Friday, September 25, 2026

seven months later: did we answer the housing questions

seven months later: did we answer the housing questions?

On February 19, 2026, I published a post called “Build Canada Homes: Hope, Urgency, and 10 Questions Canada Must Ask.”

I wasn't against Build Canada Homes.

Quite the opposite.

I wrote:

“good intentions must meet real results.”

And I asked some uncomfortable questions.

Seven months later, I thought it was time to go back and look at them.

Not because I want to say “I told you so.”

Because I want to know what happened.

so, where are we now?

When I wrote my February post, the federal government said Build Canada Homes had already advanced six Direct Build projects and four major partnerships representing more than 7,500 new homes.

By June, after the Build Canada Homes Act received Royal Assent, the government reported that projects and partnerships represented more than 11,000 homes underway or nearing construction.

That is movement.

But a housing announcement is not the same thing as a finished home.

A home under construction isn't the same thing as a home someone can move into.

And a home described as “affordable” isn't necessarily affordable to someone living on a very low income.

That's why I want to return to my original questions.

seven months later, I still want to know:

1. What does “affordable” mean in actual dollars?

Affordable to whom?

A household earning $40,000 a year?

$60,000?

Someone receiving disability or income assistance?

A senior living on a fixed income?

We need the numbers, not just the word affordable.

2. How many of these homes will actually reach the lowest-income Canadians?

“Below market” can still be completely unaffordable to somebody with very little income.

3. How many people experiencing homelessness have actually moved into new homes?

This is one of the measurements I care about most.

Not announcements.

Not proposals.

Not units in a pipeline.

People housed.

4. How many homes are completed and occupied right now?

And how many are still in planning, approval, procurement or construction?

Those are very different stages.

5. What happened to the promise of speed?

Build Canada Homes was created partly around the idea that Canada needed to build differently and faster.

So how long does it actually take from funding announcement to somebody getting a key?

6. Are modular and factory-built methods actually making a measurable difference?

If they are faster or less expensive, show us the numbers.

If they aren't, let's understand why.

7. Who is receiving the housing?

Families?

Seniors?

People experiencing homelessness?

People with disabilities?

Workers?

Middle-income households?

There can be room for different kinds of housing — but we should know what we're building and who it is intended to serve.

8. How much does each unit actually cost?

And what portion is public money?

Transparency matters when billions of dollars are involved.

9. What should Canada use as the real measure of success?

Homes announced?

Homes approved?

Homes under construction?

Homes completed?

Homes occupied?

Or people who were previously unable to find housing and now have a stable place to live?

Those numbers tell very different stories.

10. And perhaps my biggest question: what happens to the people who need housing NOW?

Housing construction takes time.

People don't stop needing shelter while construction is happening.

So how do we build for the future while also helping the people who are already homeless or precariously housed today?

I'm glad something is happening.

I meant that when I wrote my February post, and I mean it now.

But government programs should be allowed to succeed and be questioned at the same time.

Those aren't opposites.

In fact, accountability is how we find out whether good intentions are becoming real results.

Seven months ago, I wrote:

“Housing is a human need. And Canada's future depends on meeting that need now, not just promising more in the years ahead.”

I'm still asking.

How many people have actually gotten through the door?

And how many are still waiting?

💛

wait… which vancouver? untangling mary ann’s journey

I think it is time to straighten out the geography, because I managed to get myself thoroughly confused.

And if I was confused, I suspect I am not the only one.

When I first started researching my ancestor Mary Ann Maranda dit Le Frise, I kept seeing the name Fort Vancouver.

I live in Vancouver, British Columbia.

So naturally, my brain went:

Fort Vancouver… Vancouver… British Columbia?

Then I wondered if perhaps they meant Fort Langley, because I know Fort Langley is an old Hudson’s Bay Company trading post in British Columbia.

Nope.

This is where the map becomes very important.

There are three completely different places that can easily get tangled together:

Vancouver, British Columbia
This is the Canadian city we know today. It did not yet exist as a city when Mary Ann was born.

Fort Vancouver
This was a Hudson’s Bay Company post established in 1824 on the Columbia River, at what is now Vancouver, Washington, directly across the river from present-day Portland, Oregon.

Fort Langley
This was another Hudson’s Bay Company post, established in 1827 on the Fraser River in what is now British Columbia.

So:

Fort Vancouver ≠ Vancouver, B.C. ≠ Fort Langley.

That little geographical correction changed how I pictured my family's history.

now look at mary ann’s journey

Mary Ann's family story gives us a sequence that is much more interesting than simply saying they “moved north.”

Mary Ann described the journey as:

Willamette Valley → Cowlitz → Sooke

And that matters.

The Willamette Valley is in present-day Oregon.

The Cowlitz country is in what is now southwestern Washington, around the Cowlitz River and its surrounding region.

And Sooke is on the southern end of Vancouver Island, in the traditional territory of the T’Sou-ke people.

So this wasn't a journey from one modern Canadian city to another.

It was a movement through a much larger Pacific Northwest world that existed long before today's provincial and national borders.

and this is where my mental picture was wrong

I think somewhere in my head I had imagined something more like:

family packs up, gets into a wagon and heads north.

But that isn't necessarily what this landscape looked like.

The Pacific Northwest was a world of rivers, waterways, trails, portages, canoes, boats and established Indigenous travel routes.

People had been moving through these landscapes for generations.

The Columbia River, Cowlitz River, Fraser River, coastal waterways and the passages around Puget Sound and Vancouver Island were not empty wilderness waiting for Europeans to discover them.

They were already part of a complex network of Indigenous territories, communities, trade routes and relationships.

So when we try to imagine Mary Ann's family travelling north, we have to get that picture out of our heads.

We don't know exactly how they travelled every mile.

We don't know every stopping place.

We don't know exactly which river, trail, canoe route or boat was used at every stage.

Mary Ann gives us the sequence. Historical records give us the geography and historical context. Then we can use our imagination carefully to understand what that journey may have been like.

But imagination isn't evidence.

That's an important distinction.

why were they going to sooke?

This is where the family history becomes especially meaningful.

Joseph Brulé was born around 1831.

His biological father was Jacques Iroquois and his mother was Marguerite, a woman identified in the historical record as being of the T’Sou-ke people.

After Jacques died, Marguerite married Jean-Baptiste Brulé, and Joseph eventually carried the Brulé surname.

Joseph later married Mary Ann Maranda dit Le Frise.

Mary Ann herself had Indigenous ancestry. Her father, Louis Maranda dit Le Frise, was connected to the fur-trade world and had spent years at Fort Vancouver. Her mother was a Kalapuya woman from the Marysville area, according to Mary's later testimony.

So when this family moved north, we aren't looking at a random family travelling into unknown territory.

We are looking at people whose family connections already crossed the region.

Iroquois. T’Sou-ke. Kalapuya. French Canadian. Fur-trade communities. Catholic missions.

These weren't isolated histories.

They were connected.

the border makes the story even more complicated

There is another reason the geography matters.

In 1846, Britain and the United States settled their dispute over the Oregon boundary, establishing the border largely along the 49th parallel.

In 1848, the United States created the Oregon Territory.

But the families who had been living, travelling, marrying and trading throughout this region did not suddenly become strangers because governments drew a line on a map.

The political landscape was changing.

The family landscape was older.

And Mary Ann's journey north happened within that changing world.

so what did they actually experience?

We can reasonably imagine that travelling from the Willamette Valley through the Cowlitz region and eventually toward Sooke was not a simple trip.

There would have been rivers and waterways to navigate.

There would have been established trails and portages.

There would have been communities along the way.

There would have been unfamiliar places — and places that were not unfamiliar at all to people who already had family, cultural or trading connections throughout the region.

There may have been long stretches of difficult travel.

There may have been waiting for suitable conditions or transportation.

There may have been stops with relatives or other community members.

But I don't want to turn those possibilities into facts.

We don't know every detail.

What we do know is the route Mary Ann remembered:

Willamette Valley → Cowlitz → Sooke.

