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Acrew of energetic boysand girls in shorts andT-shirts constructs a“human sculpture” onthe sun-dappled pinefloor of the Bear

Island Community Centre. Two kids godown on all fours, side by side, to forma base. Another child stands with a footon one child’s back and a hand onanother’s head. A fourth child linksarms with number 3 and touches toeswith someone else. As they climb andintertwine arms and legs, all eight getthe giggles and hang on tight to avoidcollapsing in a tangle.

It’s the last afternoon of theirsummer arts camp on Bear Island, atiny aboriginal community on Lake

Temagami, about 450 kilometres northof Toronto. Like all the six-to 13-year-old campers, they started the week aswary strangers separated by labels:“natives” from Bear Island, “tourists”from the lake cottages and “townies”from the town of Temagami on themainland. Now their wriggling, wobblysculpture perfectly captures their newlinked reality as pals.

The camp is a project of theTemagami Community Foundation(TCF), a fledgling group that hopes toconnect the people in a community thatis almost as well-known for its divisions –between aboriginal land claims, forestmanagement and lakefront protection –as for its dramatic granite outcrops,ancient pines and big water. There are

144 Canadian foundations dedicated toimproving communities, but TCF is theonly one that has First Nations peoplesitting at the same table with locals andseasonal residents. And this is a bigaccomplishment – relationships amongthese three groups have a long historyof acrimony, and not just in Temagami.

L E A R N I N G T O C O M M U N I C A T EAlthough billed as an arts camp, its realpurpose is to get 40 kids from differentworlds to interact and understand oneanother. And organizers leave nothingto chance: they include an equalnumber of campers from each of thethree communities and transport thetown kids by bus and pontoon boat toBear Island. Cottagers converge in their

own boats every morning to drop offtheir kids. All week while the campersdraw and paint, listen to stories told bylocal elders, go for boat rides aroundthe island and swim at the beach, theyalso learn about one another’s lives.And, by the last day, most have shedany of the stereotypes they arrived with.

For artist and cottager BettinaSchuller, who planned and taught theprogram, one simple moment made lastyear’s camp worthwhile. A group of kidslunching outside had congregated on arock in the shade of a large white pine.As the kids chatted, the tops of threeblond heads huddled close to twoblack-haired ones. In 17 summer visitsto Temagami from her home in Jesup,Ga., Bettina had never seen aboriginal

and non-aboriginal kids just enjoyingeach other’s company. “It waswonderful,” she says, “and it made merealize why I was doing this.”

M A K I N G C O N N E C T I O N SThe TCF is working to link the threesolitudes who have uneasily shared thisregion for about a century. The passionthat Temagami stirs can provoke peopleto take unyielding, conflicting positions.The summer campers, cottagers andcanoe trippers demand environmentalprotection. The townsfolk battle to keepjobs in their tiny northern communityin the face of mine closings and loggingrestrictions. And the Temagami FirstNation has been fighting for a suitableland reserve for more than 100 years.PH

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Against this backdrop, two oldfriends with long histories inTemagami decided that a communityfoundation might get people talking,working and playing together. Theyhad no illusions that a children’s artscamp, a strawberry tea and a squaredance – all organized by the TCF lastsummer – would solve any complexissues. But they hoped to get peopletogether, in the same room, smiling.

Cofounding director VickiMcKenzie Grant knows Temagami fromevery angle. She’s a “native,” she hasbeen a “townie” and now she’s a“tourist.” A member of the TemagamiFirst Nation who grew up on BearIsland, where most of her extendedfamily still lives, Vicki was a bandadministrator for 10 years, then movedto Temagami when her husbandopened a law practice in town.

“The one thing I told my husbandwhen we got married was, ‘Don’t everexpect me to live in Temagami,’” shesays. Afraid of racial prejudice, Vickihad resisted the move, but her fearsproved unfounded. She made goodfriends in town and recently movedagain, to Stouffville, Ont. She returnsevery summer to her cottage onDeacon’s Island and laughs that she’snow one of those “tourists” she used todismiss as people with lots of moneyand paternalistic attitudes.

By Vicki’s definition, the TCF’sother founding director, Walter Ross, is also a “tourist,” but he bristles at theword. Walter insists he’s a “seasonalresident” who participates in thecommunity. An accountant who retireda few years ago from a big Toronto firm,he has made Temagami his summerhome since he was a 13-year-oldcamper 50 years ago. With his wife andgrown kids, he spends summers at hiscottage with his books and canoe.

Walter and Vicki have known eachother for 30 years and had often talkedabout how to improve relationships inthis community they both love. Keenactivists, neither wanted to create anorganization that only focused on theirown issues. What they did want was toget people collaborating on projectsthat they could all agree would maketheir community better – and, when

they couldn’t agree, to discover “theycould still have a good time together,”says Walter.

