JJ innocence lost

By Doreen Marion Gee

JJ will always occupy a very special place in my heart. She is still a bright poignant image from my childhood in James Bay. Unfortunately, because of that time in history, her memory is cast in shadows.

From around 1956 to 1959 I attended Beacon Hill Elementary School – now a condominium complex next to the Beacon Drive-In. In 1950s James Bay, racism was alive and well. As a little girl, I remember cruel slurs and racist jokes about First Nations' families who lived in the neighbourhood. In those days, this bigotry was mainstream and well tolerated. Even as a little kid with no experience in the world, their words made me wince and squirm. I knew it was wrong to refer to other human beings like that – and I was only five. People were shunned and ostracized for nothing else but the colour of their skin.

In 2015, those sickening film clips of Tennessee red-necks in fifties' Cadillacs waving signs with “We don't want your kind here!” seem to come from a different world. It couldn't happen here we smugly say. Maybe not with the same American furor and brouhaha. But it happened - silently, covertly, in James Bay and elsewhere. Back in the fifties, I saw it every day. And discrimination still seeps around corners and slithers into every aspect of society.

JJ lived in a house on Battery Street. She was a sweet little First Nations girl and my dear friend. Whenever she saw me, her face would light up - Hi Doreen! she'd say excitedly. It made me sad that JJ seemed to have so many strikes against her. I watched her hobble and limp down the sidewalk; polio had taken a toll on her body. Having some form of cognitive disability, JJ was placed in the “Special Class.” None of this mattered to me when I was a kid. I totally enjoyed her company, and we had many good times together.

So, why after all these years, do I remember JJ as though it were yesterday and still hear her voice, Hi Doreen. Do you want to play? After all this time, I know the answer. JJ had enough challenges to floor many adults, never mind a child. But nothing crushed her. She had a wild free spirit, always giggling, always fun. She held her head up high, a proud First Nations girl. Nothing kept her down. In my five-year-old mind, I loved her toughness, her bravado.

And then there was her smile. It could melt your heart. JJ would look straight at me, with her little chuckle, and smile from ear to ear, letting the sunlight in and making any clouds race away. It still warms me almost sixty years later.

Occasionally, I will feel irritated at yet another news story about the Residential Schools. But I quickly catch myself, knowing full well that the infamy of those days must never be forgotten. As with the Jewish Holocaust, we have to be reminded every day - until history stops repeating itself. This is how we keep our humanity.

My memories of JJ remind me of the pure goodness of childhood, where right and wrong are separate and distinct. It is only in adulthood that they get blurred. Maybe we all need to treat others with that same innocent child's mind.

Wherever you are JJ, I hope that some light finally shone on you and your life.