I worked at the Kelowna Heritage Museum for the summer of 2020, learning a new appreciation for local history. Local history is more adjacent to our lives than the national history we learn in our education. What is so interesting about local history is that we do not have the same degrees of separation, local history is adjacent to us at all times. There are heroes and tragedies hidden right below our noses.
Today, I want to tell a short story about a personal hero. A hero who is still with us, a woman whose selflessness was recognized nationally. Let this be an attempt to write a wrong; A wrong in which our society fails to recognize the heroes of our communities.
This hero isn’t as grand or flashy as a Marvel superhero, or as high profile as some of our historical figures. Or even what one might picture from an “everyday hero.” What makes this person so special is she that she has touched so many lives selflessly. Her physical and emotional scars run deep, and she has flaws. Yet, I believe it is important to remember this specific story to not lose sight of the whole picture. It is not my story to tell, but I do not plan to share anything available to those who want to look.
This story takes above the permafrost line in the Yukon Territory, literally thousands of miles away from any metropolis. The largest city being Whitehorse, boasting a population of 25k, the Yukon isn’t known as the most habitable place for humanity. Yet even further from civilization, deep in the forests which dominate the north, a man and a woman paddle their canoe down the Yukon River, ‘breaking trail’ on a trip with Scouts Canada.
The woman, an Adventure Leader, led the group with this man considered a local guide. The man has lived and thrived in the Yukon, despite being a survivor of polio and having severe scoliosis. Despite his conditions, he was an outdoorsman of envious ability, and it was not his first time on the Yukon River. Unfortunately, even those with extensive experience will find themselves dancing with the strings of misfortune.
The layers to combat the chill late summer Yukon mornings began to become uncomfortable under the afternoon sun. Taking off his life vest and standing, the man went to take off his jacket, but it was at that in which misfortune struck the pair’s canoe. A sort of recipe for disaster brewed: The current had turned the canoe perpendicular to the flow of the water, and a gust of wind came and tipped the canoe over. The pair were ejected into the Yukon River. Due to his conditions, he was not the most well equipped for swimming, and without his life vest, he would have begun to sink.
Remembering that this pair was breaking trail, pushing ahead to set up a camp for the Adventurer group. They were well ahead of the next group of survivors, and all their supplies would have sunk to the bottom of the Yukon River.
I am not here to tell the story of how a man died, but how a man was saved: We mustn’t forget about the hero of this story; The woman is an exceptionally strong swimmer. She flipped the canoe and threw the man onboard. Soaking wet and without supplies, the man began to pray. But, these prayers were answered before they had left on their trip. The woman tied a tow line to herself and began towing the canoe through the chilly water to shore.
Beyond this point, all I know is that the Adventurer Group caught up to the pair and survived. I like to imagine that they showed up, and the man sat next to a fire while the woman tended to it, ensuring that it produced enough heat to stave off hypothermia.
That woman’s name is Monique Rousseau, my mother taking her ex-father-in-laws name. The man’s name is Ernest Rousseau, my grandfather. Monique, known by most as Monty, would earn a Medal of Bravery, and several other awards for her heroism that afternoon on September 3rd, 1999.
This story really shows how incredible Monty is. In my memory, she never let someone who underestimates her go unanswered. She has throughout her life consistently put on the proverbial pants and showed everyone that she possesses enormous capability and incredible capacity for generosity and selflessness.
Mom has always been an inspiration to me. She would joke that her parents were always disappointed that she never went on to get an MD, so she got an MB instead. It always made me glow inside to see her signature “Monique Rousseau M.B.” on my field trip forms in elementary school.
She should also be recognized as someone possessing a great capacity to act selflessly. She has on more than one occasion gone out of her way to help complete strangers. She will often go above and beyond trying to make hopes and dreams come true for her friends. For family, her life isn’t too high a price to pay to see them smile one more day. It is perhaps not the grandest of stories. Still, we often wait until it is too late to recognize our heroes. I don’t want anyone to forget how incredible a human being my mother is. Her unfathomable capacity for self-sacrifice.
I used to collect Medal of Bravery Quarters. I still do, but I so rarely deal with cash these days that I don’t see them often. I will admit to even stealing them from the cash registers when I worked at A&W, but I would try to replace them if I had or could make the change, but let’s be honest they didn’t miss the twenty-five cents. I wouldn’t collect them to keep them though. No, I collected them to give to people.
Along with this tale, although it would usually be much quicker: “My mom has a medal of bravery, and I like to give these to people to let them know she’s a hero.” I care not for what they do with the quarter, but I believe that when they see that quarter again, they will think of that little story, and my mom’s story might live on in that quarter.
The disparity and loss of local history;
I’ve discussed what “History” as an academic field is, the study of documents. That definition is broadening, traditionally rigidly adhering to “written documents,” which presumes many things people take for granted: Literacy, Numeracy; The ability to produce recognizable documents. My mother’s story is in a document. It’s in official government records, it’s on the government website (which by some measure is an official government record), and it’s in newspapers. All the details I shared, I know, are provable in those documents. Unfortunately, this saga is primarily in the memories of my mother and my grandfather.
Thus, we get to the purpose of history. Some people will remember them, while in a generation or two it will be a tall tale, a story of how (Great)-grandma saved (great)-great-grandpa.
Those stories are important; those stories hold the keys to our democratic societies. Unfortunately, those keys, the people, are so wide and disparate that it is difficult to situate them contextually inside the narrative of what people understand as “History.” Stories more people might be familiar with such as two years later when 9/11 is understood as a catalyst for our involvement in the middle east. Some more informed might argue we forgot that we’ve been in the middle east since world war two. What about the Yugoslav Wars (1992-2001)!? (I took a wonderful class on the Balkans, which enriched my awareness of the complexity of other national histories, taught by Dr. Marco Abrams, who was a visiting scholar to UBCO.)
As we zoom out from our personal stories, the world gets so messy that we lose the details of the lives we lived. There’s a great struggle in local history to capture and consolidate what we have left, as well as continue to preserve what we have today. In all our national narratives, there’s an attempt to tell the story of our nation. Inadvertently, suggesting we are telling the lives of the people who lived with those borders. But even Europeans struggle to maintain their historical continuities as National supersedes Local.
The emphasis is present in our museums, seen in a disparity of funding for community-level and oriented museums. While at the Okanagan Heritage Museum, I was told that I’d make more money if I was at the Royal British Columbia Museum. It isn’t to say she didn’t want to pay me more; it’s that she couldn’t. Their funding of student jobs were governments grants that covered between 70-100% of a workers’ wages. The implication was that Royal British Columbia Museum is more funded than our museum, and they can’t afford to pay as much as them based on their grants.
It is merely evidence of the top-down approach to history and heritage. I am guilty of never going to the local Keremeos Museum while living in that area. The real question is, why was I never taken? Why did I never learn the stories of the history of the people and space we lived in?
The easiest thing to do is visit but consider donating or spending your time in the local museum. I learned so much about my local history. So much about the streets we walk on and the buildings we don’t even bother to consider.
Learn about the incredible people who lived incredible lives right next door.
I may be misguided, misinformed, but I hold no malicious intentions. If you disagree with anything I say, in the spirit of reconciliation, let’s have a discussion.
Miigwetch,
Alex
