacking those who were here first).  Etymology aside, the term usually refers to above-average temperatures in the autumn when fall begins to feel a bit like summer.  And today was just such a day.

Now in my former life as a professional academic, I have written a couple of articles on the way in which settler-invader cultures deal with various kinds of angst and discomfort vis-a-vis questions of indigeneity and aboriginality in postcolonial contexts.  As a scholar, therefore, I cringe at the term "Indian Summer" with its misnomer "Indian" to refer to Canada's First Nations.  I cringe at the stereotypes inherent in some of the theories as to where the term comes from (and its idea of historical aboriginals as nothing more than threatening savages intent on raiding settlers - I ask you what you would do if a bunch of people showed up and started living in your back yard?!).  As a scholar, I am sensitive to issues of aboriginal rights, concerns about identity politics, questions of belonging/non-belonging, and notions of equity.  But these are, as I say, often scholarly notions, notions which emerge from my study and research into literary and theoretical texts.

But today as I rode under an ever-warming sun, waving good-bye to The Trainer and our one new friend at Pink Lake, as the other and I kept on riding to complete a full loop of the park (loop #19 of the season for me), this new friend helped to bring life and animation into these academic concepts for me.

It turns out that he is of Métis heritage, and his family can be traced back to leaders of a particular Algonquin tribe in the area.  The Algonquins were the first of the North American aboriginal groups to ally themselves with the French, when they arrived in North America (and claimed it for France, with much of what is now Canada being Nouvelle France until 1763...or 1759, which was the date of the decisive battle in Quebec City known as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, where the British were victorious over the French forces).

As we rode along through the warm "Indian Summer" day, with the bright colours of fall beginning to show up every now and then, he told me of his work to trace his family's history.  He can trace things back to the 1500s, with official, written documents starting as early as 1603 (you gotta love those Catholic Jesuits and their record keeping!).  His great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother (and I hope I've got the right number of "greats" in there) was married to one of the key Algonquin chiefs, one who is mentioned in historical dispatches and records noting his helpfulness to the French.

So the whole area where we ride, which is now a national park, was once land lived on and traded in by various aboriginal groups - tribes, clans, families - and then they made complex and complicated alliances and connections with the French (and then the English) when they decided to head over to this part of the world to expand their imperial holdings.  For me, whose family has been in Canada for a mere 100 years and whose history can be traced to the 170,000 Ukrainians who immigrated to Canada between 1896 and 1914, but who still feels a kind of "newness" to her familial history in this country; whose surname still raises questions by Canadians with Anglo-sounding names like "Johnson" or "Smith"; whose hyphenated ethnic identity still marks her as somehow different from Canadian-Canadians; and whose life in Ottawa only began a mere 4 years ago, I found this discussion of a man reclaiming and rediscovering a lost familial link to an aboriginal past while riding through his own historical family's lands on an "Indian Summer" day to be utterly riveting.

So riveting, in fact, that I didn't even notice any burn in my legs; I didn't feel yesterday's spinning class making me heavier than usual on the bike; and I was home before I knew it.

Who knew that a bike ride could offer a living, breathing tour through a bit of Canadian history?

Over and out,
Joy