Just another day of uncertainty, worry and boredom for northern wildfire evacuees

I’m at the Billy Mosienko Arena fire evacuee registration centre, where I’ve come to drop off donations.

Dad travelled a lot. He also received a lot of gifts. This resulted in a lot of barely used, virtually new luggage.

Those get inherited the second I unload them from my vehicle in the parking lot.

“Are you donating those suitcases?” an elderly woman asks me, pointing at a pile of garbage bags. “My stuff is in those.”

I hand them to her and enter the arena, carrying bins of jackets, toiletries, clothes and medical items — materials I usually collect for my walks with Mama Bear Clan.

On the left I see lineups of people sitting and waiting to be registered, about 20 people waiting for medical services in the centre of the facility and entire families sorting through donated clothing on tables to the right.

There are young people everywhere; babies, toddlers, teenagers. Some carry hotdogs and chips from the food truck outside. Others sit on bleachers, visiting.

There is a quiet busy-ness as everyone from evacuees, aid workers and security staff fill the space. I admit to being reminded of COVID-19. This time, though, there are fewer masks.

I hand my donations to volunteers. I have a pile of gift cards from past holidays and speaking events. They get handed out quickly.

“I’ve been wearing the same jacket since we left,” a man from Pukatawagan Cree Nation tells me, trying on a favourite Jets hoodie that I have since outgrown. “We were only allowed to bring one bag of our stuff when we left.”

I sit and visit briefly with emergency workers.

“We’ve seen thousands of faces come through here,” one says.

I ask him where most end up.

“There’s almost no hotel rooms left,” he says. “Unless we hear of some, we have to send people to the soccer complex shelter on Leila Avenue.”

I leave and head towards an event I’m attending at a hotel near the airport. As I arrive I see about 30 people sitting outside, on lawn chairs and the curb, in the parking lot.

“Most of us are waiting for our Red Cross money to come in,” a young woman from Pimicikamak Cree Nation explains. “It’s pretty boring.”

The young woman has no bank account — and cannot get one because her ID was lost in the rush to leave — so her daily $34 stipend a day will come in a pre-paid gift card, which she will have to get re-loaded.

I meet a woman with three kids in the lobby, visiting with her mother and her son on her phone. They were sent to Niagara Falls while the rest of them stay in double-queen room in one of the few hotels with space left in the city.

I ask her what her son thought of the biggest waterfall in the world.

“He said it was bigger than he thought,” she says, laughing. I try to ask her more questions but the kids are loud, energetic and demanding.

“They fight a lot,” the woman tells me. “We have only one TV in the room.”

I leave to go to my event just as her husband returns with two full grocery bags from a drug store and the family of five disappears down the hallway.

Afterwards, I’m driving to interview a woman for a story I’m working on.

I turn onto Tache Avenue, headed towards Provencher Boulevard when I see a young woman sobbing while sitting on a bench, cars whizzing by her.

I pull my car into a parking lot and ask if she needs help.

She explains she is from Flin Flon, and with her grandmother, who speaks only Cree and has heart problems, is in St. Boniface Hospital.

She says she was sent by her family to care for her kokum while the rest stayed in Dauphin.

Her partner, meanwhile, is in Flin Flon protecting their belongings and fighting the fires. She hasn’t heard from him in days; his phone isn’t working.

I ask her again if she needs any help.

“No, I just want to sit here.”

It’s now mid-afternoon, and I’m writing the piece you’re reading now in a coffee shop. There’s a family inside — two parents, two kids and a grandparent — from Cranberry Portage who just received news they get to go home this week.

“We’re going to try and travel tonight,” the father tells me, “but the drive is 10 hours and there’s no place to stay on the way.”

“We’ve been living out of our car, terrified for weeks,” the mother says.

“It will be nice to go home.”

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

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