It’s Monique P, of “the Moniques,” here to tell you about our latest Quebec Roots adventure!

The Moniques  and Florence Allegrini, who among other things, runs the Quebec Roots program at the Blue Metropolis Literary Foundation, spent most of Monday and Tuesday at Ecole Luke Mettaweskum School in Nemaska, a Cree community in the James Bay region. We were there to work with Victoria Howard’s Grades Five and Six resource students. Before we arrived, the kids had already settled on the subject for their chapter in the 2012 edition ofQuebec Roots: The Place Where I Live. They want to write about the Cree culture classes at their school.

Of course, we love the topic because we get to learn a lot too! The students we worked with know, for example, how to skin a bear! Together, we wrote a poem called, “The Day Charles Brought a Dead Bear to School.” Charles is Charles Cheeso, who teaches the kids Cree culture. The students described the size of the bear’s bones (“as bigs as the legs on this chair!”). Geraldine — the only girl in Victoria’s resource class — told us how she dipped the bear’s giant paws in a pot of hot water to make the fur fall off. I think readers across the province are going to find the chapter these kids produce super interesting!

Photographer Monique Dykstra got the students to experiment with different kinds of lighting. She also had them taking portraits. Hopefully, they’ll get some good shots of Charles Cheeso! And if Charles’s hunter-friend manages to shoot another black bear, why then, maybe we’ll even get some photos of those bones and the giant paws!!

It’s interesting — and wonderful — that we can hold onto and share experiences through writing and through photography.

The school librarian Doreen Jolly told me she thinks it’s very important that Cree youngsters learn about their own culture. “What I have learned from my parents has helped me in so many ways!” she said. “In the spring, I take my grandchildren to our teepee in the bush. We cook moose meat and goose over the open fire.”

Special thanks to Victoria not only for sharing her students with us, but also for organizing our visit, preparing the apartment in which we stayed, and also for hosting a pot-luck dinner that the Moniques and Florence will never forget. We got to taste moose meat — and it was yummy!