So the two invited others from allthree communities to form the TCFboard. Some were tentative at their firstmeeting, but the group quickly jelledwith a sense of shared purpose, saysWalter. Together they managed toattract enough donations from thecommunity, including a $14,000 grantfrom the Ontario Trillium Foundation,that they could announce funding forseveral projects when they formallylaunched the foundation at a ceremonyon Bear Island in July of 2002. “That put

us on the radar screen in thecommunity right away,” says Walter.

H A V I N G A S A YAlong with the arts camp, one of the first initiatives to get TCF funding wasa group going after a sustainableforest licence (SFL), which controlshow a forest is managed and logged,for the region. The regulations – andthe politics – around the issuing ofthese provincial licences are as denseas the forest itself, especially inTemagami, where any talk of loggingcan spark controversy. (One localjokes that the town should host a

A SHARED HISTORYFirst Nations people have lived around Lake Temagami for at least 5,000 years.

The seasonal residents and the townspeople didn’t arrive until early in the

20th century. That’s when the Ontario government established the Temagami

Forest Reserve of 5,900 square miles to protect the lakeshore and the forest

from development and logging. In 1903 the railway was built through the area,

linking the south to the mining camps farther north and opening up the lake to

visitors who were keen to explore the wilderness. Temagami village sprang up

around the train station, and youth camps and cottages began to dot the lake’s

many islands. Today the population of Bear Island stands at 200 and the

population of Temagami at 1,000. Summer residents now number 10,000

(almost half are American); the rough beauty of Temagami lures travellers from

all over the world.

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protest every fall when business isquiet, to keep the restaurants full.)With the exception of one granted tothe Bracebridge region in Ontario,these licences are usually issued tologging companies.

But everybody in Temagami wantsa say in how their forest is managed, so the TCF gave a grant to help the BearIsland Band Council and the TemagamiFirst Nation Council get the province’sattention for their proposal. They wanta community SFL overseen by acommunity-based, nonprofitcorporation with a local board ofdirectors that comprisesrepresentatives of the lake residents,townspeople and Temagami FirstNation as well as logging companies.This corporation would then have thelegal responsibility for managing theforest and taking environmental,employment and First Nation issuesinto account as they do so.

The TCF grant helped the grouphire a consultant to research theBracebridge model and put together aglossy brochure for the Ontario Ministryof Natural Resources that arguedTemagami’s case. “We caught the eye ofthe minister,” says Wayne Adair, thetown’s mayor. No deal has been signedyet, but last January the group got averbal assurance from Ontario’sMinistry of Natural Resources that it

would receive a community licence.Vicki says that small grant had a

big impact: the leadership of theTemagami First Nation and the townworked on a project together for thefirst time. And it won’t be the last. Theband and the town councils held a jointmeeting last spring and plan to hold

one every year to discuss their goals.Walter says, “Coming together aroundthe community SFL really deepenedworking relationships.”

G R O W I N G C L O S E RWhen Bettina sees campers painting amural or listening to an elder’s story,she imagines those same kids 20 or 30 years into the future, when theymight meet at a negotiating table, thetown hall or even at Marg’s coffee shopon the town’s main drag. She hopesthey will be able to “communicate andbe open with each other.” And, thanksto the foundation, she’s pretty sure thatwill happen.

Last August Bettina’s family,including Sophia, her seven-year-olddaughter and an arts-camp veteran,attended the Temagami First Nation’sannual powwow. As soon as theyarrived, two First Nation girls who hadalso been at camp ran up and gaveSophia a hug. They stepped back soSophia could admire their traditionaljingle dresses, then all three took off bythemselves to dance to the drumming.“Before arts camp, that would neverhave happened,” says Bettina. •

If you want to changesomething in yourcommunity, start withthese five steps fromMonica Patten, presidentand CEO of theCommunity Foundationsof Canada.

1 Open up. Share yourideas with one or two people you think will be interested. Invitethem for coffee and talkabout what you’d like toaccomplish; it might be a stop sign at the end of your street, aneighbourhood fair or agrand plan for attractingnew business.

2 Widen the circle.If you get a good

response from the firstgroup, arrange afollowup meeting andinvite a diverse group of10 or 12. Strive for a mixof genders, ages, ethnicbackgrounds andviewpoints, and includevisionaries, planners andpeople who will want tomake phone calls and domailings. Work togetherto establish your goals.

3 Create a structurefor your group. Thismay involve formalizingan organization thatmeets the criteria of acommunity foundation(for information, visitwww.community-fdn.ca)or it may be as simple aschoosing a chairman and

a treasurer. Determinewhen you will meet, whois responsible for whatand how members willreport to the group.

4 Do your homework.Are any other groupsworking on the sameinitiative? Can you joinforces? Contact yourcommunity paper andask whether it hascovered your issue.

5 Raise your profile.Get your messageout in the local paper,church newsletters andcommunity bulletins.Make presentations tothe local town council or service groups, hold an open house and starta website.

Five Steps to a Fresh Start

Look in anydirection from BearIsland and see asweeping view ofspectacular beauty.