The Belles of the Bay Clue #3

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Stories

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We'd like to tell you about The Belles of the Bay Scavenger Hunt team.

The Belles of the Bay is a group of women with a common love for the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula. All of us have lived on the Peninsula for a significant part of our lives - three of us were born here. Three of us also now call Colpoy's Bay, a small community just outside of Wiarton, home. Three of us are mothers; one of us is about to become a mother to twins, one has grown children, and one has a child who has just graduated from grade 8 and is moving into high school. Two of us are teachers; one of us is a former student of said teachers. One of us is a sister-in-law of the other, one is an honourary auntie of another's child. Throughout this event, we continue to find common threads between us, and our lives have become more and more connected as we chat, discuss, and plan.

When this clue for the scavenger hunt was announced, we enthusiastically discussed different themes and ideas for our rock designs. We spoke of significant events in June that we felt passionately about - National Indigenous People's History Month, Pride Month, the Queen's Jubilee, the end of the school year, graduations, celebrations, milestones. We felt that these events would be perfect for the designs on our rocks; one would paint a colourful rainbow design to represent Pride; another would use the medicine wheel and feathers to commemorate Indigenous People's Month; a third design would represent the end of the school year, and the final design would celebrate nature and the solstice. We left our initial meeting with the best intentions to have our rocks painted and ready for photographing before the end of the month.

Alas, it was not to be. The teachers in the group fell into the ‘end of year’ melee, completing report cards, supporting students as they finished projects, encouraging those who were close to finishing their school careers to take those last steps, preparing for major school events like prom and graduation. And the days slipped by with out having a brush put to paint or rock. The young mother in the group discovered that she would be having twins in the fall, and her health issues relating to that pregnancy became top of mind. Our fourth member was also in the midst of those roles and duties that are often associated with the summer - preparations for change, planting gardens, transitioning from indoor chores to those outside. And the days slipped by.

Which is why, on the eve of our deadline, we do not have rocks to display. Our member who was the most unlikely to finish the task was the only one to finish - our young mother and her children made the decoration of the rock a creative task to do together, but the other three have not completed their contribution to the project. Rest assured that our designs and our rocks were intended for not one, but many special people in our lives - those who have been ‘in the shadows’, who have sometimes been discriminated against, or persecuted for their culture or their identity. Our rocks were meant to celebrate those significant milestones in a person’s life, and to honour those who have not yet reached those stages, and who may never reach them.

We will paint our rocks, ones that have been collected from the Saugeen Peninsula, home to the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, a place where rock and stone are harvested from the land, where intolerance for those who are different is sometimes a wall that others must overcome. We will come together as a team and share our stories of the past month’s celebrations and adventures, and we will create our designs with Home and Country in our hearts and minds.

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