Author: adamiebmn@gmail.com

Categories
Childhood

Growing up in Chisasibi

Growing up

A polaroid of a teepee on Fort George island that has abandoned cabins in the background.

Childhood

Growing up in Chisasibi was a fun experience, I was close with everyone back home. I spent most of my childhood outside; whether it be playing with friends, hunting, fishing and my personal favorite, camping.

Everyone knew everyone and it felt like no one was left out, at least as a kid it seemed that way. Whenever we played anything, everybody that was around was invited to join in.

High School

Our high school was very easy, as long as you showed up you practically move on to the next grade. Every memory I have of high school has to do with messing around with friends, school events and being excited to leave.

Our school didn’t have many people, in my sec 5 group we only had 11 people and by the end we had 7, we graduated with a total of 52 people if I remember correctly. It was a good ceremony, but we had to wear masks due to it being in 2021 and there were still concerns about covid.

Post High School

There isn’t much to do at post high school in Chisasibi. You only have two choices and those are to either work or further your education.

The types of jobs in Chisasibi are very limited, which is why I want to go somewhere else once I graduate from JAC. Due to the low graduation rate, most people decide to go straight into the workforce at a young age.

Not a lot of people that I know decide to go to college since they didn’t graduate high school and the ones that did usually prefer to go into a trade school rather than college.

Categories
Differences

The Differences between Chisasibi and the City

The Differences between Chisasibi and the City

A polaroid of A group of pink flowers around the Chisasibi area.
A polaroid of a desaturated version the city of Montreal with a bridge in view.

Community

There are quite a few differences between Chisasibi and the City, I noticed that almost immediately after I moved here.

The first one was in school, back home, everyone knew each other in school and here it’s the opposite.

I almost know nobody here, I only socialize with classmates and occasionally club members and that doesn’t even cover a fraction of the people in the school.

Transportation

In Chisasibi, everything is close, and you can walk from one side of town to the other in 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, as most people reading this might know, in the city you can’t walk everywhere and get where you want to go at a reasonable time. You would have to find a different means of transportation.

Whether it’s biking, driving or most commonly using public transportation. Public transportation was an annoying thing for me to learn how to navigate efficiently.

Culture diversity

I never got to meet people with different cultures growing up. Because of Chisasibi’s location, nobody really wants to move there so I didn’t get to meet a lot of new people growing up.

Before moving here, I only saw different cultures online. But after I moved, asking and learning about different cultures became one of my favorite things to do along with simply exploring the city.

Categories
Fort-George

Facts & History

Facts & History

A polaroid of an abandoned rusty ship in the forest on Fort George island.

Facts about Chisasibi

The population of Chisasibi is roughly 5000 and the student population here at John Abbott College is nearly double that at approximately 8500 to 9000 students according to google.

The primary language spoken in Chisasibi is Cree and kids don’t start learning English or French until the first grade. Pre-K and kindergarten were taught to us in Cree making the kids learn how to read and write in Cree. On top of the general English, French, Math, etc. classes we took Cree classes up until graduation.

Brief History

Chisasibi is a fairly new town founded in the early 80’s. The people of Chiasibi lived on a nearby island called Fort George before Chisasibi was founded.

The people of Fort George had to find a new place to live after the government started the James Bay Project. The project was to build hydroelectric dams on the nearby rivers which made Fort George Island dangerous to live in permanently.

But every year, we have a festival on the island called Maamouweedaau which translates to let’s get together. The festival has music, games, food and everything you’d expect from a small-town festival, a lot of people from different Cree communities in Quebec come to the Maamouweedaau.

Haunted?

Since we were kids, we’ve heard ghost stories about the island at night and how a lot of people have experienced strange things like the sounds of children laughing, foghorns and even trees falling in the middle of the night.

After hearing those stories, my friends and I wanted to go explore this abandoned ship in the forest that we’ve only heard stories about.