And that alone tells us something important.

the map finally makes sense

For years, I was looking at these places through a modern map.

Vancouver, B.C.

Washington.

Oregon.

British Columbia.

The United States.

Canada.

But Mary Ann wasn't living inside the map I was looking at.

Her world was the Pacific Northwest.

A world of Indigenous nations and territories, rivers and coastlines, trading networks, family relationships, Catholic missions, fur-trade communities and people who moved between places long before today's borders became what they are.

And suddenly that little family-tree clue about Sooke makes much more sense.

I had been looking in the wrong branch.

The connection wasn't through Mary Ann's mother.

It was through Joseph Brulé's mother, Marguerite, who was identified as a woman of the T’Sou-ke people.

And Mary Ann's own testimony gave us another important piece:

Willamette Valley → Cowlitz → Sooke.

One line in an old family history can completely change the picture in your head.

Sometimes genealogy isn't about finding one magical document that explains everything.

Sometimes it's about putting the pieces on the right map.

And sometimes you suddenly realize:

Ohhhhhh. THAT Vancouver. 😂

The people were moving through a connected Pacific Northwest world.

The borders came later.

And if we want to understand our ancestors, sometimes we have to stop looking at the modern map and learn how to see the landscape they actually lived in.

Redesign the AED.

Give those college engineers and bored high-school geniuses a project:

Redesign the AED.

Make it smaller. Make it lighter. Make it cheaper. Make it ridiculously easy for an ordinary person to use in a panic.

We have the technology. We have the smartphones. We have tiny computers in our pockets that can do things that seemed impossible not that long ago.

So why shouldn't we have a mini AED that people can carry, keep in a community emergency kit, or grab from a nearby public-access station?

Design it so someone doesn't have to be a medical professional to understand it.

Maybe your project saves someone's grandma someday.

Now that's an engineering project worth being bored for. ❤️

#AED #CPR #Innovation #Engineering #DesignForGood #SaveALife #PublicHealth

10 reflective question

1. Why shouldn't lifesaving technology be as accessible as smartphones?

2. What would an AED look like if it were designed for ordinary people rather than medical professionals?

3. Could a smaller, simpler AED save more lives?

4. What would make someone less afraid to use an AED in an emergency?

5. Could engineering students turn this into a real-world project?

6. What if every school taught students not only CPR, but how to use an AED?

7. Where should portable AEDs be available so they're actually there when needed?

8. What other lifesaving equipment could benefit from a complete redesign?

9. If technology can make so many everyday things easier, why not saving a life?

10. What if your school project someday saved your grandma—or someone

#AED

#CPR

#HandsOnlyCPR

#SaveALife

#EngineeringForGood

#DesignForGood

#Innovation

#PublicHealth

#LifesavingTechnology

#NationOfLifesavers

when your audience suddenly isn't yours

Something happened to me on Facebook that I can't quite shake.

And I think we need to talk about it.

I have been online for a very long time. I have blogged, photographed, painted, built websites and shared pieces of my life on the internet for decades.

I have never bought my audience.

Years ago, on Twitter, there were people openly selling follower packages. You could buy a little program, and suddenly you had hundreds or thousands of new followers. Eventually there were limits — I remember hearing that you couldn't add more than 5,000 at a time.

I never did it.

Every follower I earned, I earned the old-fashioned way.

Some stayed. Some disappeared. Some became friends. Some simply moved on. My Twitter account is practically dormant now.

That history matters to me because I recently watched something very strange happen on Facebook.

I reshared an old Facebook Collection post with a short video, some words about losing faith, and Willie Nelson's “Just Breathe.”

That's it.

Suddenly, the post exploded.

Print Screen of Tina Winterlik

The numbers climbed into the tens of thousands of views. My followers jumped to approximately 975. Hundreds of people were sharing it.

And then came the comments.

Amen.
I love Jesus.
God bless.
Religious messages I hadn't asked for.

Many of the accounts seemed to be part of a very different online community from mine.

Then I noticed a follower with the name:

Pay_Me_Now.

That stopped me.

Was it connected? I have absolutely no evidence that it was.

And that's precisely the point.

I don't know what was happening.

But when something changes that dramatically, that quickly, ordinary people should be allowed to ask questions without being told they're paranoid.

My niece was actually shocked that I was upset about the sudden followers.

She said something that really stayed with me:

“Influencers pay big bucks for that.”

And yes — I understand that.

But there is a difference between building an audience and suddenly having an audience appear around you that you didn't seek, don't recognize and didn't pay for.

I didn't buy those people.

I didn't ask for them.

And I didn't create a campaign to attract them.

So what happens when the algorithm suddenly puts your work in front of tens of thousands of strangers?

Who are they?

Why did they arrive?

Are they real people?

Are they bots?

Are they coordinated accounts?

Are they simply people who happened to like a song and a message?

Or is something else happening?

We should be able to ask.

Meta itself has documented networks using fake accounts and coordinated inauthentic behaviour to distribute content and manufacture engagement. And Canada's election-security agencies have documented coordinated amplification and foreign information manipulation on social media. During Canada's 2025 federal election, officials specifically worked with platforms over incidents involving online information operations and inauthentic amplification.

That does not mean my Facebook post was a foreign influence operation.

I am not making that accusation.

It means the technology exists.

It means manipulation exists.

And it means ordinary people — including artists, bloggers, young creators and small businesses — need to understand what is happening around them.

Because the next generation is growing up in an internet where attention itself has become a commodity.

Young entrepreneurs are being told:

Get more followers.

Go viral.

Build your brand.

Engagement is everything.

But perhaps we should also be teaching:

Who are your followers?
Where did they come from?
Are they genuine?
What happens when your audience suddenly changes?
What information are you giving strangers?
And what can somebody do with an audience you never intended to create?

I have already made one difficult decision because of this.

I shut down Adventurez in Mexico and related Facebook pages.

Those pages contained years and years of photographs.

When I created them, social media was smaller. There weren't quite so many strangers, algorithms, bots, scammers, fake accounts and enormous invisible networks moving information around.

Today it feels different.

I don't want my child's photographs, my travels, my art, my personal history and my life sitting indefinitely in a place where I don't understand who is looking at them or why.

And that brings me to something even more serious.

watch the internet

We are entering another period of intense political information and election activity.

Canada has already documented foreign information manipulation and interference, including coordinated and inauthentic activity online. The federal government's election review says Canadians need to remain vigilant about social-media manipulation, fake news, scams and coordinated activity.

That should concern all of us, regardless of political party.

I would say this directly to Prime Minister Mark Carney, to Canada's democratic institutions, to journalists, to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and especially to young people building businesses and audiences online:

Please watch what happens to ordinary people's social-media accounts.

Don't only look at the giant political accounts.

Look at the little ones.

Look at the sudden explosions.

Look at the strange follower patterns.

Look at coordinated comments.

Look at accounts that appear out of nowhere.

Look at people who suddenly find themselves surrounded by an audience they never asked for.

And don't dismiss someone simply because they don't understand the technology.

Sometimes the person who says,

“Something doesn't feel right here,”

is the person who noticed something everyone else was too busy counting to see.

I don't know what happened to my little Willie Nelson video.

Maybe it was simply an algorithmic lightning strike.

Maybe thousands of genuine people really did connect with those words.

Maybe some of the accounts were automated.

Maybe some were simply opportunistic.

I don't know.

But I know this:

I earned my audience.

And I want to know who is standing in the room when the room suddenly fills with 70,000 people.

Because online, sometimes the most important question isn't:

“How many people are watching?”

It's:

“Who are they — and why are they here?”

🎨📱🌎

10 reflective questions

1. Do you know who is actually following you online?

2. What would you do if your audience suddenly grew by thousands overnight?

3. Would you recognize the difference between genuine attention and manufactured engagement?

4. How much of your personal life should be permanently available online?

5. When an algorithm makes something go viral, who is really in control?

6. Should social-media companies be more transparent about where sudden waves of followers and engagement come from?

7. Could fake followers and coordinated accounts influence what real people believe?

8. Are we teaching young entrepreneurs how to build audiences—or how to protect themselves from the audiences they attract?

