Home in Okak Bay

My name is Nellie Winters. I was born in Okak Bay. From fall to spring we lived at our home in Okak Bay, and then in the summer we would go to our fishing place at Cut Throat. This is the story of my home, and when I had to leave home to go away to the boarding school at Nain.

In Okak Bay we was five families. But then down Pretty Point there was more, and up in the cove from us was more people—about another four families. The Onaliks stayed down below Pretty Point. They was like a second family to us. Aunt Lena Onalik was a midwife. She was special to us, because she’s the one who borned me and my brother Harold. We called her Inuatsuk. She called me Annaliak, and called brother Harold Angusiak. The Onaliks always came to our place for

Reflections from Them Days

Christmas. We spent a lot of good times with them, and also with the Lyalls.

Our house was the biggest one in Okak Bay. They built it from all the logs that my dad and his real good friend, old Aba Kojak, used to saw up with these old pitsaws and make houses from it. In our house, there was me and my brother Harold, my dad and my mum, and my sister before she left. My sister went away on a fishing schooner from Cut Throat. The big house with the garden was our house.

We used to have little old benches put out from in the house, and I could look right out to Pretty Point and down around. We could walk across the river when the water fell, when the tide went out. We could look out to Dad’s Island where we’d put our nets. He’d row over there two or three times a day. We’d get a lot of whabbies too. We didn’t used to waste stuff. Even the whabbies: we’d skin them and salt all the wings and the legs, salt them in barrels and soak it in the winter, same as the trout. It’d be really good. And the bodies of the whabbies, they’d just dig a hole and bury it for the dogs. The ground was so cold that when we dug it up it’d be just the same as when we put it. Sandy, see? They’d have to wash off the sand.

Inuatsuk: A term of endearment.

Annaliak: A midwife’s name for a girl she delivered.

Angusiak: A midwife’s name for a boy she delivered.

It was all kinds of stuff we used to do, them days. Seems like there was work to be done in the spring, and in the fall, in the summer, and in the winter. In the winter they would go deer hunting for weeks. You wouldn’t see them, they be gone so long travelling by dog team, and then we had all that deer meat to put away. Sometimes they’d make pants out of deerskin. A deer killed in the summertime is really pretty for making stuff out of it. The fur is right short. In the springtime there was so much to do because the capelin would be ashore and we’d be trying to dry some of that for the winter, and some for the dogs. And then we’d smoke trout and have a lot of that for the winter. And a lot of pipsis.

Whabbies: Red-throated loons. In Labrador, deer refers to caribou.

Reflections from Them Days

We used to do so much sealskins in the fall, make boots and stuff. We brought them to the government store, they bought everything like that to sell to other people. The store used to buy pipsis and bags of dried capelin too.

I really lived a lot just with my family. Whatever my parents done, whatever they worked at, we had to do it too, to learn things. If they’re working char, if they’re working with fish, if they’re drying stuff—we had to do it too. And we had to pick the berries, and help with the wood, paint the motorboat, and paint the flats. I loved doing that. Even when I was young in Okak Bay, I liked to be around Elders and help them. Dan Kora and his wife, Harriet, lived by us; they were Elders. Me and my friend Judy used to haul water for them and bring in their wood, and when they saw us they would say, “Our little angels is come!”

Pipsis (also called pissi, pitsik, piffi, piphi, pitsi, and other names): Dried trout or char.

My dad used to be a mailman. Dad used to travel from Nutak to Nain, pick up the mail, then go back to Nutak and down Hebron, and back again. He would have another fellow with him, Henoch Lampe. When Dad was delivering the mail, it used to be a month sometime before we’d see him. He’d go around the three places in a month. Sometimes he wouldn’t be able to go, see, when the weather was bad. He travelled only in the winter. I think he had eight dogs in his dog team. They had Kamutiks them days with bars. Now there’s no Kamutiks with bars on hardly, they just nail them up. They’d have a box on the Kamutik, but they still lashed it on. All lashed on with line, fishing line. Everybody that makes Kamutiks has a different way of making them.

Kamutik (also qamutiik): A sled for travelling or hauling wood, pulled by dogs or snowmobile.