In 1954, on a grey winter day, five-year-old Jackie McKee snowshoes along a railway track somewhere north of Sudbury in Canada. The photo, one of many that have captivated me at the Canadian National Railway School on Wheels Museum in Clinton, Ontario, Canada, is taken from behind. Jackie’s wool pants balloon around his tiny frame as he starts his three-quarter-of-a-mile walk home for lunch, alone. After lunch, Jackie will strap on the snowshoes and walk the track again, moving as fast as his short legs can carry him so he will be on time for afternoon lessons.

I am standing in one of seven rail cars, operated by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways, that brought education to remote Northern Ontario communities from 1926 to 1965. I am here because my Nana, Aggie Chéné, attended school this way when, in 1931, my great-grandfather lost everything, moved his family to a cabin in the Ontario bush, and taught his kids how to hunt and fish for their food.

For five days, the school car parked on a siding, attracting children of all ages from communities too small to be called villages. At the end of the week, the teacher assigned homework, strapped down the chalk and books, and moved to the next stop on his route. Four weeks later, the car returned.

One of these stops was within snowshoeing distance of Aggie’s cabin. The kids came on foot, snowshoes, dog sled, and skis. Before the rivers froze, some came in canoes. Some lived less than a mile away, some more than twenty. Some had lived in Northern Ontario for generations, including many Native kids. More were new to Canada, children of European immigrants hired to maintain the railway and isolated from the country they now called home. Some, like Aggie, were escaping poverty in other parts of Canada. A few spoke English. Most did not. Another photo shows two boys, aged 9- and 11-years-old standing outside a canvas lean-to they pitched in the snow beside the rail car. While their father tended animal traps, sometimes leaving them for months at a time, these boys decided an education was worth the hardship of winter camping.

A student quote on the school car wall reads: “Nothing was going to keep us from going to school.” Aggie and her siblings hiked four kilometres each way to the school. My uncle told me she always wore a 25-caliber rifle over her shoulder in case they spotted a pheasant. Aggie was the best shot and most likely to bring home dinner that night. He also told me she did not like going. However, I know enough of the rest of her story to guess that while she may not have always liked school, she might have been as determined to be there as the student quoted on the wall, those boys in the lean-to, and five-year-old Jackie McKee. While moving to a cabin in the Northern Ontario woods might seem romantic, there was nothing romantic about it for Aggie. My great-grandfather sexually abused her from the time she learned to read to the time she was old enough to pack a bag and leave. Hiking to the school car for five days every four weeks was an escape. She learned to read, write, and draw. She learned history, civics, art, and science. She learned the world was bigger than a cabin in the Ontario bush.

This was the goal. As a school board inspector commented in 1927 when assessing the program’s inaugural year, “Good citizenship is contagious. The advent of the school car has made these people contented and hopeful.” For kids living with a daily struggle for survival, climbing the ladder to the school car meant aiming at something that transcended themselves and life in the bush.

Last week, Charlie Kirk was shot dead on a college campus in Utah. Soon, we might know with certainty why his assassin did what he did. However, media and social media responses to Mr. Kirk’s murder provide clues. There was one day of shared shock and grief. Barely a day. Then, so-called journalists and social media influencers fled back to their political and ideological camps, shuttered the windows on our shared humanity, and pointed barrels of rhetoric through the foxholes, firing blame, threats, and insults at the other side. Some even cracked jokes.

When I read the following from the CBC on September 11th, I thought, here we go again.

“Some of Charlie Kirk's most controversial takes

Charlie Kirk, who died after being shot during an appearance at Utah Valley University Wednesday, had a long history of contentious views and often courted controversy with statements that seemed designed to provoke those who disagreed with him.”

Charlie Kirk was a Christian. And what were his contentious views? That the nuclear family matters. That human life matters. That a baby matters. That the truth of male and female matters. That a government that takes care of its citizens matters. That being able to afford a house and food matters. And most importantly, that dialogue matters. Are these contentious views? These are my views. And not too long ago, these were largely shared views and ones we could credit for creating a country people would want to call home. Show those views to the children in the school car and they would wonder what we find so contentious. Those views put the school car in their midst, and nothing could keep them from it.

The CBC story offended me. And yet, it did not surprise me. I converted to Christianity two and a half years ago. Conversion did not mean I chose a new “look”, philosophy, practice, or creed. Conversion meant a cloak dropped from my eyes and plugs came out of my ears so I could see the world God created and hear about my place in it. There were sacrifices and big changes but there was also huge upside. Anxiety and despair were replaced with peace and hope. Feeling overwhelmed and afraid were replaced with feeling comforted and strengthened. Like many new converts, I was what you might call “a bit much”. I listened to worship music and smiled at the sky. I turned every conversation into a sermon about God. “What’s for dinner, Colleen?” “Stir fry, Brock. But only after we thank God for what he has given us today! And speaking of God…” I dropped $300 at a Catholic supplies shop, “Let me get you a box for all of that,” and hung crucifixes around the house. I also decided to wear a cross around my neck.

While the other stuff was happening at home, wearing the cross was a public display of my newfound faith. I was nervous on my first Zoom call with a client. I knew the dominant script had flipped – that being a Christian went against the culture. And I knew that going against the culture could cost me. Would I lose clients? Would I lose friends? Would I lose family? Never did I wonder, would I be shot?

When I think of what offends us, and what situations and ideas we decide are so contentious that they are deemed to be violence, I know none of that would matter if we were living the life my Nana did. Or the lives of so many who struggled to survive in real ways. In life and death ways. I want to write my Nana’s story because being reminded of where we were might put some perspective on where we are. It might remind us that these traditions that we now label contentious, even hateful, are the very traditions we most need right now. It might remind us that we come from stock that is too tough and resilient to let a difference of opinion cause us to rage. A captivating story about a bunch of children in a Canadian school car might just bring some of us together.

I still like to laugh. God gave me a sense of humour and a talent for writing. He also gave me a cat, two children, a husband, and a tendency to be impulsive sometimes. Great fodder for a humour column on Substack. So, I will keep writing articles when the ideas hit me. However, something or someone is also waking me up at four o’clock in the morning with scenes from a 1931 Canadian school car in my head. That might be God too. So, when there are long breaks between humour articles, know that I am answering a call to write a book based on Aggie and those children who snowshoed to school all those years ago.

That picture of Jackie McKee is not my Nana, but it could be. They say hard times create strong men. My Nana was strong, and I will bet Jackie was too. We are not in the same hard times Aggie experienced in the 1930’s, or Jackie experienced in the 1950’s, but we are in times that are hard. However the book turns out, I pray it will be a story that points to God and, by doing so, reminds us that with Him, we are strong.

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