9. As elections approach, how can ordinary people recognize manipulation without becoming suspicious of everyone online?

10. When something online doesn't feel right, do we investigate—or simply celebrate the numbers?

social media, algorithms, fake followers, bots, digital safety, online privacy, media literacy, election integrity, foreign interference, misinformation

#DigitalSafety #SocialMedia #OnlineSafety #FakeFollowers #Bots #Algorithms #MediaLiteracy #DigitalLiteracy #ElectionIntegrity #ForeignInterference #Disinformation #Misinformation #YoungEntrepreneurs #Creators #OnlineBusiness #Privacy #Facebook #SocialMediaManipulation #ICIJ

Thursday, September 24, 2026

September 30 is coming.

And when I think about Truth and Reconciliation, I think about the children, the families, the residential schools and everything that was taken from Indigenous peoples.

But I also think about food.

Because food is life.

The buffalo.

The salmon.

The eulachon.

The clam beds.

The camas.

The berries, roots, medicines and everything that came from the land and water.

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples knew how to live with these foods, how to care for them, preserve them, trade them and pass that knowledge from one generation to the next.

The Grease Trails are one extraordinary example. Eulachon grease travelled enormous distances between coastal and interior nations. Those little fish were food, medicine, fuel and a valuable part of a vast Indigenous trading network.

And then so much of that was disrupted.

Buffalo were slaughtered.

Traditional food sources were restricted or destroyed.

People were removed from their lands and waters.

Children were taken away from the people who would have taught them.

When you interfere with a people's food system, you are interfering with much more than what is on the dinner table.

You are interfering with knowledge, independence, culture and the relationship between generations.

That is why I think food needs to be part of the conversation about Truth and Reconciliation.

And this is where I find hope.

Because the knowledge did not disappear.

People remembered.

Elders remembered.

Families remembered.

And today, people are bringing that knowledge forward again.

Clam gardens are being restored. Traditional foods are being taught. Indigenous food sovereignty movements are rebuilding connections with land and water.

This isn't about going backward.

It is about remembering what was already known.

It is about respecting the people who carried that knowledge through generations of attempts to erase it.

And perhaps there is something for all of us to learn.

We have become so disconnected from our food that many of us barely know where it comes from.

Maybe we need to learn again.

Not by taking Indigenous knowledge, but by listening to Indigenous knowledge holders.

By supporting Indigenous communities restoring their own food systems.

By understanding that land is not simply property and food is not simply a commodity.

Food can be memory.

Food can be culture.

Food can be relationship.

Food can be survival.

And food can be part of healing.

This September 30, I will be thinking about the children who were taken.

But I will also be thinking about what sustained their families before those children were taken away.

The buffalo.

The salmon.

The eulachon.

The clam gardens.

The camas.

The land and water.

And the knowledge of how to care for it.

Remembering what was lost matters.

But so does remembering what survived.

And perhaps healing begins with listening to that knowledge again.

10 reflective questions for teachers

1. Are we teaching Indigenous history as something that happened in the past — or helping students understand how its consequences continue today?

2. When we teach residential schools, do we also teach what existed before them — the knowledge, food systems, languages, economies and relationships that colonialism disrupted?

3. Do our students know what the buffalo, salmon, eulachon, camas and clam gardens meant to the peoples who depended upon them?

4. What happens when a people are separated from their food, their land and the people who hold the knowledge of how to care for both?

5. Are we teaching Indigenous peoples as victims of history, or are we teaching about their survival, knowledge, leadership and resurgence?

6. Whose knowledge is considered “expert” in our classrooms — and who decided that?

7. Can we teach reconciliation without teaching students about the land and resources that were taken, restricted or controlled?

8. What Indigenous knowledge have we never learned ourselves — and are we honest with our students about those gaps?

9. Are we teaching children to simply remember what was lost, or are we helping them understand how knowledge can survive and be carried forward?

10. If education once played a role in separating Indigenous children from their families, languages and knowledge, what responsibility does education have today in supporting truth, respect and the rebuilding of relationships?

Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous food sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge, residential schools, food systems, eulachon, buffalo, clam gardens, camas, land and culture

#TruthAndReconciliation

#September30

#NationalDayForTruthAndReconciliation

#IndigenousFoodSovereignty

#IndigenousKnowledge

#FoodIsCulture

#Eulachon

#ClamGardens

#Camas

#LandAndCulture

closed for the day,

closed for the day

you've been clicking and knocking,

clicking at my door,

i hear you clicking,

but you can't come in anymore.

you've been watching my window,

you've been checking my page,

but i'm closing the curtains

and walking off the stage.

i hear you knocking,

but you can't come in.

i hear you clicking,

go back where you've been.

i've got paint on my fingers,

and a world of my own,

i'm leaving the internet

outside my home.

i hear you knocking,

but you can't come in.

i hear you clicking,

go back where you've been.

the screen can keep glowing,

the servers can spin,

but i've closed up for today—

no internet gets in.

closed for the day,

no internet allowed.

knock all you want,

i'm not joining the crowd. 😎

i hear you knocking…

i hear you clicking…

but you can't come in.

(Inspired by "I hear you knocking!"

Dave Edmunds, Songwriters: Dave Bartholomew / Pearl King)

My Father Was an Iroquois Indian”: Mary Ann Told Us Herself

“My Father Was an Iroquois Indian”: Mary Ann Told Us Herself

Sometimes the most important genealogical document isn't a baptism record or a marriage certificate.

Sometimes it is the person themselves telling us who they were.

In my family research, I have found a remarkable testimony from Mary Ann Brulé Voutrin, born around 1832 and who lived until 1922.

When she was interviewed later in life, she was asked a simple question:

What is your blood?

Her answer was extraordinary.

She said:

“My father was an Iroquois Indian named Louis Marchelle, usually called Frizzee on account of his curly hair, and my mother was a Marysville Indian woman.”

This is Mary Ann describing her own ancestry.

She told them where she was born

Mary Ann said she was born at Marysville, Oregon, which is now Corvallis.

She said that when she was little, she was taken to French Prairie and sent to the Sisters' School at St. Paul, Oregon, where she remained until she was fifteen.

Then she married.

At only 15 years old, she married Joseph Brule, whom she described as a French Canadian.

They went first to Cowlitz and later to Victoria, British Columbia.

They had six children.

Mary Ann said that only two of those children were still living at the time of her testimony: Ellen and Cecille.

Her description of Joseph is fascinating

Mary Ann called Joseph a French Canadian.

But the earlier 1848 Catholic marriage record tells us something else.

That record identifies Joseph as the:

“minor son of the late Jacques Iroquois and of Marguerite Brulé.”

It also identifies Jean Baptiste Brulé as Joseph's foster-father and step-father.

So we have two different descriptions of the same man.

Mary Ann remembered her husband as a French Canadian.

The 1848 church record identified his biological father as Jacques Iroquois.

These statements aren't necessarily contradictory.

A person can have a French-Canadian cultural or social identity and an Iroquois biological father.

That is exactly the kind of complicated identity we encounter throughout the history of the Pacific Northwest fur-trade communities.

Mary Ann's own childhood confirms part of the story

Her testimony also helps connect the generations.

She said she was born in Marysville and was sent to St. Paul as a child.

That fits remarkably well with the earlier baptism record I found.

On July 4, 1839, the Catholic register records a five-year-old Marie Anne as the natural child of:

Louis, Iroquois, nicknamed “le Frisé,” an engagé

and

Louise, Kalapoya by nation.

Another child, Michel, was recorded immediately afterward as the child of the same parents.

The five-year-old Marie Anne in the 1839 record is consistent with Mary Ann's later testimony that she was born around 1832.

So we have something unusual and valuable:

A childhood record from 1839.

And decades later:

Mary Ann's own testimony about her parents and childhood.

The two pieces of evidence reinforce one another.

Her father's name changed in the records

This is another reason genealogy can be so difficult.

