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I’m enjoy­ing a vis­i­tor from my old stomp­ing ground, Peawanuck. You will have to look hard for it on a map — it’s an iso­lat­ed Weenusk First Nation com­mu­ni­ty of only a lit­tle more than a hun­dred inhab­i­tants, and can­not be reached by any road. It’s about thir­ty km up the Winisk Riv­er from the shores of Hudson’s Bay, and is sur­round­ed on all sides by the 23,552 square km of Polar Bear Provin­cial Park (the name of which is some­what mis­lead­ing… it has no vis­i­tor facil­i­ties, is reach­able only by air, and spe­cial per­mis­sion is required before vis­it­ing it). But this lit­tle town has a spe­cial place in my heart, and I am delight­ed to give hos­pi­tal­i­ty to any­one who hails from there.

My guest is Jason Hunter, a musi­cian and film-mak­er. I’ve had to work much of the time he was here, and he had his own affairs to attend to, but we did find time to explore near­by Don Val­ley togeth­er. The trip held a sur­prise. I took Jason through sev­er­al wood­ed ravines, then to an aban­doned brick pit, now flood­ed and filled with ponds, marsh­es, ducks and tur­tles, and a “sacred spot” with a won­der­ful view of the city. Near that, there is a large aban­doned fac­to­ry, in ruinous con­di­tion. It is board­ed up and pro­tect­ed by chain-link fences, but that is noth­ing to enter­pris­ing tres­passers. We were soon inside, walk­ing among the immense brick ovens, illu­mi­nat­ed by shafts of light from the decay­ing and dam­aged roof. But we were not alone. We heard the nois­es of some oth­er intrud­ers. So climbed up to the rust­ing cat­walks that criss-crossed the ovens. The oth­er peo­ple were a cam­era crew, prepar­ing an elab­o­rate pho­to shoot. The mod­el was a tall woman, pos­ing entire­ly naked, except for a fan­tas­tic bird head-dress and a trail­ing cape. It was in imi­ta­tion of a sym­bol­ist paint­ing that I rec­og­nized, but could not name. Sens­ing that our ogling was impo­lite, we retreat­ed to oth­er parts of the ruined fac­to­ry, find­ing a way up onto the roof. I had told Jason there were all sorts of odd things to find in the Don Valley.

Puz­zled by the blog title?  Peawanuck means “flint­stone” in Cree.