Trina Mather-Simard was already having a hectic week of last-minute errands before someone rear-ended her in the Tim Hortons drive-thru Thursday.
“How’s that for timing?” she laughed. “That’s what you get for trying to run off to Timmys!”
Nobody was hurt, and she was soon back on the job as festival and artistic director for the Summer Solstice Aboriginal Arts Festival, held last weekend at its new home on LeBreton Flats.
The festival has moved from Victoria Island, where the Algonquin say they have been meeting for more than 5,000 years.
“Victoria Island, as significant as it is to our community and as beautiful a spot as it is, isn’t very well-known in Ottawa circles,” Mather-Simard said.
With the bigger, more prominent location comes expanded programming, like an international powwow competition hosted by the Grammy-nominated Northern Cree Singers.
The festival’s growth also means some backup for Mather-Simard, who started six years ago as its sole dedicated staffer. Today, there are four, but the work keeps expanding.
“Let’s just say my parents picked my children up for the weekend today because I don’t really make it home,” she said.
Tomorrow marks National Aboriginal Day, not a red-letter day for many Canadians. Mather-Simard hopes events like hers will help change that.
“For us it’s important as Aboriginal people to come together for National Aboriginal Day and celebrate, but I think it’s equally important to take the opportunity to share and educate and just really expose the rest of the residents to a living, evolving aboriginal culture here in the region,” she said.
Three years ago, the government apologized for the harms inflicted by residential schools, and Mather-Simard believes the moment was important not only for Aboriginal people but for all Canadians.
“I don’t think a lot of Canadians, until that apology, really realized some of the things that were impacting and holding back the aboriginal community, and some of the things that they were struggling with,” she said. “So I think that that acknowledgement helps other Canadians kind of understand the path that has led us here, and so everyone can move forward together.”
It’s a long way forward, as auditor general Sheila Fraser noted in her final report of a stubborn and chronic lack of improvement on aboriginal health, education and housing.
But for now, National Aboriginal Day and the Summer Solstice Aboriginal Arts Festival are growing celebrations of Canada’s first cultures, and everyone is invited.
