On the road

I recall as a teenager being eager to head south from my home in Attawapiskat to visit cities that were hosting summer events. It was so thrilling for me to go on a road trip with family or friends and take in all the sites and sounds of summer in the south. For much of my early life I rarely ventured out of my First Nation, but in my teen years there were more opportunities.

Before I began to fly south for school in North Bay and Timmins as a teen all I ever experienced were trips from Attawapiskat to Moosonee by truck on the old winter road. Some of the time we would head out on that treacherous ice road to Fort Albany or Kashechewan to visit family and friends. As a teen the whole world seemed to open up to me with my first flights south to Timmins and North Bay.

Summer road trips were the next big deal. We would either hitch a ride with someone renting a vehicle or take a bus to southern cities. Back in those old days of the 1990s hardly anybody from up the coast had a driver’s licence or the opportunity to rent vehicles for road trips outside our First Nation. At home, we drove our vehicles – mostly trucks, four wheelers and tractors – without many rules. It was rare in those days to be able to visit much of Ontario, the rest of Canada or the United States.

I can remember my first opportunity to get a driver’s license. I was 16 and it was during that mad rush in the early 1990s when driver-licensing rules were changing. The old rules were that you only needed to have one major drivers test and you could get your license right away. The new rules set up a system of graduated licensing over a period of years and multiple testing. My friends and relatives all rushed to Moosonee to get our licenses.

None of us had ever driven a modern city street before. We had no idea of the many rules and regulations. Yet we thought of ourselves as great drivers. I could speed race my cousins backwards and win. We could steer an old, rusted half-ton truck through the deepest snowdrifts, blinding storms and melting winter roads in the spring. I could navigate the many potholes in my community and I knew every dip and depression on the gravel roads. I rode a four-wheeler on my free time. I drove a tractor during my work hours. We learned by trial and error.

But nothing prepared me for the driver’s test in Moosonee that winter. I read through the testing handbook and memorized as much as I could. I had an easy time with the written test, but when I finally got into my brother-in-law Brian’s truck to get tested, I failed miserably. I nervously exited my parking spot and gently bumped against the truck in front of me. I slowed down but didn’t stop completely at stop signs. I didn’t signal at half my turns. When I finally parked at the end, the instructor told me I had automatically failed as soon as I hit the parked truck.

I went home that winter along with a host of other teenagers who had failed to get their licenses. Several people had passed but they were mostly the adults including my brother-in-law who had gone through testing a few times.

It wasn’t until four years later when I travelled south to Toronto to visit a friend that I got my first license. My first license was also not with a car but for a motorcycle. I had just purchased an older 1981 Yamaha 650 Maxim, a nimble bike with plenty of power and reliability. I had always wished to drive a car down a major highway but it was also my secret wish to ride a bike. When I got tested this time I was more prepared and I took weeks to learn how to ride properly. It was the best training I ever had as a motorcycle rider has more to lose than someone enclosed in a metal box with four wheels and a ton of steel protecting them. I became more watchful, more mindful and more careful with my driving.

The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was in judging speed and distances. On a short gravel road I always thought 50 kilometres an hour was fast but on a paved four-lane highway, speeds are much greater and that was a little scary. It took me a while to figure out how much room I needed to slow down for exits. Many times my friend and instructor had to be very vocal to let me know I had to slow down.

These days many of my family and friends from up the coast have driver’s licences and they own or rent vehicles for major road trips that take them all over the continent. That has all developed in just a couple of decades. We are no longer so landlocked and with the talk of either a train track or road connecting First Nations up the coast to southern cities like Timmins the future looks good for travel.