Home > An Ojibwa Native Artist > Going to the Dentist
Native Artist - Nokomis
Going to the Dentist
(My Favourite Story)
If you lived in the bush years ago, going to the dentist wasn't practical. But in 1939 the Ontario government set up a mobile dental service in a railway car that was pulled from town to town in the northwestern part of the province. It served those railroad communities that weren't connected to the road system. The dentist lived with his family in the front of the car, schooling his children with correspondence lessons. The back end of the railroad car had been converted to a complete, albeit tiny, dentist's office. It had a chair, a drill, and all the little weapons neatly arranged in drawers.
My mother had never been to a dentist, but someone told her that this man was like "a doctor for the teeth" and that it was GOOD to take children to see him. She was a good mother so naturally I was going to the dentist.
I wasn't yet going to school which meant that my Dad was still sticking to his rule about not living too close to a town. His idea was that if he or Mom could paddle to the village in a single day that was close enough. I mention this because we lived about twenty five miles north of the railway tracks along a canoe route that followed the shores of three small lakes. There was no current to speak of - the lakes were connected by narrow channels.
In the years since I've been telling this story I've only met three men nowadays who could paddle that distance by themselves in a single day. But times were different then - even though it was hard work, Mom could make it to town before dark, even with me in the canoe.
But going to the dentist this time took twice as long as normal. It took two days of paddling, and these were long summer days. In the evening, before we took to shore I dropped a short line into the water and caught a fish for supper. At night we propped the canoe on it's side and used it as a shelter.
When we finally reached town and saw the dentist it turned out that neither my mother nor I had anything wrong with our teeth. It had all been for nothing.
So we picked up a few supplies from the store and paddled home. But, it took another two days to get home instead of the usual day. It was a four day dentist trip.
The reason it took so long was that my brother had been born the day before we left. He was thirteen hours old when we'd launched at dawn that first morning.
If the women of my mother's generation were still paddling, during the Olympic Games Canadians across this nation would be on their feet in front of their TV's cheering as we came home with the gold.
Read about Ojibwa Mothers and their children, or go ahead and learn more about me.