In the 1839 baptism record, her father appears as:

Louis Iroquois, dit le Frisé.

In her later testimony, Mary Ann called him:

Louis Marchelle, usually called Frizzee because of his curly hair.

The nickname makes the connection especially interesting.

“Le Frisé” essentially refers to someone with curly or frizzy hair.

So the unusual nickname appears in both the earlier church record and Mary's later recollection.

This is exactly the sort of clue genealogists need when names and spellings vary across historical documents.

And what about her mother?

The 1839 priest identified her mother as:

Louise, Kalapoya by nation.

Mary Ann later described her mother as a Marysville Indian woman.

Those two descriptions fit the same general geography and Indigenous community.

So we have contemporary and later evidence pointing toward the same family:

Louis — Iroquois

Louise — Kalapuya

Marie Anne/Mary Ann — their daughter

Then Mary Ann's life took her north

Mary Ann told the interviewer that she and Joseph went from the Willamette region to Cowlitz, and later to Victoria, British Columbia.

This is another important part of my family history.

The political landscape around them was changing rapidly.

The Oregon boundary had been established along the 49th parallel in 1846.

The United States created the Oregon Territory in 1848.

British territory remained to the north.

Families who had moved throughout the Pacific Northwest for generations suddenly found themselves living within increasingly rigid political boundaries.

But the families themselves didn't suddenly become different people.

They continued moving.

They continued marrying.

They continued raising children.

And then Joseph died

Mary Ann said that Joseph died after they had six children.

Two years later she married John Baptiste Voutrin, whom she described as Canadian.

She had nine more children with him.

Eventually she returned to the reservation.

And even that part of her story tells us something important about Indigenous community and family connections.

Mary Ann said that she returned because she received word that her mother, who lived on the reservation, had died.

That sentence matters.

Her mother's family and community were still there.

The connection had not disappeared.

Why this testimony matters to me

When I first started looking at my family tree, I saw names.

Then I found documents.

Now I'm finding voices.

Mary Ann wasn't simply a name on my family tree.

She was a woman who lived through enormous changes in the Pacific Northwest.

She was born into an Indigenous/fur-trade family.

Her father was Iroquois.

Her mother was Kalapuya.

She was sent to a Catholic school as a child.

She married at 15.

She travelled from Oregon to Cowlitz and then to Victoria.

She raised children.

She lost her first husband.

She married again.

She eventually returned to an Indigenous community connected to her family.

And decades later, someone sat down and asked her about her life.

And she answered.

Three records. One family.

What makes this discovery so exciting is that I am no longer relying on one source.

I have three different kinds of evidence.

1. The 1839 baptism record

A five-year-old Marie Anne is recorded as the daughter of:

Louis Iroquois dit le Frisé

and

Louise, Kalapoya.

2. The 1848 marriage record

Marie Ann marries Joseph Brulé.

Joseph is identified as the son of:

Jacques Iroquois

and

Marguerite Brulé.

Jean Baptiste Brulé is identified as Joseph's foster- and step-father.

3. Mary Ann's later testimony

Mary Ann herself says:

Her father was Louis Marchelle, an Iroquois man known as Frizzee.

Her mother was a Marysville Indian woman.

She was born at Marysville.

She attended the Sisters' School at St. Paul.

She married Joseph Brule at 15.

She went to Cowlitz and later Victoria.

Now the family history begins to look less like speculation and more like a documented story.

And there is still more to discover

I am still investigating the exact identities and relationships in these records.

I want to know more about Louis Marchelle / Louis Iroquois dit le Frisé.

I want to know more about Louise, Mary Ann's Kalapuya mother.

I want to understand more about Marguerite, Joseph's mother, and her connection to the T’Sou-ke people.

And I want to understand how these families navigated the changing world of the Oregon Country, Vancouver Island and the emerging Canadian and American borders.

But I don't need to invent the answers.

Mary Ann left us clues.

The priests left us records.

And nearly two hundred years later, her descendants can still follow the trail.

Sometimes the past doesn't speak very loudly.

Sometimes it speaks in an old church register.

Sometimes it speaks through the testimony of a 57-year-old woman remembering her childhood.

But if we listen carefully—

it is still speaking.

closing the curtains

Well… I finally did it.

I made my Instagram accounts private.

Not because I’m disappearing. Not because I’ve stopped making art, taking photographs, writing, or sharing my little observations about the world.

Actually, quite the opposite.

I think I’m becoming more interested in where my energy goes — and who I’m sharing it with.

For years, social media has been an open door. Anyone could wander in. Algorithms could decide who saw something I made. Posts could travel far beyond the people I ever intended to reach. And lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about how strange that is.

So I closed the curtains a little.

My Instagram accounts are now private, which means I get to choose who comes through the door. 🌿

That doesn't mean everything stops. My blog is still here. It remains my little archive of people, places, art, politics, nature, Mexico, memories, questions, and whatever else catches my eye.

And Facebook? I’m still figuring that one out. 😂

Maybe this is the beginning of a gradual retreat from social media. Maybe it isn't. I don't really know yet.

If I eventually spend more time in the mountains of Mexico, painting, writing, learning Spanish, weaving, watching the stars and living a little closer to the land, I suspect I won't need quite so much internet anyway.

Ironically, even San José del Pacífico has Starlink now. 😂

So this isn't goodbye.

It's simply me asking myself:

Do I really need to have every door wide open all the time?

Maybe it's okay to close a few curtains.

And if I change my mind?

I can always open them again.

🌿🎨🦋

What do you think?

Do you ever feel like social media has become too much of an open door?

Have you ever stepped back from it and found that you actually gained something by doing less?

And if you could choose what parts of your life remained public and what stayed behind the curtain, what would you keep private?

just us chickens 🐔

I did something a little strange on Facebook.

I switched my profile out of Professional Mode.

Then I blocked a few very weird mystery followers, went through my albums and started changing the privacy settings on a whole bunch of things I hadn't realized were still connected to a much larger audience.

I kept one little public window open.

Think of it as a billboard.

The rest of the house? Much more private.

And that is intentional.

For years, social media has been part of my life — sharing art, photography, Mexico, stories, political observations, random discoveries, things that make me laugh and things that make me worry.

But lately I've been thinking about how much of my life I actually want to live online.

Maybe less.

Eventually, I want to cut back considerably on social media altogether.

Especially if I end up living the kind of life I've been imagining for years — somewhere in Mexico, perhaps in the mountains for part of the year, surrounded by trees and sky instead of notifications.

There's something wonderfully contradictory about that idea.

I'm looking at posts about San José del Pacífico, imagining myself disappearing into the mountains for a while...

…and then I notice everyone talking about Starlink. 😂

Apparently you can run away to the Mexican mountains and still have high-speed internet.

So perhaps going “off-grid” doesn't necessarily mean disappearing anymore.

Maybe it means choosing what gets access to you.

That's really what I'm trying to do.

I'm not announcing that I'm vanishing from the internet tomorrow. My blog is important to me. It's my archive, my witness, my little record of people, places and things I've encountered along the way.

But I don't need every corner of my life to be public.

I don't need thousands of followers.

I don't need algorithms deciding who should see me.

And I certainly don't need mysterious accounts wandering into my little chicken coop asking me for money. 😂🐔

There are only 59 people in my Facebook corner now.

They come from different chapters of my life — Mexico, travel, art, photography, old friends, old acquaintances and people I probably haven't spoken to in years.

That's actually kind of lovely.

So for now, I've left the front window open.

If you happen to wander past, you can look in.

You can say hi.

But I've closed a few doors.

And maybe that's what this next chapter is going to be about:

less noise, fewer strangers, more real life.

Perhaps eventually, fewer screens too.

Because there are mountains waiting.

And apparently, Starlink. 😂

🐔❤️

What would you keep if you decided to make your digital life much smaller?

How much of your life do you actually want strangers to have access to?

Could you imagine living with less social media — or even almost none?

Would “off-grid” mean no internet to you, or simply choosing when and why you connect?

What parts of your life belong online, and what parts should remain yours alone?

