By Sandy RichardsonPhotographs by John Macfie
The McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg has mounted a major exhibit of photographs taken by John Macfie in many indigenous communities in the Hudson Bay Watershed during the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibit, People of the Watershed, was curated by Paul Seesequasis, author of Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun (2019).
The photographs capture life on the land when the Anishinaabe, Cree, and Anisininew (formerly called Oji-Cree) people of the region still lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Fur trapping was still a viable way of life and the move to a more sedentary lifestyle in settled communities was just beginning. Travel was still largely by canoe, snowshoe, and dog team; outboard motors and snowmobiles were not yet common. Macfie understood that the way of life he was witnessing was passing into history and was inspired to record that way of life and the people. His photographs, in the words of Paul Seesequasis, “form an ambitious, wide-ranging visual account of the people, the lands, and the life of the watershed” at a time of tremendous cultural change.
From the 1950s through the early 1960s John Macfie worked as a trapline management officer with the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests in Northern Ontario. His territory covered the Hudson Bay Watershed from the Manitoba border to Moose Factory and as far south as Mattagami.
Macfie had an interest in photography and he carried a camera on his work travels through this vast region, beginning with a simple folding Kodak camera, then moving up to a Rolleicord for black and white photographs and a Zeiss Contax for colour slides. The colour film used was Kodachrome, and prints from these colour slides form the basis of the People of the Watershed exhibit.
When he finished working in the north Macfie returned to the Parry Sound area, where he had grown up, and continued working for the Department of Lands and Forests as a senior conservation officer. In 1972 he became the supervisor of the Fish and Wiildlife Branch, Parry Sound Region, a position he held until his retirement in 1981.
Following his retirement he researched the history of the Parry Sound District, writing weekly newspaper columns and publishing numerous books. One of these books was Hudson Bay Watershed: A Photographic Memoir of the Ojibway, Cree, and Oji-Cree (1991) in collaboration with Anishinaabe scholar and author Basil Johnston. Many of the photographs that appeared in that book in black and white are Included in the People of the Watershed exhibit in colour.
Late in his life John Macfie donated his prints, negatives, and slides (over 1,200 in all) to the Archives of Ontario for posterity. He died in 2018 at the age of 93.
The People of the Watershed exhibit is a wonderful, historic show that will be of interest to anyone who has paddled any of the many rivers in the Hudson Bay Watershed and visited some of the communities depicted, as well as anyone interested in the people and cultural history of the region. The exhibit runs at the McMichael Gallery until November 17; after that it will move on to other venues, most in Northern Ontario.
https://mcmichael.com/event/people-of-the-watershed-photographs-by-john-macfie