MOSQUITOES ON HORSEBACK

Hebron, once the northernmost settlement in Labrador was a community settled by Moravian missionaries in the 1830s.  The missionaries provided education and religious instruction to the local Inuit, engaging in trade, medical practice and the administration of justice. 

When the Mission closed in 1959 Inuit families were forcibly relocated. Another chapter in Canada’s unhappy past and the treatment of its indigenous people.

The Mission building is now a National Historic Site.  With its steep roof, spire and small dormer windows the building’s Germanic design stands out on the landscape.  A number of Inuit act as caretakers of the past returning each short summer to renovate and restore the building.

Three bronze plaques have been erected near the Mission which tells the story of attempts at reconciliation.   Danny Williams, the then Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador’s statement of apology is set out on the first plaque. The Inuit’s response accepting the apology appears in a third.  In between the two lies a list of names of those people who were forcibly removed.

One of those individuals, Gustav Amos, took a break from his caretaking role to greet us on shore.  A soft spoken man, he took us through the Mission building explaining the function of each area and the renovation work underway. Outside at the memorial list of names, he pointed out his mother and father, his finger rubbing sentimentally over their names.  Gustav’s wrinkled face was an open book, an old face on young shoulders that somehow expressed hope, making one feel that things would turn out right in the end.

Around the Mission building the state of dilapidation of the remaining homes was almost artistic with dwellings collapsed drunkenly from the effects of the harsh elements.  It had a sadness about it.

And as for the swarms of large mosquitoes that pursued us from zodiac to shore and back again, well their persistence was quite another story.