Have you ever gone through your old social-media accounts and discovered just how much you had accidentally left public?

Is 59 people actually enough?

What would you do with the time you got back from social media?

Could a quieter digital life lead to a louder real life?

Maybe the next chapter isn't about disappearing — maybe it's about deciding who gets to see the view.

#justuschickens #digitalminimalism #socialmedia #privacy #offgrid #mexico #sanjosedelpacifico #mountainlife #emilys2ndact #secondact #lessnoise #morelife

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Emily’s 2nd Act is coming to a park near you! 🚲🫖

Emily’s 2nd Act
Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita 🌲🎨

Emily’s 2nd Act
Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita 🌲🎨

Emily’s 2nd Act
Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita 🌲🎨

🌲🎨 Emily’s 2nd Act is coming to a park near you! 🚲🫖

After years of imagining it, researching it and not quite getting around to it… I’m hoping to finally bring Emily’s 2nd Act out into the world.

hoped-for itinerary

September 28 – October 5

📍 Seaforth Peace Park
📍 Harmony Park
📍 Vanier Park / Maritime Museum
📍 Hadden Park
📍 Kits Beach
📍 Trafalgar Street & Point Grey — at my murals
📍 Jericho Beach

September 30 — Truth and Reconciliation
📍 Outside the Music Academy, by Sen̓áḵw
⏰ TBA

A bicycle, a little pop-up art show, mint tea, Emily Carr Appreciation, and hopefully a few unexpected conversations along the way.

Emily’s 2nd Act
Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita 🌲🎨

has facebook- "meta" wasted your time?

has facebook "meta" wasted your time?

Okay, Facebook- Meta

We need to talk.

A few days ago, one of my old posts suddenly went viral.

I went from approximately 225 followers to 975 in about a day.

The post had 454 shares and more than 60,000 views.

I've shared plenty of things over the years.

Nothing has ever done anything remotely like this.

Then I started looking at the new followers.

I began seeing patterns that made me suspicious — including accounts with no profile photo appearing among clusters of other new accounts. I took screenshots because I wanted to document what I was seeing.

I don't know that every account was a bot.

I don't know who created them.

I don't know exactly why they appeared.

But I know what happened next.

I started cleaning them out.

And I discovered that removing and blocking these accounts is a one-at-a-time process.

Click.

Again.

And again.

Hours of my time.

Time I didn't ask to spend.

Time I didn't create the problem to begin with.

So I started wondering:

what is a class action?

A class action is a lawsuit in which one or more representative people bring a claim on behalf of a larger group of people who have sufficiently similar legal or factual issues.

It is not simply “get 40 people and sue Facebook.”

In British Columbia, for example, the legislation says an identifiable class can consist of two or more people, but a court still has to determine whether there is a valid cause of action, common issues, whether a class proceeding is the preferable procedure, and whether there is an appropriate representative plaintiff with a workable plan.

Federal Canadian rules have similar certification requirements.

So why would anyone want a class action?

Because sometimes one person's problem isn't big enough to justify years of litigation.

But if thousands of people have experienced substantially the same problem, bringing the common issues together can make it possible to ask a court to examine what happened.

It can also make something visible that might otherwise remain thousands of separate complaints.

And that's the question I'm asking.

Has Facebook wasted your time too?

Not just with fake followers.

Not just bots.

Not just suspicious friend requests.

I'm talking about the larger question:

How much of our lives are we spending managing problems created by the technology we're using?

Facebook can operate at enormous scale.

It can recommend.

Sort.

Promote.

Suppress.

Detect.

Connect.

Separate.

And apparently sometimes send hundreds of people toward one little post.

But when an ordinary person wants to clean up the resulting mess?

Apparently:

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

One account at a time.

So, Facebook, I have a question:

Who pays for my time?

Because my time is not free.

And this isn't just about me.

I'm curious how many other people have stories.

Maybe there is nothing legally actionable here.

Maybe there is.

That's for lawyers and courts to determine — not me.

But I would like to ask a lawyer who understands technology, social media platforms and class proceedings to look at it.

Because I am getting pretty damn tired of being manipulated by someone else's code.

And I don't mean only Facebook.

We're increasingly living inside systems designed by people we will never meet, using algorithms we cannot see, making decisions we often don't understand.

And then we're told to adapt.

Click here.

Accept this.

Block that.

Change this setting.

Report this.

Verify that.

Start over.

Do it again.

Your time. Your attention. Your data. Your labour.

All valuable.

so I have some questions.

Not just for Facebook users.

For teachers:

What are we teaching children about algorithms, attention, manipulation and digital power?

For kids:

Do you realize how much of your world is being shaped by code written by somebody else?

For parents and grandparents:

Do we understand what we're asking young people to live inside?

For business owners:

How much of your livelihood depends on algorithms you don't control?

For mental-health professionals:

What happens to people when they spend hours fighting systems that never seem to listen?

For frontline workers:

How much of your working day is now spent dealing with automated systems instead of actual human beings?

For teachers again:

Should digital literacy include not just how to use technology, but how to recognize when technology is using us?

For politicians:

Who is responsible when enormous platforms create enormous problems for ordinary people?

For Mark Carney:

What does accountability look like when some of the most powerful systems affecting Canadians are private technology platforms operating across borders?

For David Eby:

What protections should ordinary British Columbians have when digital platforms create problems that consume people's time, privacy, money or safety?

For Elizabeth May:

How do we protect human beings from systems that are increasingly powerful, automated and difficult for individuals to challenge?

And for all of us:

When did our time become something corporations could simply take?

When did “free” technology stop meaning free?

Who owns the algorithm?

Who gets to see how it works?

Who gets to challenge it when it gets something wrong?

Who pays when we have to clean up its mistakes?

And perhaps the hardest question:

Are we still using the technology — or has the technology started using us?

I don't know the answers.

But I think these are questions worth asking.

And if you've spent hours cleaning up fake followers, bots, suspicious accounts, hacked accounts, unwanted messages or some other digital mess you didn't create:

Tell me about it.

Maybe my strange little Facebook episode isn't just a weird story.

Maybe it's a tiny example of a much bigger problem.

And maybe it's time we started keeping track.

truth hurts

I love Dan Rather.

I grew up watching journalists like him who understood that journalism wasn't supposed to make politicians comfortable. It was supposed to make the public informed.

Dan Rather once said journalists should “try to find out the truth as close as is humanly possible.”

That sentence has been sitting in my head lately.

Because yesterday I watched a clip of Donald Trump speaking somewhere — but without the usual White House press pool, there were no microphones and no television cameras providing the normal coverage.

And apparently… nobody could hear him. 😂🤣😂

You can remove the reporters.

You can remove the cameras.

But then who is left to hear you?

It sounds funny, but underneath the laughter is something much more serious.

What happens when the journalists who spent their lives chasing facts are gone?

What happens when journalism becomes increasingly dependent on advertising, subscriptions, ratings, clicks and wealthy owners?

What happens when the story that makes money isn't necessarily the story that matters most?

And what happens when politicians understand that controlling access can also mean controlling what gets seen?

I keep thinking about this because I am not a traditional journalist. I'm a blogger. I don't have a newsroom, a giant budget, a team of researchers or someone checking every sentence before I hit publish.

I'm just one person trying to look at the world, investigate things that interest me, check what I can, connect pieces of information and share what I hope is true.

And that raises some uncomfortable questions.

10 questions I keep asking myself

Who actually controls the truth when the people who control the money also control the biggest microphones?
If advertising pays for journalism, can journalism ever be completely independent of the people paying for the advertising?
When clicks and ratings determine what gets attention, are we reporting what people need to know — or what keeps them watching?
What happens to important stories that are complicated, slow and difficult to explain, but aren't profitable?
When politicians call something “fake news,” how do ordinary people determine whether they're attacking bad journalism — or simply attacking journalism they don't like?
When journalists make mistakes, should losing trust be permanent — or should accountability, corrections and transparency be part of rebuilding it?
If a blogger discovers something important before a major news organization does, does that make it journalism — or does journalism require something more?
How much of what we believe is actually something we investigated ourselves, and how much came from whichever screen happened to reach us first?
Who gets to decide which voices are credible — governments, corporations, editors, algorithms, audiences, or all of us together?
And perhaps the hardest question: if I say I am only trying to share the truth, how do I make sure I am not simply sharing what I want to be true?

