We loaded the boat with nets, a rifle and some tarpaulin. For Bertram, the young son of guide Bernard Diamond, there was a lunch box sporting an iconic Spiderman emblem. The boy’s mother kissed him on his head and made sure his life jacket was strapped on tight before leaving.
Then, the three of us departed Waskaganish and set off heading south into Rupert Bay.
The sea was far from calm. The murky, stirred-up surface gleamed almost mercurial as we moved out into the open water. The gargled clamour of the two-stroke engine chanted incessantly, lulling us into a trance-like state with each bump from the sturdy wavelets crashing beneath us, leading us deeper and deeper into a place of inner silence, of outer wonderment.
The sky split in two. One half incandescent, the other ominous. Two omens of a potential future teasing us in biblical fashion.
“It is raining there,” said Bernard as he pointed southwest towards the Nottaway. Half an hour upriver is where we would stop to check the nets for sturgeon, a fish prized for its fatty, boneless meat.
The rain fell and nipped at our exposed skin like shards of glass. We moved along the Nottaway seamlessly as the waters there had stilled. I learned then that the river harboured invisible paths only Bernard could see.
We cut through and along stretches of the water’s hidden highways, taking strange brutal turns, crisscrossing here and there on what seemed to be an evenly deep river.
“There are rocks, hiding everywhere,” Bernard said, noticing the confusion on my face. “But I know where they live.”
When we reached the nets, the rains had ceased. The country opened up into a vast range of peat bogs and boreal forest cut through only by the large fanned-out capillaries of northern rivers.
Bertram stood up and grabbed a long spruce pole. He began digging into the river, prodding to the sides of the bow of the boat, calling out: “Deep! Deep!”
His father nodded. We approached a pink buoy a few dozen feet from the river’s edge. Bernard scanned his surroundings keeping an eye out for moose or woodland caribou.
“This is where I shot a bear,” he shared, pointing over at a rocky island. Then he called out to his son to catch the buoy so we could check the nets. The land around us was full of someone’s memory.
With each pull on the long rope, we grew more and more eager for a sign. We prayed for a tug, a glimmer of that silken fish skin to reveal itself in the sunlight.
Bertram scurried back and forth along the boat in excitement. His father quietened him in Cree. And there it was. A large, white-bellied sturgeon, twisted entirely in the net, surrendered.
When we reached the end of the net, we had totaled three large sturgeon. Food for days, food to be sold and shared with the community as is typical amongst the Cree.
“Mommy fish, daddy fish, baby fish,” Bertram pointed out, patting the diamond-patterned surfaces of the Jurassic creatures.
“They look like dinosaurs,” Bernard had told me earlier that day before setting off. I had never seen a sturgeon before. They are beautiful.
“Clouds are coming again,” said Bernard. He pointed at a large container at my feet. I unraveled a red-and-white-striped tarpaulin and wrapped it around myself and Bertram.
Bernard moved speedily over the river as the rain poured, now slicing at us. We could hardly keep our eyes open as the drops of water stung at them incessantly.
I found myself constantly checking on Bertram. He was singing to himself. He sang and sang until eventually he stopped, drifting into a deep sleep. His head bobbed with every bump from the boat.
He was happy. They had caught fish.
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