Driving Around

In the truck driving around

Kejick Bay is 75 km from Sioux Lookout, the nearest real city, and 48 km to Hudson, the nearest town where there is a post office, a garage and a LCBO, but not a real grocery store. So, living in Kejick Bay involves a lot of driving for anything you need.

On our first full day visiting Alisha and Derek, We spent part of the day with Alisha at the school. We tried to help clean up, I read a story to the younger students, and we helped out with a community breakfast. This being my first visit back into a school since I retired ten years ago, I did not want to overdo it, so when an opportunity to help Derek with his maintenance duties arose, I jumped at the chance; I'd rather be driving around in a big GMC 2500 than cleaning up Alisha's office. I left Regis to help Alisha and I went to help Derek.

STOP, I need a picture of that old truck!

First stop was the band dump where the school's garbage was unloaded. I was warned to be on the lookout for bears as they have been known to hang around the dump, but no such luck.

Next stop was the beach where we unloaded a load of firewood so the teachers could light a campfire to cook hot dogs for a school outing to the beach in the afternoon. Somehow I feel that having a fire on an unsupervised beach with students might not be approved back home, but here it is not only perfectly acceptable, but expected; part of the “outdoor ed” program.

A load of chairs now had to be moved to one of three schools in the Band School Board, Frenchman's Head. This school was 49 km away, but moving chairs was one of my specialities back in the day, so I was comfortable stacking, loading and transporting them. A drum set had to be moved as well, so the truck was loaded to accommodate everything. When it is an hour away, you do not make two trips.

Scenery on the drive

One of Dereks duties is to maintain the band-owned houses used by the teachers, and one needed flooring installed, so while in Frenchman's Head we convinced the “powers to be” to cut us a PO and we headed to Sioux Lookout for a truckload of flooring. It was easy, because we did not have to shop around; there is only one hardware store. That was a 40 km drive and then another 75 km back to Kejick Bay.

One of the Band's outdoor ed facilities

This is life in Kejick Bay. The actual jobs we had to do did not take long, but we spent over three hours just driving over twisting rough roads to get to places, get things, or get things done. Derek commented that he felt like he had been driving around all day. Then when we finished for the day, he decided we deserved a cold beer, so we had to go back into Hudson, 48 km away to stock up the beer fridge. BUT that beer was good after a day driving around.