That last one matters to me.

Because I don't want to become part of the problem I'm questioning.

I can be wrong.

Journalists can be wrong.

Bloggers can be wrong.

Governments can be wrong.

Corporations can be wrong.

And audiences can be wrong.

That's why I think the goal isn't pretending any one person has a monopoly on truth.

Maybe the goal is to keep looking.

Keep questioning.

Keep checking.

Keep listening to people we don't automatically agree with.

And when we discover we were wrong, say so.

Dan Rather has spent decades talking about the responsibility of journalism to seek the truth as closely as humans can.

Maybe that responsibility doesn't belong only to journalists anymore.

Maybe it belongs to anyone holding a camera, writing a blog, posting a video, sharing a story — or simply deciding whether to press share.

Truth hurts sometimes.

But silence can hurt a whole lot more.

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

hurricane polo — watching from afar

I’m watching Hurricane Polo from Vancouver tonight, but my thoughts are down on the Pacific coast of Mexico — especially Oaxaca.

Polo has become a powerful hurricane while moving offshore, and although it is not currently expected to make a direct landfall in Oaxaca, the coast can still feel a storm like this through huge waves, dangerous surf, strong winds and heavy rain.

When I hear “Oaxaca coast,” I think of Puerto Escondido, Huatulco, Mazunte, San Agustinillo, Zipolite and all the little communities in between.

I’ve spent enough time there to know that the Pacific is both beautiful and powerful. The same ocean that brings those magnificent waves to Zipolite can become something entirely different during a hurricane.

So tonight I’m watching from Vancouver, checking the updates and thinking about the people, animals, homes, fishing boats, palapas and beaches along that coast.

Polo, please stay offshore. 🌊

And to everyone on Mexico’s Pacific coast — stay safe, listen to Protección Civil and respect the ocean.

Distance doesn't mean I don't worry about people and the place I love.

#HurricanePolo #Oaxaca #Mexico #PacificCoast #Zipolite #Huatulco #PuertoEscondido #Mazunte #AdventurezInMexico

what the hell is happening in b.c. politics right now?

September 22, 2026 — verified as of today

If you're in B.C. and haven't been following provincial politics closely, you may want to pay attention now.

I certainly had to stop and figure out what the hell was happening.

Today, Premier David Eby officially called a snap provincial election for October 24, 2026 — less than two years after the last provincial election. And this comes after weeks of extraordinary upheaval inside the B.C. Conservative opposition.

And if you live in Surrey South, there's another particularly strange piece of this story.

the people

Kerry-Lynne Findlay is a longtime Conservative politician and former federal Conservative MP. In May 2026, she became leader of the B.C. Conservatives.

She resigned as B.C. Conservative leader on September 20, after more than a dozen MLAs had left or been expelled from the party's caucus during her short leadership. She did not announce that she was leaving the Conservative Party itself; she said she would remain the Conservative candidate in the Abbotsford-Mission by-election. Lorne Doerkson subsequently became interim leader.

And here's the part that made me stop:

Brent Chapman is Findlay's husband.

Chapman is the MLA for Surrey South, elected as a B.C. Conservative in 2024. Elections B.C. confirms that he won that riding in the 2024 provincial election.

And today, September 22, Chapman announced that he was leaving the B.C. Conservatives and joining OneBC.

CTV reports that Chapman said the party he was asked to run for by then-leader John Rustad had become unrecognizable to him. He also specifically said the turmoil had become personal because he had watched his wife endure attacks from people she had previously worked alongside.

So, in two days:

September 20: Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigns as B.C. Conservative leader.

September 22: Her husband, Surrey South MLA Brent Chapman, leaves the B.C. Conservatives and joins OneBC.

September 22: David Eby calls the provincial election for October 24.

That is not speculation. Those events have happened.

and the Conservative caucus?

This is where it gets even stranger.

During Findlay's roughly four months as leader, more than a dozen MLAs left or were expelled from the Conservative caucus. Several of those MLAs formed or joined CentreBC, led by Peter Milobar.

But today's election call immediately changed the situation again.

Seven CentreBC MLAs are now rejoining the B.C. Conservatives, according to a Canadian Press report published today. Eleanor Sturko is reported to be the sole CentreBC MLA not returning to the Conservative caucus.

So the political map is literally changing while the election is being called.

and Brent Chapman has a history people should know about

This isn't the first time Chapman has been at the centre of controversy.

During the 2024 provincial campaign, old social-media posts resurfaced in which Chapman made deeply offensive comments about Palestinians and Muslims. He apologized and said those views did not represent who he was at the time of the 2024 campaign.

Additional old posts then surfaced in which he questioned whether several mass shootings had actually occurred. Chapman subsequently stated that the Quebec City mosque shooting, Sandy Hook, Aurora and the Orlando nightclub shooting were real mass shootings in which innocent people died, and said he wished they had never happened.

These are documented controversies, not rumours. His explanations and apologies are also part of the public record.

and now we have an election

David Eby went to Government House today and asked Lt.-Gov. Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia to dissolve the legislature.

The provincial election will be held Saturday, October 24, 2026.

And here's something that many people may not realize:

B.C. is already holding its municipal elections on October 17.

So voters in Surrey and elsewhere will potentially be dealing with municipal voting on October 17 and provincial voting one week later on October 24.

That's a lot of political information for voters to absorb in a very short period.

one important distinction

There are now several different political groups on the B.C. right:

B.C. Conservatives — the official Opposition party, currently led on an interim basis by Lorne Doerkson.

CentreBC — the breakaway group led by Peter Milobar. Seven of its MLAs have now agreed to return to the Conservative caucus following today's election call, according to Canadian Press.

OneBC — the party Chapman is joining today. It does not currently have official party status in the legislature.

So when someone says "the Conservatives," it is worth asking which Conservatives?

what I am watching now

I'm particularly interested in what happens next in Surrey South.

Brent Chapman is no longer a B.C. Conservative, and the provincial election has now been called.

I also want to find out who is actually running for the B.C. Greens, NDP, Conservatives, OneBC and any other parties in Surrey South, because this is going to be a very different ballot from the one people might have expected a few days ago.

And that is precisely why I'm writing this down.

Not to tell anyone how to vote.

Not to predict who will win.

Just to document what is happening while it is happening.

Because I suspect a lot of British Columbians are going to wake up and say:

"Wait... what happened?"

And honestly?

That's what I said today too. 🤨🤔🤐😬

disclosure: This post grew out of a conversation I had with ChatGPT on September 22, 2026. I asked it to help me understand the rapidly changing political situation in B.C. I then asked it to verify the information against current news reports. I have tried to distinguish documented facts from allegations, political claims and uncertainty. This is a developing story, so information may change or be corrected. I am documenting what I know as of today, not endorsing any party or candidate.

truth and reconciliation — 10 years later

Ten years ago, I took a course at Langara College that changed the way I looked at history, reconciliation and my own responsibility as a person living on these lands.

I learned from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, including Shane Pointe, and one teaching that stayed with me was the importance of being a witness.

I cannot tell another person's story. It is not mine to tell.

I can listen. I can learn. I can remember. I can document what I have witnessed. And I can tell my own story.

Shane Pointe, a Musqueam Elder and Knowledge Keeper who passed away this year, was one of the people who helped teach me that. I think about that teaching now, especially as September 30 approaches.

Ten years ago, I hoped that by now we would have moved much further.

We have learned more. We have heard more Survivors. More records have come forward. There is greater public recognition of residential schools, the children who never came home, the Survivors and their families, and the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

But reconciliation cannot simply be something we talk about once a year.

It is also about the land.

The water.

The forests.

The salmon.

The environment we leave for the generations coming after us.

And lately I have been thinking about something else: artificial intelligence.

