Of course, the Voyageurs and the Acadians arrived to this Mi’kmaw homeland long before. Still, for all sorts of reasons, they didn’t so abruptly and overwhelmingly alter the trajectory of the people and the land that was here long before them — nothing like the landing of Hector would. Tim’s Fraser clan and their fellow passengers would be the first of an onslaught of Scottish colonists — almost 185,000 over the next 100 years — all starting not long after the British conquest of New France. And the American Revolution would deliver another wave of colonists to the region.

Now it’s time for Tim to embark on a family roots journey in Nova Scotia. And somehow the timing of this journey seems fitting. Maybe it’s the moment we’re in as a country as the impacts of colonization finally become mainstream knowledge. Or maybe it’s this one stark fact: If not for the Mi’kmaq, Tim wouldn’t be here.

“I wonder if we can find places in Nova Scotia that can help us envision what the Mi’kmaw world was like before Hector arrived — to imagine that moment before everything changed?” Tim asked the question months before, when we first imagined this trip. It was a good one. “My dad, my sisters all talked about coming from Scotland, but what about the people who greeted us, those who helped our ancestors survive? How did we change their world?” Now in early spring, we’re hitting the road to find answers in a part of the Mi’kmaki, the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq, that might not look too far different from what it was before 1773. 

“I would describe this as a library or textbook,” says Parks Canada cultural interpreter Nick Whynot. Together, we stand barefoot, surrounded by dozens of images scratched into an outcrop of exposed bedrock on the shores of Kejimkujik Lake. Our bare feet are a sign of respect, but also an act of preservation, reducing the wear and tear of shoe soles on these fragile etchings as we venture out onto the rock. “A lot of these images may be just doodling or a kid playing. But a lot, I feel, have to have a story.” 

Inviting coves flank us on both sides. Views of cottage-less islands span out before us. This is the second largest collection of petroglyphs in Canada. Whynot’s direct ancestors left these marks here over the past hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years. A couple of hours is not enough time to take in all the stories these images inspire.

As master naval architects and revered shipwrights in Pictou reclaim the history of New Scotland through the restoration of Hector, the Mi’kmaq of Keji are doing exactly the same with their own ancestral vessels.

“It’s good if you can find a hard- wood hill where birch trees are, but you spend a lot of time checking hundreds of trees before you find the right one,” says Todd Labrador, Mi’kmaw Elder, cultural archeologist and renowned birchbark canoe builder, who lives in the nearby Wildcat community. The plan today was to join Todd and his daughter, Melissa Labrador, in digging for spruce root in Keji’s mossy forest floor — a ritual for them every spring. More than 200 metres of root go into each canoe to secure the vessel’s seams. But Mother Nature has other plans. It’s pouring rain today. Instead, we meet beside Todd’s 6.5-metre birchbark canoe on display within the park’s visitor centre.

“We put a sail in the centre and sailed this one with the Bluenose II last summer,” says Todd, resting his hand on the gunnels. Todd’s great-grandfather Joe Jeremy built the mast hoops for the original Bluenose in Lunenburg. He’s also the namesake of nearby Jeremy’s Bay.

As Nova Scotia’s last practising Mi’kmaw birchbark canoe builder, Todd’s knowledge on sourcing the materials and crafting his vessels reaches back many generations and from both sides of his family. He has also spent decades reclaiming additional knowledge through archival photographs, speaking to Elders and just being on the land here, along with Melissa. These days, they’re concerned that a bark disease, possibly aggravated by climate change, is threatening their local supply.

Indeed, this landscape has long been a sanctuary for the Labradors. In the 1840s, Todd’s ancestors were granted the tract of land that included the main petroglyph site we had just visited. As young children, Todd’s father and his siblings hid in these forests from residential school agents who came to collect them. Today, Todd and Melissa find solace prying out lengths of spruce root across Keji in spring and harvesting birchbark as thick as a loonie on steamy July days. Their people have connected to and moved through this homeland for millennia.

“Sometimes we lived by the ocean year-round. Sometimes we travelled inland. And Keji was sort of the centre between the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean,” explains Todd. “Our ancestors didn’t have boundaries. This is Keji. This is where we live. But then the settlers start moving in. And then when our ancestors came back, there was no room.”

In his gentle way, Todd makes clear how the wrongs of the past are not just part of some distant colonial era. “When I first started working here at Keji back in 1982, as a Mi’kmaw person, I was not allowed to go to the petroglyphs sites,” he explains. He and Melissa’s late mother both worked here. For 10 years, they pushed for permission to build a birchbark wigwam but were told it wouldn’t fit in the national park. “Well, I was thinking, okay, if it wouldn’t fit in Keji, where would it fit?” 

Later, he suggested building a canoe as part of an interactive park program with visitors. The answer was no again. So in 2004, Todd quit his job with Parks Canada to build canoes elsewhere. He travelled to France, where his skills were widely celebrated. In 2009, Parks Canada asked Todd to build the canoe that now takes pride of place in the visitor centre. And finally, in 2014, Parks Canada asked if he would run the canoe-building program that he had suggested a decade earlier. He agreed, and today people from all over the world sign up to help Todd build a canoe on summer Sundays. “The response has been incredible,” he says.

At first, Melissa stands behind her father quietly as he speaks to us. Still, her work for her people is far from in the background. She is also a revered community leader. “I’m an artist, but first I’m a mother. The term Indigenous Guardian kind of covers the rest of what I do,” says Melissa, “as far as the preservation of landscape, culture and history together.”

This work starts with the homeschooling of her 10-year-old twins to ensure they fully absorb their culture. Melissa is also an assistant canoe builder and a well-known artist in her own right, with paintings showcased in both galleries and magazines. Finally, there’s her cultural guardianship.

“Just outside Kejimkujik Park, there are a couple of wilderness areas that I helped to create and to reclaim their Indigenous names,” says Melissa. She’s drawing attention as well to some culturally rich Mi’kmaw areas on Kespukwitk’s south shore. Melissa also partners with her father to pass down their canoe-building knowledge to Mi’kmaw youth in communities across the province and spends time researching documents in the provincial and national archives that corroborate the oral histories of her family’s prominent standing in the region.