Day in and day out, it stretches before me: long and narrow lake Massawippi, located in North Hatley, my companion for the past three years. I like to think I have been its companion, too. Another bystander of both our flows; our movements. The Abenaki people tell us it is a lake filled with an abundance of clear water. Clearer thinking for me, yes—I am a February baby, after all—about my past, memories I chose to marvel about, right here, for the curious. To my complete surprise, winter, cold and humid, talked to me. I listened to what it had to say; what it was helping dig out—and stories emerged, in my heart, auto-fictive in essence. And not.

This collection is not meant to form a historical account of the blue El Dorado this period was considered by many to be. Or so little. It simply steeps inside imagination’s cold well while winking at life’s warm truisms. This collection is a way out, a river’s mouth from which fresh and dead leaves flow.

My adolescent years were spent in James Bay, during the execution of one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects, a period of my life I recall with rare lucidity. A golden age of sorts—my father’s, a pioneer of the Quebec north, as well. This sentiment, like the images that light them, is vivid in its holding of this time, a feeling of freedom and hope and worry met by the birth of my children only. The birth of meanings. Stories, witnesses that speak, and telling me I was there. The young girl I was, her mind caught inside the taiga’s tentacles, and the adults they held hostage. And, of course, they held her, too.

I am still here, and I remember, I do—the beauty and the foul.

For better and for worse.

ADELINE

Look at her. See her, won’t you? For her sake.

Someone needs to.

She is sleeping in her bed, a curled, small body clinging to a light blanket. Too light to fight the cold floating in the room. Her left thumb tickles the inside of her palate as she rubs the bridge of her nose with her index finger, sucking security in. Trying to. No light casted on her, and inside her chest, more obscurity; a child's turmoil needing to rise. Was it the wind that called to her that stormy night—to open her eyes, stand and walk away from her little self—to where? The fiery winter blowing on Labrador land, a land she knows nothing about. The map to a treasure chest. A quest, morphing inside her little heart.

Barefoot, she walks the short corridor, to the entrance door. No one had thought to lock the door. No one, for only Mother is there. Daddy—gone far from home. A dam to build. A dyke to inspect. A wife to flee.

Outside, the howling is soft, yet constant. A constant howling blowing inside her head.

Her pink flannel night gown, white lace at the collar, is waving around her knees. In the middle of the front yard, she stands, half-dressed. Over-exposed. Snowbanks, her walls. Nighttime, a hand. The little girl is facing the other trailers located across her street, her short auburn hair tossed by the rapid snowfall, her cheeks, rosier than normal. She stares yet does not see, does not feel, until her bare feet start to scream. Her toes, too.

A hand to her arm, and the mother’s squeeze is hard, the pull back to her home, just as well. Back in her bed, waiting: A cover that covers nothing but good dreams. A blanket that crushes.

This could be her story.

And I ask myself, how was it she heard my steps?

I don’t know.

And sometimes, I don’t believe she did—come to me, knowingly. So unlike her. Then and now. Maybe this mother had been sleepwalking, as I had, to me, the subconscious, the seat of her instincts that hadn’t died—not yet—and saving me. Or maybe was it to save herself, is often all I can believe. From the world’s eye that would be thrown upon her.

All I know is that the longing has been long.

To be held.

Never satisfied or answered.

Still to this day.