We are entering a strange time when AI can repeat information endlessly, sometimes without knowing where it came from. Human stories, photographs, research and lived experiences can be copied, rearranged and repeated until the original person almost disappears.

That makes being a witness feel even more important to me.

My old photographs. My paintings. My family research. My notebooks. My blog. The things I saw and documented before AI was everywhere.

They are pieces of a human record.

I don't claim to speak for anyone else.

I can only say:

I was here.
I saw this.
I learned this.
I remember.
This is what I can witness.

Ten years later, I am still learning.

And I still hope we can do better.

#TruthAndReconciliation #NationalDayForTruthAndReconciliation #OrangeShirtDay #EveryChildMatters #MMIWG #Witness #Reconciliation #IndigenousHistory #LandAndWater #ShanePointe #Langara

A 1839 Baptism Record: Finding My Iroquois and Kalapuya Ancestors

Sometimes genealogy gives you a family story.

Sometimes it gives you a document.

And sometimes, nearly 200 years later, you find the document that makes the story real.

I have been researching my family history and have been trying to understand the Indigenous ancestry on one branch of my family tree.

One of the people I kept coming back to was Mary Ann Miranda Brulé, later Mary Ann Voutrin.

I now have an extraordinary piece of evidence from July 4, 1839.

The 1839 baptism record

The Catholic mission register from the Willamette records the baptism of a five-year-old girl named Marie Anne.

The priest recorded her as the:

“natural child of Louis, Iroquois, nicknamed le Frisé, engagé, and of Louise, Kalapoya by nation.”

In other words:

Father: Louis — Iroquois, “le Frisé,” an engagé

Mother: Louise — Kalapoya/Kalapuya

This is a contemporary record from 1839.

It isn't a family tree website created generations later.

It is a Catholic mission record made when Marie Anne was a child.

The same register contains another baptism, recorded immediately afterward, for Michel, aged three, also identified as the child of Louis Iroquois dit le Frisé and Louise, Kalapouya.

That gives us additional evidence that Louis and Louise were a family with multiple children.

Who was Louis?

The priest identified Louis as Iroquois and an engagé.

An engagé was a contracted worker in the fur-trade world.

This is important because Iroquois men were active participants in the western fur trade.

Beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many Iroquois men—particularly from communities around what is now Kahnawà:ke, Akwesasne and Oka—were recruited to work as voyageurs, hunters, guides and other fur-trade workers.

Many travelled enormous distances west.

Some returned home.

Others stayed.

Some married Indigenous women from the communities where they worked and made new lives in the West.

Historian Jean Barman has documented hundreds of these Iroquois journeys and the communities that developed from them.

My ancestor appears to have been part of that much larger movement.

And Louise?

The baptism record identifies Marie Anne's mother simply as:

“Louise, Kalapoya by nation.”

That spelling is the priest's nineteenth-century spelling. Today we generally use Kalapuya.

This matters enormously.

It means that Mary Ann's Indigenous ancestry was not only Iroquois.

Her mother was Kalapuya.

So Mary Ann was born into a family connecting two different Indigenous histories:

Iroquois + Kalapuya.

The name “Marie Anne” becomes important

In 1839, the priest recorded her as Marie Anne.

Later records and historical research identify her as Mary Ann Miranda Brulé, and eventually Mary Ann Voutrin.

This is one reason genealogy can become so difficult.

Names change.

People use French names, English names, nicknames and married surnames.

Spelling changes between records.

A woman can appear under several surnames during her lifetime.

So I don't want to pretend that the paperwork is always simple.

But in this case, the age is a powerful clue.

The 1839 baptism record says Marie Anne was five years old.

Nine years later, in 1848, a young Marie Ann married Joseph Brulé in the Willamette Valley.

The historical record identifies that bride as Mary Ann/Marianne.

The ages line up.

Then comes the 1848 marriage record

On August 7, 1848, Joseph Brulé married Marie Ann Maranda dit la Frise at the Mission of St. Paul.

That record identifies Joseph as the:

“minor son of the late Jacques Iroquois and of Marguerite Brulé.”

It also identifies Jean Baptiste Brulé as Joseph's foster-father and step-father.

So we have another Indigenous connection.

Joseph's biological father was identified as Jacques Iroquois.

His mother was Marguerite.

And his foster/stepfather was Jean Baptiste Brulé.

This explains why Joseph carried the Brulé name even though his biological father was identified as Iroquois.

Look at what came together in this marriage

Mary Ann:

Iroquois father + Kalapuya mother

Joseph:

Iroquois father + T’Sou-ke mother

According to historian Jean Barman's reconstruction, Joseph's mother Marguerite was a woman of the Sooke/T’Sou-ke people of southern Vancouver Island. Barman also traces the family's later movement north and connects it with Marguerite's desire to return to her home territory.

So when Joseph and Mary Ann married, two remarkably interconnected Indigenous family histories came together.

Iroquois.
Kalapuya.
T’Sou-ke.

Alongside the French-Canadian and fur-trade connections that were already woven throughout their lives.

This wasn't an unusual world

That is perhaps the most important thing I have learned.

It is tempting to look at my family and think:

What an unusual combination of backgrounds.

But the Pacific Northwest of the fur-trade era was full of these connections.

Iroquois men travelled west.

They worked in the fur trade.

They formed families with local Indigenous women.

Their children could become part of their mother's communities through kinship, marriage and adoption.

French-Canadian voyageurs and Indigenous families became connected through generations of relationships.

Historian Jean Barman describes Iroquois descendants becoming integrated into western Indigenous communities while retaining or adapting their Iroquois identity.

These were not people living in isolated boxes.

They were living in communities.

And then governments changed the rules

This is where the story becomes much more difficult.

The people in these families had their own relationships, identities and communities.

But colonial governments increasingly imposed categories of race, citizenship, land ownership and tribal affiliation.

People who had once lived and worked together could suddenly be required to prove what they were.

A person with a French surname could still have Indigenous ancestry.

An Iroquois man could become part of a western Indigenous community.

A child could inherit ancestry from several nations.

A woman could be identified differently in different records.

The historical record itself reflects these changes.

That is why I think it is so important to go back to the earliest documents we can find.

What I know—and what I am still investigating

I can now document that a 1839 Catholic baptism record identifies a five-year-old Marie Anne as the daughter of Louis, Iroquois, dit/nicknamed le Frisé, an engagé, and Louise, Kalapuya.

I can document the 1848 marriage of Marie Ann and Joseph Brulé and Joseph's identification as the son of Jacques Iroquois and Marguerite Brulé, with Jean Baptiste Brulé identified as his foster- and step-father.

And I have historical research connecting Joseph's mother, Marguerite, with the T’Sou-ke/Sooke people.

There are still questions.

Who exactly was Louis Iroquois dit le Frisé?

What was Louise's full story?

How did Louis come to the Oregon Country?

What happened to this family after the children were baptized?

And how did these families eventually become connected to Vancouver Island and the communities of British Columbia?

I don't want to fill those gaps with guesses.

I want the documents.

Because that is what makes this journey so fascinating.

Almost 200 years later

A priest sat down in 1839 and wrote a few lines in a baptism register.

He probably had no idea that someone nearly two centuries later would be reading those words trying to find her ancestors.

But there they are.

Louis.

Louise.

Marie Anne.

An Iroquois father.

A Kalapuya mother.

A little girl five years old.

And a family whose story would eventually become part of mine.

Sometimes history isn't lost.

Sometimes it is simply waiting for us to learn how to read it.

And sometimes one little line in an old church book can bring an entire family back into view.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Gr. Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary — March 1885

Excerpt from My Great-Grandfather’s Diary 📖

I’m sharing excerpts from my Great-Grandfather’s diary. They may not always appear in chronological order, so please bear with me as I work through them.

He lived in Nanoose Bay, on Notch Hill, and his diary gives us a glimpse into our family’s life and history.

My Great-Great-Grandfather came from the Azores to Victoria in 1862. He later married my Songhees Great-Great-Grandmother in 1876, the same year the federal Indian Act was enacted.

