Falling with Heron
Writing, Teaching & Healing Practices
I am associate professor in Earth-based social work at Wilfrid Laurier University, not far from my home in Toronto (Tarontho, “meeting place”), Canada (Kanatha, “village”) that I share with my partner and two children. I am the author of threebooks, including Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North (University of Ottawa Press, short-listed for 2012 Canada Prize) and A Canadian Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond (McGill-Queens University Press, 2016); and the Editor of the book by Cayuga Elder Gae Ho Hwako Norma Jacobs Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys (McGill-Queens University Press, 2022).
My writing and teaching arises from the time I spend walking in the forests and along the lakes and rivers that are the root of my life in south-eastern Ontario (Ontar:io, shining waters). The originalmeaning of my given name, Timothy, is "He who honours God or the Creator." But for too long my canadien catholic ancestors have held to a Creator who is seen as wholly outside of creation. Heron has become one of my many Earth guides in renewing a moregrounded sense of my name, Timothy.
Image: Braid of Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière on the back of Turtle, Notre Dame de Turtle Island (A Canadian Climate of Mind 2016).
Merci, Gratitude
I know lots of people who struggle with wanting to be in the canoe but are on the ship. It is hard for them to decide where they stand on the river of life because of this confusion. The waters around them are always dark and deep. It is hard to find answers about who they are and how to live… There is so much confusion in those dark in-between waters, and it raises questions about how to retrieve people.
I often reflect on these elder words of Gae Ho Hwako Norma Jacobs from her book Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on our Journeys (MQUP 2022) that I helped with as Editor. From within these stormy waters, I am trying to imagine what could have been, what it is to be small “c” canadien, to be a family and community who lived Two Row relations in peace, friendship and respect; who could give thanks to creation through every act of living. The first quote is from my 2016 book that draws upon a mid-1600s letter written by Wendat to Notre Dame de Chartres as means to contemplate the primary importance of gratitude; and the second quote is a direct reflection on N. Jacobs' Thanksgiving teaching:
Dating from the mid-twelfth-century, this stained glass window in the cathedral at Chartres is known as Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière or Blue Virgin. Her shades of blue and white garments flow like water and air within a red surround that resonates with the Sun’s warming rays. Upon her lap sits the Christ child with a green halo… that suggests spring’s natural profusion or what Saint Hildegard referred to as viriditas, a fresh green that “represents the principle of life, growth, and fertility flowing from the life-creating power”… traversing an oceanic gulf, the Blue Virgin’s angelic theophany is an emanation of energy into the viriditas of Turtle Island… a potentiality symbolized in the braided name Notre Dame de Turtle Island. (Leduc, A Canadian Climate of Mind, 161, 169).
Feeling the cool rain fall upon my face, the spirit of thanksgiving arises from within me like the mist that now hangs above the ground, vegetation, and roads around my house. The renewal of rainwater, the warmth of sun, the droplet-speckled leaves of so many plants, so much medicine, the moist soil of E tinoha ongwesidage’dra gwe’ (Mother Earth), which supports life, and the ancestors and spirits, who are like the mist, all remind me of our first human responsibility to express thanks for this great mystery given by Shogwaeyadisho’ (the Creator)… For Gae Ho Hwako, the environmental and social issues that intensify with each passing year are most fundamentally rooted in the ways of societies whose people have forgotten to express gratitude for all that we have been given. (Leduc, in Ǫ da gaho dḛ:s: Reflecting on Our Journeys, 19)
Ancestral Responsibilities
The patterns of my Two Row work as a canadien is concerned with responding to colonial missions (of Christianity, academia, social work, environmentalism, Canada) by honouring viable cultural ancestors and uplifting treaties; but doing so from the depths of Canadian institutions and consciousness. This is what my writing and teaching engages through some of the following relations:
1) canadien/catholic ancestors: coureur de bois like E. Brule, J. B. Rousseau and A. Leduc; Grey Nuns & Jesuit missionaries
2) Spiritual & ecology of mind teachers: T. Merton (Trappist monk), ecology of mind (e.g. J. Livingston, R. Carson, A. Leopold), Carl Jung, & hermeticism
3) Indigenous teachers (adopted for relational teachings): N. Jacobs, K. Tekakwitha, J. Brant, Kondiaronk (Montreal Tree of Peace), V. Deloria, Jr., & J. Thomas
4) Missions: St. Marie aux pays des Huron, Residential Schools, Social Work, & the University
5) Treaties/Agreements: Two Row, 1701 Montreal Tree of Peace, Seven Fires, Toronto Purchase, Haldimand & Nuttfield Tracts
6) Earth/Water Relations: Heron, Oak, White Pine, Passage de Tarontho (Humber River), St. Lawrence River & many more.
Image: 1701 Montreal Tree of Peace agreement between 39 Indigenous Nations and the French.
The adoption enacted in Montreal attempted to “appropriate the otherness” of colonists not to a particular culture, as was the intent of Religious and then modern missions, but rather asked colonials to bring their cultural ways into relation with a Tree of Peace that needs everyone to lift it up... Rather than taking up specific Indigenous ceremonies, as a French Canadien I can learn from “Indigenous worldviews” about the values they model. While I have long appreciated hearing stories of the Haudenosaunee Tree of Peace, I am more rooted when learning about a Montreal Tree of Peace that I was never formally educated about and yet grounds all my ancestors. It is from renewing these roots that I listen carefully to the earlier stories of a Tree of Peace with a focus on the values they contain and what they teach about approaching a via naturaliza of my cultural responsibilities in this co-creation. (Leduc, in Extinction & Religion 2024).