A place to mourn family in Pickle Lake

Seven months after her identical twin sister, Nellie, died, Stephanie Wassaykeesic went to visit her grave in the Northwestern Ontario town of Pickle Lake. It was Aug. 1, 2022, their birthday.

Pickle Lake, about 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, is a gateway to the region’s network of seasonal winter roads that link to remote Indigenous communities. The town of 400 people lies on ancestral trapping, hunting and fishing grounds of Mishkeegogamang First Nation, of which Ms. Wassaykeesic and her family are members.

It was a seven-hour drive from Ms. Wassaykeesic’s home in Ear Falls. She brought her partner, Jon, and their three children.

Ms. Wassaykeesic, 34, wanted to build a little fence around the grave – where her mother Janet was also buried – as part of an Anishnawbe tradition. The two had died within months of each other.

The deaths hit the Wassaykeesic clan hard. Janet had five other children apart from the twins.

“She was a pillar,” her son, Allan Wassaykeesic, recalls. “My mom was that type of person that if you were hungry, she would spend her last dollars to feed you.”

Building a modest structure around their graves seemed like a fitting tribute.

Ms. Wassaykeesic and her family said that they received permission to do the work by a clerk at Pickle Lake’s municipal office. The family then got to work, first erecting the fence, then adding an archway that they hoped would one day support a shroud of vines, then a simple wooden cross. They finished with a fresh coat of white paint.

When the former chair of the local cemetery board stopped by to warn them the structure was against the rules, they told her they had permission from the town. If it became an issue, they could always come back and take it down, they said. They drove home to Ear Falls.

Two months later, Ms. Wassaykeesic got a call from a friend in Pickle Lake: the fence had been torn down. Stephanie says no one had contacted her or anyone else in her large family, most of whom live in the area around Pickle Lake. “That was the heartbreaking part. No letter, no call, no e-mail, no Facebook message.”

Ms. Wassaykeesic’s extended family was planning to visit the grave site on Oct. 21, the first anniversary of her mother’s death. They arrived to find the remains of the fence piled in a heap behind the town office. All that is left now is a cross made from birch and a wooden plaque bearing Janet’s name. At Nellie’s grave, there were a few yellow plastic flowers, a small solar light and a handmade wooden cross.

Jeremy Millar, who was a town councillor at the time, said taking down the fence around the Wassaykeesic grave wasn’t meant as disrespect. Town officials were just enforcing the rules. A local bylaw states that “since wooden crosses, borders, stones, fence railings … may become unsightly and hinder proper maintenance … they are prohibited.”

Mr. Millar said the council couldn’t reach anyone in the Wassaykeesic family. “It’s very regrettable that the whole situation happened, but the facts are, it should never have gone up.”

That seems a poor excuse to those in the Wassaykeesic family. Tom Wassaykeesic, uncle to Stephanie and Nellie, has written to the town demanding an apology. He points out it took down the fence at the start of October, just a few days after National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The family says they have still not heard back from the town council.

Allan Wassaykeesic remembers when he got the call that Nellie was gravely ill. He prepared to make the drive to Red Lake to visit her, hoping to talk to her on the phone before he left. Then he learned that she was gone.

“It still honestly feels like I’m waiting for that call, but I won’t get the chance to talk to her anymore,” he says.

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