The diary belonged to my Great-Grandfather. My Great-Aunt Mary eventually donated it to the Royal BC Museum. I was able to have it scanned into a PDF, and I’ve also been working from the handwritten cursive to create a hand-printed transcription so that we can actually read his words.

It feels pretty special to be able to bring these pages back into the family story, more than a century later.

More excerpts to come. ❤️

Transcription Note

Please note: These transcriptions may contain errors. I am working from handwritten cursive that is more than 140 years old, and some words, names and places are difficult to decipher. Where I’m uncertain, I’ve indicated it with [brackets] or a question mark rather than guessing.

I’m sharing these as a work in progress, and I’ll continue to correct and refine the transcriptions as I learn more.

March 1885

March 1 — Sunday

Showers.

March 2 — Monday

Surveying.

March 3 — Tuesday

Surveying.

March 4 — Wednesday

Surveying.

March 5 — Thursday

Clearing in front of the house to put fruit trees in.

March 6 — Friday

Fine weather. ?

March 7 — Saturday

We finished surveying.

March 8 — Sunday

Fishing for ? -?

Places, People & Subjects Mentioned

House · fruit trees · surveying · fishing

More excerpts from Joseph Enos's diary to come. ❤️

Gr. Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary January 1885

Gr. Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary — Surveying, January–February 1885

Excerpt from My Great-Grandfather’s Diary 📖

I’m sharing excerpts from my Great-Grandfather’s diary. They may not always appear in chronological order, so please bear with me as I work through them.

He lived in Nanoose Bay, on Notch Hill, and his diary gives us a glimpse into our family’s life and history.

My Great-Great-Grandfather came from the Azores to Victoria in 1862. He later married my Songhees Great-Great-Grandmother in 1876, the same year the federal Indian Act was enacted.

It feels pretty special to be able to bring these pages back into the family story, more than a century later.

More excerpts to come. ❤️

Transcription Note

I’m sharing these as a work in progress, and I’ll continue to correct and refine the transcriptions as I learn more.

January–February 1885

January 19 — Monday

Surveying.

January 20 — Tuesday

Surveying.

January 21 — Wednesday

Surveying.

January 22 — Thursday

I went up the cost to help J.R. Hamilton to survey his Claims, G.H Drabble Survey Jan. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 Feb 1, 2, 3, 4 Surveying at J.B Hamilton.

February 5 — Thursday

We finishing surveying Hamilton & 6 and started on our way down.

February 6 — Friday

G J. Hamilton and M Drabble went went to survey J. Hamilton.

February 7 — Saturday

John Soza came to ? with us.

February 8 — Sunday

Fine weather. I went to J. Hamiltons.

February 9 — Monday

J. Hirst called. We began to pull the turnips up.

February 10 — Tuesday

Pulling up turnips.

February 11 — Wednesday

Drabble and Hamilton? head the bay having ? surveying our claims.

February 14 — Saturday

Surveying.

Places, People & Subjects Mentioned

J.R. Hamilton · G.H. Drabble · J.B. Hamilton · John Soza · J. Hirst

Surveying · Claims · turnips · bay

More excerpts from Joseph Enos's diary to come. ❤️

Gr. Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary — January 1886

Excerpt from My Great-Grandfather’s Diary 📖

I’m sharing excerpts from my Great-Grandfather’s diary. They may not always appear in chronological order, so please bear with me as I work through them.

He lived in Nanoose Bay, on Notch Hill, and his diary gives us a glimpse into our family’s life and history.

My Great-Great-Grandfather came from the Azores to Victoria in 1862. He later married my Songhees Great-Great-Grandmother in 1876, the same year the federal Indian Act was enacted.

It feels pretty special to be able to bring these pages back into the family story, more than a century later.

More excerpts to come. ❤️

Transcription Note

I’m sharing these as a work in progress, and I’ll continue to correct and refine the transcriptions as I learn more.

January 1886

January 1 — Friday

Working at the barn.

January 2 — Saturday

Working around the house.

January 3 — Sunday

Freezing hard. At home.

January 4 — Monday

Working at the barn.

January 5 — Tuesday

Working at the barn.

January 6 — Wednesday

Working at the barn.

January 7 — Thursday

Frosty. Working at the barn.

January 8 — Friday

Working at the Barn.

January 9 — Saturday

Shower. Working at the barn.

January 10 — Sunday

Misty Weather. I went to Wm Jacks.

January 11 — Monday

Working at the barn.

January 12 — Tuesday

Mr. Tomas Indian Agent came settle about the estate of Indian John who died about a month ago.

January 13 — Wednesday

Fogg y weather. Sawing timber for rails.

January 14 — Thursday

About 6 inches of snow fell last night.

January 15 — Friday

Freezing hard.

January 16 — Saturday

Very cold. At home.

January 17 — Sunday

I went to Wm Roberts.

Places, People & Subjects Mentioned

Nanoose Bay · Notch Hill · Wm Jacks · Wm Roberts · Mr. Tomas · Indian Agent · Indian John

Barn · house · timber · rails · snow · estate

More excerpts from Joseph Enos's diary to come. ❤️

Gr. Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary — December 1885

Excerpt from My Great-Grandfather’s Diary 📖

I’m sharing excerpts from my Great-Grandfather’s diary. They may not always appear in chronological order, so please bear with me as I work through them.

He lived in Nanoose Bay, on Notch Hill, and his diary gives us a glimpse into our family’s life and history.

My Great-Great-Grandfather came from the Azores to Victoria in 1862. He later married my Songhees Great-Great-Grandmother in 1876, the same year the federal Indian Act was enacted.

It feels pretty special to be able to bring these pages back into the family story, more than a century later.

More excerpts to come. ❤️

Transcription Note

I’m sharing these as a work in progress, and I’ll continue to correct and refine the transcriptions as I learn more.

December 1885

December 1 — Tuesday

Working at the barn.

December 2 — Wednesday

Working at the cellar.

December 3 — Thursday

Cloudy. At home.

December 4 — Friday

Father returned from Victoria.

December 5 — Saturday

Clearing a road to the foot of Notch Hill to get our timber for the barn.

December 6 — Sunday

Mr. John Kenny arrived her from Wellington having come from Victoria and will remain with for a while.

December 7 — Monday

Cutting timber at the foot of Notch Hill for the barn.

December 8 — Tuesday

Fine clear weather.

December 9 — Wednesday

Frosty weather. Looking for oxen.

December 10 — Thursday

Halling timber for the barn.

December 11 — Friday

Freezing. Hauling firewood.

December 12 — Saturday

At home.

December 13 — Sunday

A. Hirst came to look for his cattle.

December 14 — Monday

Cloudy. Looking for A. Hirst cattl.

December 15 — Tuesday

Looking for A. Hirst cattle.

December 16 — Wednesday

I helped Hirst to drive his cattle to E. M River.

December 17 — Thursday

Snowery. At home.

December 18 — Friday

Snowery. Working.

December 19 — Saturday

Working at...?

December 20 — Sunday

Cloudy. At home.

December 21 — Monday

Working at the barn.

December 22 — Tuesday

I took H. Rosewall's cow to the Indian Camp for father to take to Nanaimo tomorrow.

December 23 — Wednesday

Father went to Nanaimo.

December 24 — Thursday

Raining. At home.

December 25 — Friday

Christmas Day. Father returned from Nanaimo.

December 26 — Saturday

Working at the barn.

December 27 — Sunday

At home.

December 28 — Monday

Snowery. Working at the barn.

December 29 — Tuesday

Reverend Father Durand paid returned to Nanaimo us a visit.

December 30 — Wednesday

At home.

December 31 — Thursday

Rev Father Durand returned to Nanaimo.

Places, People & Subjects Mentioned

Notch Hill · Wellington · Victoria · Nanaimo · E. M. River · Indian Camp

Barn · cellar · timber · oxen · firewood · cattle · cow · snow · Christmas · Reverend Father Durand

More excerpts from Joseph Enos's diary to come. ❤️